We Will Love Again – Episode 14
Noah released Alaina’s wrist, but neither of them moved. The hotel corridor seemed too quiet to contain the question her answer had created.
“You didn’t marry Peter.” Noah repeated the fact as if testing it for deception. “Then who did you leave me for?”
Alaina could not tell him there had never been another man. That truth would strip away the reason for their breakup and expose the person who demanded it. “We ended things a long time ago.”
“That wasn’t my question.” Noah stepped into the corridor, letting the suite door close behind him. Without the distance of a conference table, the anger in his face was impossible to ignore.
“You don’t get to interrogate me because you bought access to my company.” Alaina kept her voice low. “I brought your contracts. If there’s nothing else, I’m leaving.”
Noah should have let her go. Instead, he heard the same evasion that had haunted him for five years. “You humiliated me for a man you didn’t even stay with. Was he worth it?”
“This is exactly why the past should stay buried.” Her composure cracked. “No answer I give you will return what we lost.”
The grief in her voice did not belong to someone pleased with her choice. Noah saw it, and suspicion pushed against the certainty that had sustained him for years.
“You said I was wasting your time,” he reminded her. “You laughed at my ring. Then you left in his car.”
Alaina remembered every word because she had punished herself with them ever since. “I know what I said.”
“Do you?” Noah’s bitterness rose. “I built my entire life around never being that powerless again.”
She looked at the man he had become and felt the cost of her decision anew. “Then maybe what happened gave you everything you wanted.”
“Everything?” His laugh was quiet and empty. Wealth had purchased freedom, influence, and admiration. It had never returned the trust he lost on that sidewalk.
Alaina turned away before emotion betrayed her. Fatigue made the corridor sway, and she caught the wall with one hand.
Noah reacted before anger could stop him. He steadied her by the shoulders, noticing how cold she felt. “When did you last eat?”
“That isn’t your concern.” Even as she protested, weakness softened her voice. The night’s rush and weeks of poor sleep had caught up with her.
He guided her into the suite and ordered food. Alaina objected, but Noah ignored her with the stubborn protectiveness she remembered too well.
For several minutes, they sat on opposite sides of the room while the untouched contract box waited between them. The arrangement felt like a parody of the evenings they once spent studying together.
When food arrived, Alaina ate only enough to stop his scrutiny. She stood as soon as she could. “You have your files. I’ve done my job.”
Her bag slipped from the chair as she reached for it, spilling its contents across the carpet. Noah bent to help—and froze when he saw a familiar engagement ring hanging from a fine chain among her belongings.
