Falling, Fallen | ✔️

47

~Soren's POV~

The week passed rather quickly and, before I even knew it, Friday was here and Ayla and I were expected at another business party together. Truthfully, I was glad that she was going to be going with me because I had missed her, but I also worried that she was just doing this to keep the peace. Hell, I knew that's what she was doing. I wanted her to do what she wanted, but I still couldn't stop myself from smiling as I got ready, knowing she'd be joining me.

I put on my most expensive suit, wanting to look nice, and made sure that I smelled good too. Since I never did a whole lot to style it, I decided to run a little bit of product through it to push my dark hair back and keep it from falling into my face or from sticking up everywhere. It not only felt a little bit weird but I wasn't even sure if she was going to like the way it looked.

I huffed out a breath and buttoned up the jacket of my suit, almost feeling giddy though I couldn't pretend that I didn't know why. When I left my room I glanced down into the living room and kitchen to see if Ayla was finished getting ready yet, but there was no sign of her so I knew she was still getting dressed. A larger part of me wanted to go see what she was up to in her bedroom, but I also knew that I couldn't. She wanted to have as little contact with me as possible, and I hated that. I didn't want to give her space, just like I didn't want it to be easy for her to fall out of love with me. It was selfish, I knew it, but the idea of her no longer having feelings for me made me feel uneasy. I didn't know what exactly it was, or what was wrong with me.

Or maybe that was just what I wanted to think. I knew I had invested myself in her, that I didn't see her as only a friend, and that was the reason why I had absolutely diminished that line between us. I just wasn't sure at what point it stopped being casual and became personal, for both of us. She had fallen in love with me and I wasn't sure why I had fucked it all up the way that I did.

It had only been about a month ago now, but Ayla confessing her feelings for me had thrown me for a loop for a while. Maybe some part of me had known, but I didn't expect her to say it so readily. She had bared her feelings to me and I just crushed them in the midst of my uncertainty. There was no excuse, and even to myself I couldn't understand why I was such a coward that I hadn't even been able to respond properly to her feelings. I didn't understand why I couldn't even admit my own feelings, not until recently anyway.

My meeting her and then marrying her had come quickly, against both of our real wishes, and I wanted to be mad at her for it when I had only just met her. Yet as time went on, as she was around me more and more often, I couldn't be. It wasn't her fault at all. If it hadn't been with her, I would've been set up with somebody else. Sometimes I think of that and wonder how it was that I was lucky enough to able to meet her only by chance.

Even so, I still couldn't quite pinpoint when exactly I started to grow attached to her. Maybe it started even before we began having sex, and then had only grown stronger. That seemed most probable to me. One thing that kept crawling back in my head every so often was the foundation that we were built upon. She and I only had a year together, and now it was only two months before she'd be gone. When she had confessed to me about her feelings, it was then that it really hit me how temporary it was to have her with me.

She loves me, she loves me, she loves me, I had thought, and nothing else. Over and over, telling it to myself to make it seem more real than it felt.

By the time I had gathered myself a little more, I had already fucked it all up in just a few minutes. I rejected her, told her I didn't love her, which I knew wasn't true. It didn't really even process that I had rejected her until she got up and left, honestly. I was probably crazier about her than she was about me but I doubted that it even mattered now. She didn't want to have feelings for me anymore, and I probably didn't deserve them anyway. It wouldn't be fair of me to go to her, telling her that I was wrong, not when I had already hurt her.