Everlastingly Loving You - Chapter 99

“Blaine,” Sophia called.

“Let’s dive into business, shall we?” Blaine asked.

Sophia wondered, “Since you’re a CEO, should I stick to Blaine or Mr Wilson.”

Her eyes lit up.

“Or Mr CEO,” she said slyly.

“Says the duchess,” Blaine retorted.

“When did having a royal title turn into an insult?” Sophia asked, watching Blaine laugh amusedly.

Nicholas glared at Blaine from afar.

He decided he couldn’t watch before he walked away, off to the palace library.

If he wasn’t playing the piano, eating, catching up with the latest news or chatting with Julia, he went to the library to read.

There, it was peaceful and tranquil.

In particular, there was no duchess calling her friend Mr CEO.

And there was certainly no noisy brother that lacked the word boundaries in his dictionary.

He picked up where he left off for the novel he read previously before he began reading.

Sophia, done with all her meetings and discussions, found Nicholas in the library.

“Thought I wouldn’t find you here, huh,” Sophia whispered to him.

“I did for a split second,” Nicholas admitted.

“I’m not much of a bookworm, but, I had this phase where I’d isolate myself and spend days reading in the library going nowhere else but my quarters to take baths etc,” Sophia said voluntarily.

“Everything here’s just so… quiet.”

__

“Wilson,” Clarisse greeted out of mere courtesy, nothing else.

She didn’t so much as look at him.

She was surprised he’d asked her to meet, but Sophia had convinced her to do so.

“Claire, I–”

Fires burned at the back of Clarisse’s eyes.

“Don’t call me Claire,” she scowled.

“You haven’t the right to call me Claire.”

“Clarisse, I’m sorry.”

“Can’t you give me a moment to talk?”

“I can explain,” Blaine insisted.

Clarisse bit her lip and shut her eyes.

She was infuriated.

“Really? You can explain?!”

“You were the one who broke up with me!”

“You were the one that claimed you wanted nothing to do with me.”

“You were the man that broke my heart.”

“Anything else? I don’t think so. That suffices.”

“The audacity you have, Wilson.”

“Coming back in my life, flattering Sophia to what, get her on your side?”

“You took my heart.”

“Stomped on it multiple times, chopped it up into tiny, little pieces before you scattered them.”

Blaine interjected, “That is not–”

Clarisse glared at him to shut the hell up.

“I loved you.”

“I loved you at your worst.”

“I loved you unconditionally. I loved you so much it hurts,” she gritted her teeth.

“But what do you do instead?” She asked, on the verge of tears.

“You break up with me, and you move on,” Clarisse said, her voice breaking mid-sentence.

“Like you hadn’t broken up with me.”

“Like you hadn’t ruined my life and wasted me years that I could’ve spent doing anything else.”

“Anything else,” Clarisse repeated, her vision getting blurry as she fought back her tears.

“And do you know what is the worst part of this all?” Clarisse asked.

Blaine shook his head.

“No,” he said, his voice hushed and cracked.

Clarisse exhaled.

“It’s that I’m still head over heels in love with you,” she said, her voice close to a whisper with how soft she spoke.

She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye.

“Finals, our last year of university.”

“I showed up at the examination room distraught and puffy-eyed.”

“But Sophia was worse.”

“She hadn’t slept.”

“She hadn’t taken a break.”

“For her, all she did was study, and be there for me.”

“She’d hold a tissue box and sleep beside me so she’d be there for me if I randomly woke up and burst out crying,” Clarisse said, her lip quivering when she said that.

Sophia was the type of person to go on with her life regardless whether or not her friends were facing tough obstacles like these, but it was Clarisse that was suffering.

She knew she had to be by her friend’s side.

She knew she had to prioritize that over something she’d prepared long ago for.

“Whenever she goes on about Nicholas or any other man for that matter, you are the first person I think of,” Clarisse admitted tearfully.

“The pain you caused me, was nothing compared to the pain you inflicted to those around me.”

“I haven’t seen you in so long, and yet my feelings for you had never once wavered.”

“I was in denial, thinking I’d been over you and that you no longer wanted anything to do with me like you said you did,” Clarisse said, a tear dripping down her cheek and onto the floor.

Blaine’s heart broke into two at the sight of her crying because of him.

He had remembered what Sophia had told him, that Clarisse couldn’t handle him being here and whatever he was trying to do, he’d stop and turn the other way.

Her precise words were, ‘Turn around and walk away. You’re my friend, Blaine, but if it comes to you or Clarisse, I pick my best friend, because she has enough on her plate as it is, there is no need for you to come in and make her question her feelings and hurt her all over again. Dammit, I won’t let you hurt her all over again.’

“Even whenever I think of you, this voice in my head telling me I shouldn’t,” Clarisse said, snapping him out of his train of thought.

“That I shouldn’t think of someone who doesn’t want or love me.”

Blaine looked as though he was tearing up as well.

He had never meant to hurt her.

He’d never meant to hurt her at all.

He’d come to fix things.

To tell her why.

To tell her the truth of the matter.

If only he could tell her how much he still loved her.

The subtle glances, the way he had this stutter when he thought of her or she was nearby, it wasn’t obvious, but it was there.

He’d kept going for her, thinking he’d never be good enough for her, no matter what charities he donated to, and no matter what he’d accomplish.

She was his epitome of perfection.

She thought telling him this would give her some sort of catharsis, but to put it frankly, she didn’t feel any better than she did before. She’d only felt worse.