Chapter 241
HARLOTTE-
I could not stop.
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Even though I knew I did not want to ruin our friendship over une fight. Over my jealousy of seeing Luca talking to someone he had a crush on in the past..
“I cannot believe this,” I said. “I cannot believe you. This morning. The bathroom. And then her. Like itall meant nothing to you.”
“Nothing happened.” Luca’s voice stayed low. Tight. “I promise. I didn’t flirt, Charlotte. It was a harmless conversation.”
“I don’t believe you.” It came out as a whisper. “You knew she was coming onto you and you stayed and talked to her. You must have been hoping for something.”
He ran a hand down his face.
“This is why I never wanted to start whatever this is between us.”
I gasped.
The room seemed to spin.
Did he really just say that to me?
My heart squeezed so tightly I had to lock my knees. My body was not cooperating. I wanted to take the words and shove them back into his mouth.
“Do you regret having sex with me?” I demanded.
“Of course not.” He snapped immediately. “That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Then what are you saying?” I asked, holding his gaze.
He looked at me like he was not sure he should answer.
Then he did anyway.
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“I’m saying your friendship is too important to me. I can’t lose you. That’s why I never wanted to cross that
1 line between friends. We never should have crossed that line. What we had worked. We never had
arguments like this because we stayed friends. The way it should have remained.”
Something in my chest went cold.
He could not have said it any clearer.
He meant those words.
“You don’t need to explain anything anymore,” I said. “I get it. This was a mistake for you. You never actually wanted to be more than friends. You hate that we crossed that line and clearly I’m at fault for even
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The Mockey Captain’s Unwanted Wife
bringing up this entire thing.”
Nis face changed.
Shock.
Then pain.
Like he had not heard himself until I translated it.
“Charlotte-that is not-”
I was already moving.
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Out of the bedroom. Across the suite. Past the couch where I had worn lingerie and asked for a deal like an
idiot.
He started following me.
“Charlotte. Stop. Listen-”
I slammed the door in his face.
The sound cracked through the corridor.
I stood there for one second with my palm still on the wood, waiting.
He would open it.
He always came after me.
He had carried me out of a bar. He had found me after Valentina. He had held me in a medical corridor. He would open the door.
The handle did not move.
I waited another breath.
Then another.
Nothing.
The hurt that followed was worse than the photos.
I rushed to the lift before I could knock and take it back.
My own reflection stared at me in the doors. Red eyes. The mark on my throat he had told me not to cover. A girl who had just been told the best thing that ever happened to her should never have happened.
I went down to the bar.
I needed to be away from him for a few minutes.
Maybe longer.
The Mockey Captain’s Unwanted Wife
I took a stool at the end and ordered something I would not drink.
Then I cried.
Not pretty.
I kept imagining Luca with someone like his crush. Happy with her. Articles with the two of them everywhere. Paloma Voss on his arm in a hallway that looked like a date even when he swore it was not.
I would not survive something like that.
Luca had been clear in the suite.
This thing between us was an obvious mistake to him.
The deal I had asked for like an idiot, trying to keep him without asking him to choose me.
I wiped my face with the back of my hand.
My phone buzzed.
I turned it face down.
I did not look.
If it was him, I was not ready.
If it was not him, that would hurt more.
A couple at the other end laughed. Soft. Easy. That was all I had ever wished for with Luca. Not a rule. Us as a couple. Just that. Not friends but more.
“Rough day?” the bartender asked, kind, not nosy.
“Something like that.”
I did not look at the lift.
I knew he would come.
Eventually.
It was Luca.
Unfortunately, he did not come.
Minutes stretched.
I watched the doors anyway, hating myself for it.
Every time they opened my chest lifted. Every time it was not him, something in me dropped again.
He was supposed to follow.
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He always followed.
night he had said we never should have crossed the line, and then he had let me slam a door and leave.
That felt like the truth of it.
I also knew if I saw his face too soon I would either break down in front of him or scream that I was in love
with him and how could he have been so blind.
So I sat there and cried into a napkin like a girl who had forgotten she was supposed to be the strong one.
The one who supported his career.
The one who did not let her feelings get in the way.
The one who had proposed the entire thing.
That was the part I could not even be angry about properly.
I had asked for sex.
I had said no strings.
I had said just sex, remember?
He had tried to stay on the friend side of the line and I had pulled him over it. Then I had gotten jealous of a photograph and demanded it mean more than the ‘contract I wrote in my head myself.
Of course he thought it was a mistake.
In his eyes, it had never been meant to be more than sex.
And I had been the one who sold it to him that way because I was too afraid to say the real thing.
I love you.
I have loved you.
The deal was a coward’s version of choose me.
I pressed the napkin harder against my eyes.
The drink sat untouched.
I checked the lift again.
Still not him.
The hope of it hurt almost as much as the fight.
I loved him.
I did not know how to confess it now.
The Mockey Captain’s Unwanted Wife
It did not feel like it mattered anymore.
if, to Luca, all of it had been a line we never should have crossed.
I sat there anyway, waiting for a man I had told myself I would not face yet, and breaking a little more each minute he did not come.
AD
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10:18 Thu, Oct 1.
The Mockey Captain’s Unwanted Wife
Dex Morgan
Dex works to elevate each story with clean writing, emotional balance, and thoughtful flow for readers.