Chapter 16
The truth was, Elijah had fallen for Gloria long before tonight.
When she’d told him that last time she was over him. When he’d discovered she’d vanished without a word. When he’d searched her room and found no trace of the love letters and drawings she’d once created for him. When he’d come to London and seen her with another man.
He had fallen for the girl who’d chased after him for years, without even realizing it himself.
He’d mistaken his feelings for something else entirely, burying them whenever they surfaced.
Until now, when they finally hit him with devastating clarity.
His chest tightened like he was having a heart attack, making it hard to breathe.
For one crazy moment, he considered barging inside, racing upstairs to grab Gloria, to tell her he loved her. To say he’d been an idiot and beg for another chance.
But reality kept him frozen in place, unable to move as snow piled on his shoulders.
The cold seeping through his clothes was nothing compared to the ice forming in his chest.
He watched helplessly as the woman who had once adored him stood beside another man, exchanging whispers that made her smile.
Gloria’s face glowed with a happiness he hadn’t seen in years.
A memory flashed–a rainy night that felt like a lifetime ago.
The rain had poured just as heavily then as the snow fell now.
That night, behind a window just like this one, he and Jenna had tangled together beside a fireplace.
And Gloria had knelt outside in the downpour all night, watching them, her world collapsing with each passing minute.
He had seen the light fade from her eyes until she finally passed out on the wet ground.
Now he understood exactly what she’d felt. Now he knew the gut–wrenching pain of watching someone you love choose someone else.
The man standing like a statue outside gradually caught the guests‘ attention.
People clustered at the windows, clutching their drinks and speculating about the “poor lovesick fool” in the snow.
Eventually, the engaged couple made their way to the windows.
When Gloria spotted him, surprise crossed her face, followed by something almost like pity.
She’d heard the gossip from back home.
The woman Elijah had worshipped turned out to be a monster. And the “troublesome girl” he’d dismissed had been the victim all along.
This complete reversal had finally opened his eyes to what he’d done.
That’s why he’d flown across an ocean to find her. Why he now stood in the snow like something from a bad romance novel.
Gloria’s fingers tightened around her champagne flute before she deliberately turned away.
“If Jenna hadn’t been caught, I’d probably have waited my entire life for him to realize how wrong he was,” she said, her voice carrying a sharp edge.
That was human nature–only seeing the truth when it slapped you in the face, only valuing what you had after you’d thrown it away.
But Gloria didn’t need his eleventh–hour regrets. She had no interest in reopening old wounds for a man who only wanted her when he couldn’t have her,
That would only drag her backward when she was finally moving forward.
Chapter 16
Meepy seeing each other again was the deanen ending for both of them.
Lifes end withing, simply slipping an arm around his fiancée’s waist, understanding without words.
One by our the ensile lights dimmed. Cars pulled away from the snowy driveway.
thil finally, the massive doors closed with a definitive thad, and Elijah–still standing in the deepening snow–realized Gloria wasn’t coming out
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Chapter 17
