The cigarette went out with a sharp sizzle, its light fading away in an instant.
Stella wondered if she had misheard him. The noise from the rest of the private room, the laughter and clinking of glasses, continued unabated, almost as if it couldn’t touch the space between her and Weston. It was as if they were in their own isolated world, a silence settling heavily over them.
Weston waited, but no response came from Stella. The silence stretched on.
Finally, he turned to her, his voice cold. “Come with me. State your price.”
Stella shut her eyes. She lowered her head, trying to stifle her emotions, but a cryptic smile tugged at her lips. Then, unable to hold back, she laughed—soft, but uncontrollable, her shoulders shaking with the force of it.
Weston furrowed his brows, clearly perplexed and irritated by her response. He reached out and grasped her chin, lifting her face toward him. “I asked you to state your price.”
Stella took a moment to compose herself, her expression falling into one of cold indifference. “I want my child back. Can you give that to me?”
Her words struck Weston like a slap to the face. His grip on her chin tightened sharply, and his eyes turned frigid. “Stella Sealey, you were the one who chose to jump that day.”
His voice was low, filled with barely contained fury. He had been tolerating her, and his patience had almost run out. But now, with her words, it seemed all the anger he had kept in check was unleashed.
“I told you to trust me. I told you I wouldn’t let you die. Why didn’t you trust me?” His voice wavered with frustration, his fury evident in his every movement.
Stella met his gaze with a calm that only fueled his rage. “I also told you they were Guinevere’s people. Why didn’t you trust me?” Her voice was icy, as if challenging him to answer.
The tension between them was palpable, a vicious circle of accusations and old wounds being ripped open.
Weston’s anger flared, and he sneered. “And that’s why you jumped in front of me? Stella Sealey, was that your revenge, thinking I’d regret my decision that way?”
Stella’s lips curled into a scornful smile. “You regret your decision?” She shook her head, her voice bitter. “No. I never thought you’d regret it. Weston Ford, I was the one who regretted it.”
Her words hit him like a hammer to the chest. Weston’s eyes widened, a flicker of confusion and pain flashing across his face. “What do you regret?”
“I regret falling in love with you,” she said quietly, but the impact of the words was deafening.
The room seemed to shrink as those words settled between them, a crack forming in the fortress Weston had so carefully built around his heart. The cold wind that swept in from that crack made his chest tighten with pain, a feeling so foreign and sharp that he could barely comprehend it.
Weston’s face darkened with fury, yet something inside him was broken—something he couldn’t fix.
“Stella Sealey, you…” He breathed heavily, his grip on her chin tightening once more. His anger was so intense that it felt like he could consume her whole.
“You really have a way, don’t you?” His words dripped with frustration. She always seemed to succeed in making him lose control of everything—his reason, his sanity—until he was nothing more than a puppet to her emotions.
“You love me, is that so?” He pinched her chin harder, and Stella winced, her eyes filling with tears.
At his question, she laughed again, this time harsh and mocking. “If I didn’t, would I have landed myself in this mess?”
She had been thankful that Weston paid off Roger’s hospital bills, and because of that, she never dared to ask for anything in return. She let go of her feelings quickly when Guinevere appeared, without complaint. But what followed was far worse than she ever imagined.
She had lost a child—the only child she would ever have. She had been forced to leave her home, change her name, and start all over. And if she had never gotten involved with Weston, perhaps she would have still been burdened by debt, but she wouldn’t have suffered the way she had. She wouldn’t have endured the pain, the sorrow.
Yet, here she was—left with nothing but the consequences of her own choices.
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