Page 36 of Falling for Mr. Ruthless (The Rules We Break #1)
I move to pass him in the doorway. He reaches for me, fingers catching my wrist. The contact burns like a brand—heat searing through my skin to something deeper, something I've tried to cauterize with years of distance.
"Chanel. Please."
I look down at his hand on my skin. Four years ago, that touch could undo me. Could make me forget every principle, every boundary. Could make me believe that love was enough to overcome what separated us.
Now it just feels like trespass.
"Let go."
He releases me instantly, fingers uncurling as if my skin has scalded him. Physical boundaries, at least, he still respects.
I walk toward the elevator, each step measured, controlled. Everything inside me trembles, but I won't let him see it. Won't give him that vulnerability. Not again.
"This time, I was honest," he calls after me, voice pitched low enough that I could pretend not to hear if I wanted to.
I pause, hand on the elevator call button. Don't turn.
"Honesty after damage isn't redemption, Jakob." My voice barely carries across the distance between us. "It's just another way to make yourself feel better about what you've done."
I step into the elevator, watching his reflection in the polished doors as they slide closed—a man going still with the particular stillness of predators and broken things. Only when I'm sealed away from his gaze do I finally exhale, a sound like something tearing loose inside my chest.
The descent feels like falling.
* * *
I check on Jaden first when I get home, finding him curled on his side, one arm flung above his head—just like his father sleeps.
The resemblance hits like a physical blow tonight.
The curve of his mouth, the fan of dark lashes against brown skin.
Jakob's features softened through mine, a living testament to what we once created together.
I find Latanya's note tucked into Jaden's backpack, alongside a small container of homemade cookies. She must have slipped it in before leaving:
Haven't seen your face in weeks, stranger. Coffee dates don't cancel themselves, you know. Jaden says you've been "working at Dad's" but your eyes look tired. Whatever storm you're weathering, I've got an umbrella big enough for two.Miss you. Love you. P.S. I'm just a call away. Day or night.
I trace her looping handwriting, gratitude a knife-edge in my throat. One person who wants nothing from me but friendship.
I pour wine into a glass that catches the city lights through my window. My apartment feels smaller after weeks in Jakob's penthouse—less sleek, more lived-in. But it's mine. Built with my choices, my compromises, my refusal to let his leaving define me.
The night air on my balcony carries the first hint of autumn chill.
Below, Manhattan continues its relentless rhythm, indifferent to the small apocalypses playing out in apartments across its grid .
How many other women stand on balconies tonight, holding themselves together with nothing but practice and pride?
The glass door slides open behind me. I don't turn, don't need to.
My body recognizes the particular cadence of his footsteps, the shift in air pressure that signals his presence.
The scent that reaches me before his voice does—sandalwood and cedar, and something darker, something that belongs to memory rather than the present.
"You shouldn't be here," I say, still facing the city.
"I know."
His voice comes from closer than expected, intimate in the darkness.
I turn to find him standing at the threshold of the balcony, hands in his pockets.
He's changed from his suit into dark jeans and a charcoal henley that clings to the body I once knew better than my own.
The casual clothes make him look more dangerous somehow.
More like the man I married than the CEO I've been auditing.
"How did you get in?" I ask, though I already know.
"I still have a key." His eyes hold mine, unblinking. "From when I pick up Jaden."
I take a long swallow of wine, buying seconds to compose myself. "Why are you here, Jakob?"
"Because I couldn't stay away."
The honesty catches me off guard—no calculation, no strategy, just raw truth. It would be easier if he lied. If he claimed Jaden needed something, or work couldn't wait, or any excuse that would let me keep my walls intact.
"That's not a good enough reason." I set my glass down with deliberate care, needing my hands free. Needing nothing between us if this confrontation is to finish what began earlier. "Not after today."
He steps onto the balcony, moving into my space with the same deliberate slowness he approaches everything—giving me time to retreat, to establish boundaries, to refuse.
I don't move. Some stubborn, self-destructive part of me refuses to yield ground, even as my pulse hammers against my ribs, even as my body recognizes his proximity before my mind can intervene.
"I know I hurt you," he says, stopping just close enough that I can feel the heat radiating from him. "I know I broke what we had. I know you don't believe me when I say I was trying to protect you."
"Then why are you here?" I hate how my voice betrays me, dropping lower, softer. Hate how my body remembers what my mind has spent years trying to forget.
His eyes move over my face like physical touch, cataloging details I can't hide— the slight tremble of my lips, the pulse at my throat, the way my breath comes faster when he's near. Nothing escapes Jakob. Nothing ever did.
"Because when you walked out today, I realized something.
" He reaches up, not touching me, his hand hovering near my cheek.
The space between his palm and my skin seems to crackle with current.
"I've been trying to protect you since the day we met.
From my family's judgment. From my world's corruption. From my own darkness."
His hand finally makes contact, fingertips brushing my skin with devastating gentleness.
"But I never asked if you wanted protection." His voice roughens. "I never considered that you might prefer the truth—with all its danger—to safety built on lies."
Something shifts in my chest—tectonic plates grinding against each other, creating fissures where I thought I'd built solid ground.
"I trusted you," I whisper, the words scraping my throat raw. "With everything. My heart. My body. Our son. And you walked away without a word of explanation. Just divorce papers and silence."
His thumb traces the curve of my cheekbone, and I hate how my body betrays me, leaning into the touch like a flower seeking light after years of darkness. Muscle memory. Biological treachery.
"I thought I was saving you." His voice drops to something barely audible. "I thought loving you meant keeping you clean of my mistakes. My compromises."
"That's not love," I say, but the conviction is bleeding out of the words, leaving them hollow. "That's control."
"I know." His hand slides to cup the back of my neck, and the contact sends electricity down my spine. A current that shouldn't still exist after four years of careful disconnection. "I know that now."
I should step back. Should rebuild the walls he's somehow slipped past. Should remember the hurt, the betrayal, the years of silence. Should remember this morning—the professional humiliation, the exile, the consequences of being tied to him.
Instead, I reach up and press my palm against his chest, feeling his heartbeat race beneath my fingers. Feeling the evidence that he's as affected as I am by this proximity we've denied ourselves for so long.
"I can't trust you," I say, but even I hear the question in the statement. The wavering at the edges.
"I know." His other hand comes up to cradle my face. "I haven't earned it yet."
The yet hangs between us, heavy with possibility. With implication. With a future I'm not sure I can risk believing in.
"Jakob—" I start, but the rest of the sentence dissolves as his lips brush mine.
Not a demand. A question.
My body answers before my mind can intervene, fingers curling into his shirt, pulling him closer, turning the brush into pressure. Into heat. Into hunger that four years of distance hasn't diminished.
Something breaks loose inside me—some final thread of restraint snapping under the weight of want I've denied for too long.
His arms wrap around me, lifting me against him until my feet barely touch the ground.
My hands find his hair, fingers tangling in the thick strands as our mouths move together with the desperate precision of muscle memory.
This . This is what I've missed. Not just the physical contact— though God, his body against mine feels like coming home —but the way the world narrows to just this moment. Just us. Nothing calculated or controlled or constructed.
Just raw. Just real.
He walks me backward until I feel the wall of the building against my shoulders, his body pressing into mine with delicious weight.
His hands slide down my sides, over my hips, gripping my thighs to lift me higher.
I wrap my legs around his waist, the position bringing him hard against my center, drawing a sound from his throat that vibrates through my skin.
"Inside," I manage between kisses, aware of the open balcony, the sleeping child down the hall.
He carries me through the sliding door, into the darkened living room, never breaking contact.
My back hits the couch, his weight following me down, and suddenly we're horizontal.
His body covering mine, his mouth moving from my lips to my jaw to the sensitive spot below my ear that he still remembers.
I arch against him, hands pulling at his shirt, needing skin. Needing proof that this is real, that he's here, that the connection between us wasn't just something I imagined to explain the hollow ache of his absence.