Page 182 of Reckless Obsession

“We both wanted this,” he says, and the words come strained, uneven. “And I wanted it to work between us. I really wanted—”

He cuts himself off.

His hand drags through his hair, slow and almost desperate, like he can pull the right words out of his own head if he grips hard enough. But the room stays silent.

And that silence is suffocating.

It is thick with every morning he made me coffee. Every time he let me steal his shirts. Every night he told me he was coming back, and he did. Every promise he gave me that I was stupid enough to treat like something solid.

“So you were still in love with him the whole time?” I ask. “And what? You spent the last four days with him while you ignored every text I sent, and you remembered you wanted to be his husband again?”

His face changes, and I see a crack in his composure. Not completely. Tristan would rather bleed out than fall apart in front of someone. But I see it in the way his mouth opens and closes around words he will not say.

He wants to explain.

I can feel it.

But he doesn’t.

And I can’t keep looking at him while he chooses silence again.

“I loved you,” I say.

The confession falls into the room with the weight of a blade dropped on stone.

Tristan goes still.

My throat tightens until it hurts.

“I love you,” I correct, because there is no point lying now. Not when everything I have tried to protect has already been stripped open in front of him. “I have loved you for so long that I don’t know what it will feel like with anyone else. I loved you when I watched you kiss him for years. I loved you when I sat at your wedding and watched you promise your whole life to him.” My breath breaks, and I press my lips together hard enough to taste blood. “I loved you while you were married to him. I loved you when you fucked me two years ago and walked out the door like I was nothing.”

Tristan’s eyes glisten.

It should help.

It doesn’t.

“I love you so much it makes me sick.” I whisper.

“Maksim, don’t do this—”

“No.” I shake my head, forcing myself to meet his gaze. “You don’t get to say my name like it fixes anything. You don’t get to look at me like you’re hurting too, when you’re the one who chose him.”

His expression folds inward.

He looks wrecked.

I wish it made me feel better.

It doesn’t.

“So all that bullshit about Dante was what?” I ask, genuinely confused now. “All the you’re mine bullshit. Telling me to cut him off. Acting like you couldn’t stand the thought of someone else even looking at me.”

My laugh comes out thin and broken.

“What was that, Tristan?”

He says nothing.