Carbon: Devil's Rose #8

Chapter 31: Gabriella Jordan

"We're so good at that," I admit as I feel Roman's fingers nimbly button my dress back up.

He chuckles, laying a kiss on my neck per usual.

"I would hope so. We've been doing it for a while now," he adds.

I turn my body around to help him put his clothes back on, yanking his belt just one notch too tight to tease him.

"As much as I love a surprise visit, little dove, what are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be at work?"

"It's my lunch break, and I'm meeting up with Olympia."

He doesn't look the least bit surprised. He shouldn't, we talked about this already.

"How are you feeling about it?"

"I'm actually not too worried about it. I'm just hoping she doesn't shut me down after two seconds of me speaking to her."

Which is honestly pretty likely to happen.

"Do you want me to go down there and spy on you?"

"You have a camera in here. You don't even have to come downstairs."

A blush highlights Roman's face, and he squeezes my waist.

"I wasn't going to get in your business unless you wanted me to, Gabriella."

"I know, I know. I don't care if you watch but don't get worked up and interrupt. If we argue, we argue."

Roman is quiet, so he doesn't exactly agree with me, but he knows that this is my choice.

"I'll see you later, Roman."

"I hate this part," he whispers against the top of my head.

"What part?"

"Taking off this ring, saying goodbye to you."

He's such a sweetheart. I get where he's coming from, but I also know that it won't last much longer at least the ring part.

"Well, after tonight, you'll never have to take off this ring again. Not until you put a wedding ring on my finger. The goodbye part, that I can't help you with."

He leans down, a little hum exciting his throat as he presses a sweet and delicate kiss to my lips. He slowly takes off my engagement ring, grimacing. I cradle his head with my hand and rub small circles on his cheek to calm him. Feeling better, he tucks the ring back into his pocket and slaps me on my ass as I exit the office.

I feel like I should be more nervous about talking to my sister. Don't get me wrong, I am nervous, but it's a type of nervousness that I can get through alone. I think it's because I know that this is the right thing to do. 

We need to clear the air about the bullshit that she's put me through. I have tried to be a good sister to her, and she's pushed me to the side for long enough. I deserve to be treated better. I also think that Olympia deserves to get out whatever she needs to say to move on with her life too. 

For some reason, maybe because it makes her feel good about herself, she treats me like I'm nothing sometimes. I want her to be able to talk to someone about that, even if it's me, the person that she's treating horribly. There has to be something else going on that makes her treat me this way. 

We both deserve better. We're grown women. We shouldn't be hurting each other. If that means that we need to support one another from afar, so be it. It's better than torturing one another because we don't want to be around one another. 

We could be doing so many other and better things in our lives than wasting energy on doing whatever we're doing with our relationship now. We can be better than this. I know it.