His Most Cherished Regret

Naomi

The world is perfect. It smells like Nathan. Like clean linen, expensive cologne, and the faint, musky scent of his skin that’s uniquely him. His arm is a heavy, possessive weight across my waist, his chest a solid wall at my back. His heart beats a steady rhythm against my ear, a slow, deep drum that says I’m safe. That I’m his.

He promised. Last night, under the sliver of a moon, with my body still humming from the electricity of his touch, he promised me everything. *You’re it for me, Naomi. Always have been. After graduation, we make it official. You’ll be a Harland. The most cherished woman in this city.*

Ten years. I have loved him for ten years, ever since my foster parents, the Masons, took me in and I met their son’s best friend. The quiet, intense boy with eyes the color of a stormy sea. Now, he’s a man. And he’s mine.

A soft smile touches my lips. I keep my eyes closed, wanting to live in this perfect moment just a little longer. It’s graduation day. The start of our real life.

The bedroom door creaks open. Footsteps, more than one pair, pad softly into the room.

“Figured I’d find you here,” a familiar voice says. My foster brother, Trevor.

Nathan’s grip on me tightens for a second, a subconscious reflex. He stirs, his breath warm against the back of my neck.

“Get out, Trev,” Nathan murmurs, his voice thick with sleep.

“Silas is calling a meeting in an hour. And Marco’s here,” Trevor replies. The scrape of a chair being pulled across the hardwood floor follows.

“Tell my father the world can wait.”

There’s a low chuckle. It’s not Trevor. It’s Marco, one of Nathan’s lieutenants. “The world waits for no man, boss. Not even you.”

Nathan shifts, pulling the sheet higher over my bare shoulder. A protective gesture that makes my heart swell. He thinks I’m still asleep. It’s better this way. I want to listen to them, to the sound of his voice in the morning, a sound I plan to get used to for the rest of my life.

He switches languages, slipping into the fluid, rapid-fire Italian he uses when he’s talking business. The language he and his family use when they don’t want outsiders to understand. The language my own grandmother, my *nonna*, spoke to me exclusively until the day she died. They have no idea I understand every single word.

*“Did you get what you came for?”* Trevor asks in clumsy, accented Italian. He always tries to keep up, but he sounds like a tourist with a phrasebook.

Nathan laughs, a low, rumbling sound that vibrates through me. I almost purr. *“And then some.”*

*“So that’s it, then?”* Marco says, his tone laced with amusement. *“The great Nathan Harland is finally tied down? By this little thing?”*

My smile falters. Little thing? I press my face deeper into the pillow, feigning sleep.

Nathan’s hand strokes my hair, a gesture so tender it makes my breath catch. But his voice, when he replies, is different. It’s colder. Lighter. A performance.

*“Don’t be an idiot,”* Nathan scoffs. The sound is casual, dismissive. It’s a pinprick to the balloon of my happiness. *“This was an exercise. Nothing more.”*

My blood runs cold. The air in my lungs turns to ice. Exercise. *Esercizio*.

*“An exercise?”* Marco presses, disbelief in his tone. *“Nate, the girl’s been following you around with her heart in her eyes since we were kids. This wasn’t just a hookup for her.”*

*“That’s what made it so easy,”* Nathan says. His fingers are still tangled in my hair, so gentle, so possessive. The contrast makes me feel sick. *“It was a warm-up. You know Tiffany gets back from her parents’ place in the Hamptons next week. I needed to be ready for her.”*

Warm-up. *Riscaldamento*.

The word echoes in the sudden, roaring silence of my mind. The steady beat of his heart against my ear is no longer a comfort. It’s a countdown. A bomb.

*“You have to practice on something, right?”* he continues, and the casual cruelty of it sucks the air from the room. *“Can’t go into the main event cold.”*

Marco lets out a sharp laugh. Trevor is silent.

“Nate,” Trevor finally says, his voice strained. He switches back to English. “That’s my foster sister you’re talking about.”

*“And I’m talking about her in a language she doesn’t understand,”* Nathan replies smoothly, his Italian seamless again. His hand drops from my hair and lands on my hip, his thumb drawing a lazy circle on my bare skin. The touch feels like a brand. Like a violation. *“Relax, Trevor. She’s nothing. A sweet, naive nothing. It was one night. It’s over. It meant nothing.”*

Nothing. *Niente*.

That’s the word that breaks me. It shatters the perfect world, the perfect morning, the perfect ten-year-long dream. I am nothing. A practice run. A body he used to warm up for someone else. For Tiffany Croft, the cheer captain with the perfect blonde hair and the vacant blue eyes.

Every promise from last night curdles into a lie. Every gentle touch becomes an act of calculated deception. The blood in my veins turns to sludge. My body feels impossibly heavy, pinned to this bed by his arm and the weight of my own humiliation.

I focus on my breathing. In, out. Slow, even. I cannot move. I cannot make a sound. If he knows I heard, if he sees the devastation in my eyes, he’ll have taken my dignity, too. That’s the one thing I have left.

*“Business,”* Nathan says, his tone shifting, becoming hard and clipped. *“What did my father want?”*

They talk for another ten minutes. About shipments and territories. About the Falcone family making moves on their turf. I hear the words, but they don’t register. They’re just noise, a meaningless hum beneath the single word screaming in my head.

*Niente. Niente. Niente.*

Finally, Nathan moves. He lifts his arm from my waist, and the loss of his warmth is a relief. The mattress shifts as he stands. I hear the rustle of clothes, the clink of a belt buckle. I keep my eyes squeezed shut, my breathing deep and even.

“I’ll be back in a couple hours,” he says in English, his voice close to my ear. “Don’t move.”

His lips brush my temple. It’s a ghost of a kiss, an insult layered on top of the injury. It takes every ounce of my self-control not to flinch, not to recoil from his touch.

Then he’s gone. The door clicks shut, and the sound of their retreating footsteps fades down the hall.

I’m alone.

For a full minute, I don’t move. I lie perfectly still in the wreckage of my life. I don’t cry. The hurt is too deep for tears. It’s a cold, hard knot in my chest, a shard of glass in my gut. He thought I was weak. Naive. A lost puppy. Nothing.

He was wrong.

Slowly, deliberately, I push myself out of his bed. The sheets, which smell of him, of us, now smell like deceit. I stand on shaky legs and walk to the full-length mirror in the corner of his room. A girl I barely recognize stares back at me. Her hair is a mess, her lips are swollen from his kisses, and there are faint bruises on her neck. Marks of his passion. Marks of my shame.

But her eyes. Her eyes aren’t soft or heartbroken. They’re burning.

I see my laptop on his desk. My foster parents bought it for me as a graduation gift. I walk over, flip open the screen. It boots up, the screen glowing with my future.

The acceptance letter is the first thing I see. *Congratulations on your acceptance to the California Institute of Technology.*

Caltech. Close to home. Close to him. Part of the plan. A plan built on a foundation of lies.

My hand is steady on the trackpad. My fingers move with a purpose I haven’t felt in my entire life. I navigate to the admissions portal. My heart doesn’t ache. It doesn’t flutter. It pumps ice through my veins.

I find the link I need. *Decline Your Offer of Admission.*

The cursor hovers over the button for a single, breath-held moment.

Goodbye, Naomi Foster, the sweet, naive nothing.

I click it.

A confirmation page appears. I don’t hesitate. I click again.

It’s done. My future, erased in two seconds.

I open a new browser tab. The search bar is a stark white line, a blank page. A new beginning. I type three letters.

M. I. T.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Three thousand miles away. A world away. Their application deadline was extended by a week due to a server crash. I have six hours left.

I start typing. My name. My address. My grades are perfect. My test scores are near perfect. I upload the essay I wrote for Caltech, but first I change the last line.

*Original: My goal is to use engineering to build stronger, more connected communities.*

I delete it. I write a new ending.

*My goal is to build systems so secure, so impenetrable, that they can never be broken by anyone or anything.*

I will not be broken. I will not be a warm-up. I will not be nothing.

I will become a fortress. And one day, Nathan Harland will come knocking. And he will find the walls are too high to climb.