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"I don't have anyone else," she cries out.
"Then it's time for you to work like the rest of us."
"Just...just give me a loan one last time. Please."
"No."
He stepped back.
She slapped him...and then stared at Ronan in shock as if she couldn't believe what he had just done. "R-Ronan—-"
That was it for him.
A single nod was all it took, and Lena started screaming as soon as she saw the building security head toward her.
"Ronan—-"
The pair of security carried her bodily out of the premises, and Ronan turned away. This part of his life was over. Because this time, he finally saw Lena for the girl she had always been.
Acacia was still unconscious when he visited her. He took her hand in his, and he swallowed hard as he found himself praying for the first time.
Please. God. Please.
Ronan studied her face, searching for traces of Lena in her features.
All those similarities used to be so damn easy to spot.
But now, all he could see were the things that made them polar opposites.
Like the hardened expression on Lena's face...and the softened look on Acacia's.
Don't wait until it's too late, and you've already lost everything.
Konstantin's warning echoed in Ronan's mind like a death knell as he paced the sterile hospital corridor. He paused at the window of Acacia's room, watching her chest rise and fall in sleep, tubes and wires connecting her to machines that beeped a steady rhythm. His hands clenched into fists at his sides, the urge to go to her, to touch her, to explain everything nearly overwhelming him.
But he couldn't. Not yet. Not until he sorted through the chaos in his own mind.
When he was finally permitted to enter her room, he took her hand in his, and he swallowed hard as he found himself praying for the first time.
Please. God. Please.
Time slipped by, but he remained by her side until her eyes finally fluttered open.
For a moment, confusion clouded her eyes, then recognition dawned, and she started to smile at him—a smile that faded as memory returned, and pain gripped his chest because it was like the fucking sun dying on him.
"I need you to tell me the truth." Her voice was hardly more than a whisper, but the tremor in it cut him to the quick.
"Acacia—"
The machines monitoring her vitals registered a spike in her heart rate.
"Swear it, please."
"I swear."
She swallowed hard, her eyes never leaving his face. "Did you want me the first time because I look like your ex?"
The question hung between them, sharp as a scalpel. He could lie to her. Tell her no, absolve himself of the sin of his initial deception. Anything to keep her from leaving him. But because he loved her too much, even if it meant losing her by speaking the truth—-