Corrupted Chaos: An Enemies to Lovers Forced Proximity Romance (Tarnished Empire)

My gut wrenched, my heart breaking all over again at the thought of telling the man I was falling for about the first man I’d ever loved.

“It was just a way of him saying goodbye to me.” I tried to brush it off even though my body shook with the pain of remembering that day, his written words, his lifeless form.

“That all it said?” He stepped close, caging me in against the hallway wall.

“I can’t say it out loud,” I whispered, about to break. My body shook from trying to hold in my sobs, trying to overcome the emotion that fought to escape. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

This could have been the moment Cade broke me. He could have told me to buck up or said this was why he didn’t trust me with more at work.

He could have said so many things. But he didn’t.

As he stared at me, his hand came up to rub my cheek. He didn’t look through me or glance away from me. He held my gaze like he wanted more. He wanted everything. He wanted my soul, and he couldn’t hack into my mind to get it. Here, he had to ask if he wanted this side of me.

And I had to say yes.

He held out his phone. “If you can’t talk about it, put it in writing on a screen and let me read it.”

I took my time typing in his Notes app, tears streaming down my face. Yet, Cade wiped them away, one by one, over and over again. Patiently, softly, caringly.

Line 1: I won’t say this is a love letter, because it’s not.

Line 2: But if I were to have written one, it would have been about you.

Line 3: So, don’t blame yourself.

Line 4: You’re too good for this place by me.

Line 5: I probably should have let you go before all this.

Line 6: But I couldn’t. You were the only one who loved me.

Line 7: All that love around you. I just wanted a sliver.

Line 8: It fucked with my head and made me weak, so weak I held onto you.

Line 9: You think I’m strong to do this? Or a coward?

Line 10: Maybe if I tell you to move on, I’ll be strong but . . .

Line 11: I’m too jealous and our love ain’t healthy

Line 12: Get a love that isn’t dangerous like ours

Line 13: I’m sorry for the mess.

Line 14: But I’m letting you go now. 

“He was dramatic and poetic,” I whispered as I handed him the phone. “I’ve memorized every line, and sometimes I just scramble them all up in hopes that it will mean something different.”

He did what he always did when he was avoiding words: he hummed to give us both a moment to digest what was happening.

I showed him my darkest secret, trusted him with a part of me I didn’t want anybody to see. He had the power now. I’d given it all to him.

“Will you delete it?” I asked quietly as he continued to stare at the phone.

“Am I a dangerous love or a safe one, Izzy?” he asked without answering me.

“I—” His dark gaze held mine, expecting me to know the answer. He wanted to know where we were going, as if we had anywhere to go at all. I knew my heart was lost to him, but I still tried to ignore it. “Aren’t we just having fun, Cade? You let Rodney in here because—”

“I let Rodney in here for your enjoyment. Not mine.” He immediately cut me off. “Don’t confuse my willingness to make you happy with how serious I am about you. I would’ve never have done that before.”

“We’re serious now?” He’d lost his mind. “What do you mean you wouldn’t have done that before?”

“Because I don’t share . . . except for you. For some reason, I’m inclined to make you feel good, even if it fucks with my head. I loved seeing you look alive while I watched, but don’t think for a second I’d let it happen again. You and I are done with others from this point on.”

“You don’t control that. If I want to go grab Rodney for a quickie—”

“It’ll be the last quickie he has before he dies a slow, excruciating death.” The threat rumbled out of him, so menacing I believed him.

“What are we doing?” I whispered, I asked, my heart beating so fast I swear my blood couldn’t keep up. “You’re talking like this is serious.”

“Is it not?” he asked, making me suddenly feel like I was the crazy one.

“What the hell would I tell our team out there?”

“The truth?” He shrugged.

“Didn’t you just hear me? I slept with an older man when I was sixteen, Cade.” I winced as I said it out loud. “The first time you met me, you called me an addict. Now I’m sleeping with my freaking boss. That doesn’t look real great for you.”

“I’m not too worried about my reputation.” He chuckled and leaned back against the wall to take me in. “What are you really scared of, Izzy?”

Did he not realize I could fall for him so fast and so hard that I’d never make it back to the surface? “Why do I have to be scared of anything? Why can’t it just be that this was fun and now we need to stop fucking around?”

“You ready to go back to bottling up everything you’re feeling?” He lifted his stupid dark brow.

“I’ve done it just fine over the years,” I blurted out, then I gasped at the words, slapping a hand over my mouth.

And there was that genuine smile of his when he pulled discomfort from someone, or when he cracked a fucking code or finished a stupid confidential project that he wouldn’t let me help him work on. “Exactly. And why do that another second when you’ve been fine letting it all go here?”

“Am I some sort of experiment to you?” I yelled. “I can’t gamble with this, with us, with any of it. I lost my first love because I was being reckless with my emotions and my behavior.”

“You lost him because he OD’d. He chose his own fate.”

“I could have stopped it,” I whispered.

“You can’t think like that. It’s like saying I could have stopped all the lives lost because my father. I could have stopped him.”

“But you did.” I pointed out.

“I could have done it sooner.”

“Do you really think like that?” I wondered if he took blame like so many children took on their parents’ sins.

“No.” He shook his head. “We can’t change someone’s path once their mind is made up. You can’t go back and rewrite his story or think of the what-ifs. It’s why you shouldn’t try to scramble that letter into something it’s not. You accept what people have done and respond to it in the way that’s best for you.”

“Is that what you did with your father?” I asked quietly, trying to understand him maybe like he was trying to understand me.

“Yes. We gave him what he deserved.” He stopped for a second to glance at his phone. “With Vincent, it seems you can only respond by writing him back, huh?”

“Like a letter?” I squinted at him.

He shrugged. “Maybe.”

I shook my head. “Look, I can’t. I can’t do any of this, okay? Let’s just forget we talked this over. It’s . . . I should have been able to stop him . . .” I took a deep breath.

“No, love.” His voice was soft, but firm. “You can’t blame yourself for a decision he made, Izzy.” He tried to pull me into his arms but I didn’t let him. He was saying what I’d probably needed to hear for a very long time but hadn’t gotten to.

Yet, I wanted to hide from him. I wanted to disappear. I wanted a damn hit or pick me up of a drug I couldn’t go back to.

That was the moment.

That feeling. It could consume me.

I knew I had to step away. I was lost in the depths of my own ocean of sorrow and embarrassment with another wave about to drown me. And it could have been the opposite; I could have been flying in a cloud of my own happiness, crazy in love and not seeing that the sun was about to blind me. I got too close to it all, and then I wanted to indulge in what could ruin me.

It was a sign. A stark reminder. “We shouldn’t be talking about this.”

“Why?” He frowned and then searched my face.

“Why? Because I haven’t told anyone this. You shouldn’t know this, Cade! Why would you even want to?” I poked him to shove him back, but he didn’t move an inch.

“Because I want to know everything about you. I’m trying to figure you out, to understand you.”

“I don’t want you to,” I exclaimed and combed my hands through my messy hair. God, I should have had it up in a ponytail. I shouldn’t have been prancing around in my wrinkled mess of clothes, head full of waves and face free of makeup. I’d unraveled and let myself go free when I shouldn’t have been. “I’m not a fucking algorithm to decode. I’m a screw up. That’s it.”

I held my arms out and waved them in front of myself like I was presenting. I’d lost the mask. I’d lost the facade. I was standing in front of him, vulnerable, and I didn’t know if my heart could handle someone loving the real me again, someone breaking my heart and leaving again.

“Funny that you’re more attractive as a screwup than a well-put-together doll. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’d take you either way, but this you is what I want.” He didn’t even say it as a joke.

My heart squeezed at his words, how he looked at me with genuine affection in his gaze. My body responded, but I couldn’t. “This was a fun cabin retreat, Cade. Not a relationship. I have to go back to being put together after this.”

He pulled a lock of my hair and stepped close. “Should I fight you for your mess, baby doll?”

“You wouldn’t win.” I chuckled sadly and glanced away. Why was my heart already breaking?

But he turned my chin up and made me stare into those whiskey eyes of his. They held determination and domination. “I always win, Ms. Hardy.”

“Well, it’s not a game we’re playing. We can’t do this anymore. The red line of spray paint is being reinforced.”

He shook his head. “What are you so scared of? Losing someone you care about again? You care about me?” The man was smiling as if he’d been given some type of award.

I rolled my eyes. “If I cared about you, we’d have a hell of an uphill battle. Don’t you get that? I’ve had therapy for my addiction, Cade.” I paced down the hallway to the living room, and he followed to watch me walk back and forth. “I’ve studied it and researched it—like I do with the fucking systems we dig into. I know what’s good for me. Relationships like this . . . how can they be? You’re still part of the mob, even if it’s a business now. And I’m still an addict, even if I’m recovered for now. We can’t sit here and say that how we bump heads . . .”

He narrowed his eyes, then went to take a seat at the table where he opened his laptop. “You’re avoiding the real conversation, Izzy.”

“What’s the real conversation, then?” I stopped to place my hands on my hips and glare at him and his stupid computer.

He didn’t even look up from it. “You’re using a man’s suicide to cage you in. It’s keeping you away from really living the beautiful chaos you would be if you’d let go and talk about it. So I’ll indulge you for now, and when you’re ready, I’ll be here to talk.”

“Are you kidding? Our relationship is—”

“Nonexistent. This is all fun. I get it,” he mumbled, shifting his focus to work. The man even started typing away on his laptop.

I strode over the laptop snatched it from his fingers, shutting it angrily. “I’m talking to you.”

“And I’m working”—he shrugged—“because you’re saying nothing of real importance right now. Might as well work.”

This fucking guy.

I held the laptop out in front of me and then slammed it down onto the ground.

When he smiled, I fucking stomped on it like a child. “So much for working, you jackass.”

A full-on grin spread across his face. “There she is. Now, do you need to say anything else before I take you to the bedroom and fuck you silent? I can’t stand the bullshit you’re spewing today about not being with me. I have other things to do.”

“Do you hear yourself? I just told you I was dating an older man at sixteen and he was my first love. He committed suicide, and I spiraled, and now you’re working me up into a fucking frenzy as if I might not spiral again?” My voice was well above a normal volume as I got in his face, my emotions out of control.

I felt as though my life was out of control. I’d let all my emotions run wild on this trip, and now everything felt like it was all unraveling, and I couldn’t stop it.

He rubbed his jaw, and I heard the scratch from his five-o’clock shadow, imagined the way it would feel against my skin. “You feel like you’re losing it, Izzy? You don’t want to trust yourself? Why not? Have you looked at your life in the past nine years?”

I hesitated, though it didn’t matter since he was ready to dive in anyway.

“Because I have. I’ve seen how you operate over the past year. You stay up late working, you walk a tightrope of restrictions, you don’t let your hair down like you need to, and you don’t let that little Harley Quinn inside you breathe.”

“That’s not true—”

“And she needs to breathe, dollface. Or else you’ll never be happy.”

“What if my happy isn’t healthy, Cade?” I chewed my lip and glared at him.

“I’d be happier with a toxic mess of a girlfriend anyway.”

“Don’t call me that.” I stepped back. Fear slithered through me at the same time my heart soared. “I just wrecked your freaking laptop.”

“I know.” He stared down at it. “Want to apologize?”

I crossed my arms because I really didn’t. Our relationship had always entailed me giving him attitude—that was our touchstone—and even here, when I was saying we couldn’t have anything between us at all anymore, my soul was still connected to him. I wanted to be a brat, but I ground out, “Sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Such a good girl. Does it feel as nice as holding back?” he murmured as he got up and slid a finger down my arm. I shivered as he meandered out of the room while I stared at the red roses, the beautiful bloodred roses, still so alive because I’d watered them every day. So many of them the whole island counter was full of glass vases. That’s where the thorns were hidden though, tucked away, pretending they weren’t there at all.

I saw how my little canvas had been propped up against one vase. Cade must have done it . . . he enjoyed the part of me that was artistic, like he could enjoy my beauty and my thorns, all my problems and my strengths.

He walked back in with a new laptop and sat back down.

“You had another laptop that whole time?”

“Even if I didn’t, the staff would have gotten me one.” He was back to typing.

I threw up my hands. “This is why we can never date.”

He chuckled and then took his glasses off to rub between his eyes. “You know what, Izzy? Fine. How about we entertain your idea for a week or two. Have a weekend to yourself when we get back. Sleep on your side of the bed. See how you feel, huh?”

“I’ll feel damn good about it,” I concluded and nodded my head with a jerk. “Come take this bracelet off.”

He tsked at me. “That’s not happening. It’s a gift that stays on you. Forever.”

“Even if I don’t want anything with you.”

He shrugged. “Seems you don’t right now. So, you’re getting what you want.”

I don’t know why I felt like I was going to cry, but tears formed in my eyes. So I spun around and stomped out of the room.

And that was the end of it.

Cutting off the relationship before there ever was one.

I had to deal with my family. Lilah had called me about ten times in the last ten minutes.

So I did.

I called her back, I shared my story, and she listened without judgment. It was what a sister did. And then she got super pissed that I’d never told her in the first place. I wasn’t sure why that was such a relief, why she didn’t coddle me through the whole thing, but I needed it.

She even laughed as I asked her if she was worried. “Worried about my sister? Sure. But I’m not as worried now that you’ve let it out and shared it all.”

It was a gentle revelation that she believed I could be okay, that she believed in me and my sobriety. And she’d wanted my reality, not my façade.

The structure I had was falling apart. And the change scared me. I just needed to work, needed time to myself, so I took it.

I went back to the job, and I avoided Cade for the last two days of the retreat. I avoided everything, the calls from the team, from the rest of my family, and even from Cade.

But avoiding life and the feelings inside of a soul always has a way of coming out.