Billionaire's Second Chance At Love

Chapter Sixty Four

The whole cursed night was spent tossing and turning in bed.

Why, you may wonder?

That's because her body had never burned that way in her life, the way it did in those unbearably agonizing hours.

She couldn't really explain it—the kind of horrible torture it was. The kind of torture that felt more and more hazardous as the clock ticked away, constantly providing her with a nourishing dose of reminders that Ronin was just a tiny distance away. The man she had crushed on for such a long time. The man she had hoped would be a better husband. The man she had hoped would stop being a stranger in their unconventional marriage. The man she had spent her nights hoping would turn over a new leaf one day and touch her the way her whole body would writhe under his warmth.

Carmen vividly remembered the way her mind would conjure up strange yet beautiful fantasies of them in her dreams. With him being the one who would make her heart flutter with just a smile, sometimes walking into the office and heading straight to her desk, catching her by surprise and asking her on a date. Of course, she would have said yes because that's what she had wanted for such a long time—the crush and all. But he would surprise her once again, calling her into his cabin. He would ask her to shut the door and be a nice boss for once, the boss who wouldn't despise her mere existence. The boss who would take her hand in his, make her sit at his desk, lean in, and give a sweet peck on her lips, telling her how beautiful she was, how he had wanted to do that for a longer time than she did, how he was about to make her fall in love with him...

But, of course, at the end of the night, the bubble of her dream would burst, and she would wake up to the painful reality soon enough—alone in her bed, alone in her room, alone in her life.

That had hurt, Carmen wouldn't lie. Ronin's indifference, even long after their marriage, had hurt a lot more than she was ready to admit, even to herself.

But times had changed now. Ronin had changed, and she knew this change was not one of his usual acts. The day she took him to see his sister, Ronin had asked her to give them some alone time. Carmen had given him a silent nod and left, giving the brother and sister the privacy they needed. When Ronin finally walked out of that room that day, he was a changed man.

It was all in his eyes, in the way he finally allowed that brusque facade to slip away and reveal the vulnerable man he was from the inside—the man who cried if hurt and didn't just suck it up because that's what society expected from him, the perfect man. The man who allowed himself this second chance at redemption. The man who was flawed and had made horrible mistakes, but also the man who wanted to start over now and make all his wrongs right.

Even if she wanted to, Carmen could not ignore this new Ronin. It was hard to. Impossible even. Because the new Ronin was the kind of man she always dreamed of herself. The man who gave her butterflies by merely breathing in the same room. The man who had stopped being an asshole and had embraced his kinder side. The side that was more beautiful than anything. The side that cared. The side he was forced to suppress for millions of reasons. But also the side that did not change the fact that they were now divorced, that it was complicated, and that she couldn't take a risk on her heart, not again, not with him.

The alarm on her phone yawned and shrieked, and it didn't take long to realize she hadn't slept a wink.

'Such a waste of a night,' she thought to herself, before finally turning off the noise and sitting up, her back against the headboard.

Carmen's eyes slowly, unintentionally crawled over to the door—the small space between the floor and the bottom of it, where the lights from the outside room flooded in, the room she had Ronin to last night.