The Rose He Killed novel Chapter 109

Chapter 98: The Test

Bella POV

I’d planned it to be over quickly. Drive over, say what needed saying, measure the results like a woman who had her feelings under complete control

After the phone call last night, the least I could do was look him in the eye when I told him how I really felt.

Maya arrived at eight to watch Tom without me having to ask. She took one look at my face and pointed at the door.

“Go,” she said, already steering Tom toward the kitchen. “We’re making pancakes. You’re not invited.”

Tom looked up from his dinosaur. “Why isn’t Mommy invited?”

“Because she has grown-up things to do, baby.”

“Like see Daddy?”

Maya shot me a look over his head that said see, even he knows. I grabbed my keys before I could think myself out of it.

Caleb’s penthouse was forty-fifty minutes in morning traffic. I spent the entire drive telling myself this was practical. Two adults having an honest conversation about where things stood.

I was still rehearsing the conversation when his door opened. He was still in his running clothes when he opened the door, slightly out of breath, like he’d just gotten back. Dark hair damp at the temples, grey eyes landing on me with an expression that moved through surprise and settled somewhere careful.

“Bella.” His voice was neutral, but his hand tightened on the door frame. “Is Tom okay?”

“Tom’s fine.” I stepped past him into the apartment before I could lose my nerve. “I need to say something and I need you to just listen and not make it weird.”

“Okay.” He closed the door and turned to face me, leaning back against it with his arms loose at his sides.

I turned to face him. “Last time I told you it wasn’t nothing.”

“You did,” he said carefully.

“I meant it.” I held his gaze even though looking directly at him was doing unhelpful things to my concentration. “What I said after we slept together – the just physical thing that was me being a coward. It wasn’t fair and it wasn’t true and I needed to say that to your face.”

Caleb didn’t move. Didn’t smile or reach for me or do anything that would have given me an excuse to panic. He just watched me with those grey eyes and waited, which was somehow more disarming than anything else he could have done.

“That’s all,” I said. “That’s what I came to say.”

“Okay.” He pushed off the door slowly and crossed the room toward me, stopping close enough that I had

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Chapter 98 Pre Test

to-tilt my head up to keep his eyes. “My turn.”

“I said you could listen, not”

+25 Points

“Bella.” He said my name quietly, and something in the way he said it made me stop. “Let me say one thing.”

I pressed my lips together. “One thing.”

He reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers barely grazing my cheek, and my heart did something embarrassing and immediate in response.

“I’ve been in love with you,” he said, “since long before I knew what to do with it. And I destroyed you because of that, because I was too broken and too stupid and too scared to recognize what I had.” His hand dropped back to his side. “I’m not asking you to forgive that. I’m not asking you for anything you’re not ready to give. I just need you to know that nothing about this is casual for me. Nothing. Not the house, not the phone calls, not that night, not any of it.”

The room was very quiet as I felt so emotional.”That was more than one thing,” I said, because I needed a second to breathe.

The corner of his mouth moved. “I know. I’ll accept the penalty.”

“Caleb”

“You don’t have to say it back.” He stepped back, giving me space, giving me air. “You don’t have to say anything, I just needed you to know it..”

I looked at him standing there – this man who had broken me completely, who had spent years becoming someone I hadn’t expected, who drove minutes each way every evening to eat dinner with our son and sit on my porch in the dark and ask for nothing.

I crossed the space between us and kissed him, this was me, finally done lying about what I wanted.

His arms came around me immediately, pulling me in like he’d been waiting for exactly this and had the patience of a man who’d learned to wait. He kissed me back slowly, deliberately, one hand cradling the back of my head and the other pressed flat against my spine like he was making sure I was real,

I grabbed the front of his shirt and kissed him harder, and he made a low sound against my mouth that undid me.

“Bella.” He pulled back just far enough to look at me, breathing unsteady, eyes dark. “Tell me what this

means.”

“It means,” I said, still holding his shirt, “that I’m tired of punishing both of us for something I’ve already forgiven.”

“You forgave me,” he said quietly.

“I’m working on it.” I met his eyes. “Don’t make me regret telling you.”

He pressed his forehead against mine, both hands cupping my face now, and exhaled – long and slow, like he’d been holding it for years.

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Chapter 98. The Test

“Never,” he said. “I promise you, never again.”

+25 Paints

We stood there for a moment, foreheads together, his thumbs brushing my cheeks, the city moving far below us and neither of us in any hurry to move.

Then his stomach growled toudly.

I pulled back and stared at him. “Really

“I just ran six miles.” He looked genuinely aggrieved. “I’m a human being.”

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