Chapter 98-A way to reach her (2)

Chapter 98: 98-A way to reach her (2)

"I know I made mistakes. I know I haven’t always treated you the way you deserve, but I love you, Mara. I always have."

Aymara looked at Nathaniel. His face remained still, but the line of his fingers seemed tighter beneath her fingertips.

"Really?"

"Of course! You know me better than anyone. You know how much I care about you."

Her expression turned cold. She didn’t believe a single word. "Then why did you abandon me?"

The question silenced him. She continued before he could invent an excuse.

"Why did you leave me to die for her? Why did you take what belonged to me and run off with Sarah? Why did you remember how much you loved me only after I stopped giving you what you wanted?"

"Aymara, that’s not fair," his voice lowered, sounding bullied.

"Isn’t it?"

"You don’t understand what happened. Everything was falling apart. We were desperate, and I had to make a difficult decision. I was trying to survive and I thought what I have with Sarah is true love but it isn’t..."

Aymara gave a humorless laugh. "So was I," she recalled how coldly he’d been when he asked Marko and Pete to throw her into the ocean and turned bitter.

"I know, and I’m sorry. I’ve regretted it ever since. If I could change it, I would."

"No, you wouldn’t."

"Mara..."

"You’d make the same decision again if you thought it would benefit you. You’d just find a better way to hide your intentions," she called out the truth openly.

Silence followed.

Aymara could imagine him struggling to reconcile the woman he remembered with the one speaking to him now. She almost felt sorry for him.

Dylan had spent years believing she would always forgive him. He had mistaken her love for weakness. Now he was discovering the consequences.

"I don’t want to lose you, Mara," he said eventually. "We can start over. We can forget everything and work together. We were good together before all this."

Aymara’s hand stilled. She hated how her nickname sounded when he said. It was different from the way that Nathaniel said it.

Soon, disbelief replaced her indifference. Forget everything? The betrayal, the abandonment, and the years she had wasted trying to make him happy? Did he expect her to erase the memories of her first death because he had decided he wanted her back?

"What exactly do you think we had, Dylan?"

"What do you mean?" He asked.

"What part are you remembering so fondly? The part where I paid for everything? Where I gave up my interests to please you? Or where you convinced me that being a good girlfriend meant never questioning your decisions?"

"Mara, that’s not how I see it."

"Then your eyesight must be terrible," she spoke out.

After a brief silence, Dylan cleared his throat. "I know I’ve been selfish, but I can change. I’ll do whatever it takes to prove that I love you."

Aymara glanced at Nathaniel and brushed her thumb over his hand. "That’s the problem, Dylan."

"What problem?"

"I don’t want you to change for me. I don’t want you to prove anything to me because I don’t want a future with you," her voice remained calm. "I don’t love you anymore."

Silence fell so abruptly that she wondered whether the connection had been lost and then Dylan spoke. "No. You don’t mean that."

Aymara’s eyes narrowed with alarm. "Excuse me?"

"You’re angry. You’re trying to hurt me because I hurt you, but I know you, Mara. You can’t stop loving someone after six years just like that."

Even now, he was telling her what she felt, as though he had authority over her heart. He had never truly listened to her. He only heard the parts of her words that suited him.

"Dylan," she said quietly, "you don’t know me as well as you think you do."

"Mara, please..."

"Our relationship ended when you chose to abandon me. Whatever feelings I had for you are gone. I don’t owe you another chance, and I don’t owe you an explanation for moving on," she paused. "If you call me again to discuss our relationship, I’ll block this number too."

"Wait! Just listen to me!"

"I’m already being generous by listening this long."

"Mara, I love you!"

Aymara looked down at Nathaniel’s hand in hers and smiled faintly. "That’s unfortunate for you."

She ended the call. The room fell quiet again. Aymara set the phone aside and returned her attention to Nathaniel.

"Honestly," she muttered. "What an exhausting man."

She resumed massaging his hands, her fingers lingering over each knuckle.

"I don’t know how I tolerated him for six years. I should be awarded a medal for surviving that relationship."

She leaned closer. "You’re much easier to be around, you know that? You’re also much more handsome. And you don’t spend all your time telling me what to do."

She tilted her head in thought. "Well, except when you think I’m about to do something reckless. Then you give me that look, and I feel like I’m being scolded by the world’s most beautiful judge," Aymara smiled. "If you weren’t so determined to worry me, you’d be perfect."

She lifted his hand between both of hers, bringing his knuckles close enough that her breath warmed his skin.

"Get better soon, Nate. I have a lot of things I want to do with you."

She failed to notice the subtle change in his face. The moment Dylan’s voice emerged from the phone, Nathaniel’s eyes had pressed tightly shut. His fingers had gone rigid beneath Aymara’s touch, then slowly loosened when she began stroking his hand again.

He had heard everything. He had heard Dylan call her sweetheart, speak of their six years together, plead for another chance, and insist that Aymara still loved him and he had heard her reject him every time.

Nathaniel kept his eyes closed, his expression carefully controlled despite the emotions stirring inside him. Beneath the blanket, his free hand curled against the sheet, then relaxed by force of will.

Relief came first and then something painfully close to hope built. The hope was so sudden that it frightened him. For one reckless moment, he imagined opening his eyes, meeting hers, and believing that her words might include him.

His chest tightened around the thought, and he had to steady his breathing before the monitor could betray him.

He had spent so long convincing himself that Aymara’s affection belonged to the past that hearing her speak so firmly about moving on felt unreal but he was afraid, too.

Afraid her feelings might change once her anger faded. Afraid the man who had occupied six years of her life might still hold a place in her heart that Nathaniel could never fill. Afraid that if he reached for the hope now stirring in him, he would only give her another reason to pull away.

He had no intention of asking her to choose him. If Aymara stayed beside him, he wanted it to be because she genuinely wished to, not because she was escaping Dylan. And if she chose to leave, he would rather suffer quietly than make her feel trapped.

Still, when her fingers stroked the back of his hand, his heart betrayed him with a faint, hopeful ache. His thumb shifted almost imperceptibly toward hers before he stopped it, afraid even that small movement might reveal too much.

He wanted to open his eyes and ask whether she truly meant what she had said.

Instead, he remained still. He wasn’t ready to expose feelings he had barely begun to understand himself. So he held his breath for one beat, let it out slowly, and kept his face composed while her warmth remained wrapped around his hand.

Beside him, Aymara took a sip of tea and glanced at the food. "Well, my noodles are definitely getting cold now," she turned back to Nathaniel. "But I suppose I can forgive you for that," her smile softened. "Just this once."

Nathaniel’s fingers twitched almost imperceptibly inside her hands.

Aymara didn’t notice. She leaned back in her chair, content to remain beside him while the monitor filled the quiet room with its steady rhythm.

For the first time in a long while, she wasn’t thinking about Dylan, the past, or the life she had lost. She was thinking about the man beside her and the man she was slowly, carefully learning how to love.

Nathaniel wanted to reach out but one thought crossed his mind that stopped him. With all communication networks down, the only way Dylan would be able to call Aymara is if he was using the cruise’s network and that can only be granted by someone inside the cruise.

If Aymara truly wanted nothing do with Dylan, why had she left him a way to reach? His features hardened.