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He had been her whole life for these last five years.
Perhaps that was the problem. There was nothing and no one else. She had been far too focused on changing her life. On making something better for herself. And that had encouraged her to make her job all-encompassing. Really, the issue was her desperation. To escape what she had been. To never have to go back to the life that she had lived with her parents.
To maintain control.
In the strangest way, even though Luca was a tyrant, she was in control in this life. She managed all the particulars of his daily life. While she was often creating an environment that suited him, she knew everything about it.
She was the cruise director.
Perhaps that was her problem now. She was on the cusp of a change. Nobody wanted change. Change, even when it was change that you wanted, even when it was change that felt inevitable, was frightening.
She was going to move away from Rome. It had been her home these last five years.
Her first time out of the United States, and she simply didn’t miss it. She hadn’t gone back. She had spent these past years traveling, but she’d had this as her home base.
She had lived in the same apartment now for three years.
That was the problem.
She was leaving everything that she knew now. That was why it all felt unsettled.
It wasn’t Luca.
Because she didn’t want to believe that she had softer feelings for Luca.
When he was just the most unreasonable human being on the planet.
And yet.
He didn’t care about her. The fact that his activities hadn’t in any way changed in the past week indicated that. He was nothing in response to her leaving. He had been perturbed when he had first heard about it because it was a change he wasn’t in control of. And when it came to not liking change Luca was a champion.
But it had nothing to do with her. Nothing to do with actually wanting her around, or caring about her in any regard.
And the same went for her.
She didn’t care about him. She just felt attached to her life.
Understandable.
That was all.
When it was finally time for them to leave for the summit, she felt like there was a guillotine about to fall.
Because this was it. The end of the road.
Maybe she should have arranged to stay over in Singapore for a while after. A little bit of time between the end of one job and the beginning of another. Time to explore a part of the world she hadn’t seen before, and perhaps embrace new experiences.
For one fleeting moment she imagined what it would be like if she cut loose entirely. If she forgot herself. If she found a man—a man that wasn’t Luca—and had a wild fling.
Her whole being rejected that instantly.
That just wasn’t her.
She wasn’t a virgin out of any sense of principle.
It was only that...
You are preoccupied by him.