Desired by All and He Threw Away 130

I braced for his distance. For the logical assessment, the calm plan to mitigate the damage I’d caused. Instead, I heard the soft thud of his knees hitting the floor beside me. Not in front of me. Beside me. 

His hand didn’t touch my shoulder. It covered my clenched fist where it rested on my leg. His skin was warm, his grip solid. 

“Look at me,” he said, his voice rough. 

I shook my head, my face still hidden. 

“Taylor. Look at me.” 

I dragged my head up. His face was close, his eyes searching mine with an intensity that stole my breath. There was no pity there. No placation. Just a raw, shared understanding of what it meant to be broken. 

“You think your past is a liability?” he asked, his voice low, each word deliberate. “It’s the only thing that’s real.” He took a slow breath, as if the next words cost him something. “I was seventeen when I told my father I wanted to design buildings, not inherit them. He took me to the new corporate wing he’d just funded. Told me that was my canvas. My ‘hobby‘ was costing people’s jobs.” Aiden’s jaw tightened, his gaze drifting past me to the dark trees outside. “I learned to want what they told me to want. I learned to be so perfect, so controlled, that most days I can’t find the boy who dreamed of anything else.” 

He looked back at me, and something fragile and fierce shone through the usual granite. “You… you never learned how to do that. You fought for every scrap. You loved so hard it left scars. You’re a mess, Taylor. A beautiful, stubborn, glorious mess. And you scare the hell out of me because you make me remember what it feels like to want something real.” 

He wasn’t comforting me. He was confessing. Stripping himself bare to meet me in the wreckage. The iron control he wore like armor was gone, and what was left was just a man, as haunted by his ghosts as I was by mine. 

The crushing weight of my guilt shifted. It didn’t disappear, but it was no longer mine alone to carry. He was holding part of it now. 

I turned my hand under his, lacing our fingers together. The connection was an electric current in the silent 

room. 

“We can’t just say he’s lying,” I whispered, the idea crystallizing from the shared pain. “It’s noise against noise. He wants the world to pick me apart. To see me as the villain.” 

Aiden’s eyes narrowed, the strategist returning, but softer now. “What are you thinking?” 

“We don’t defend my past.” I sat up straighter, the old fight sparking back to life, hotter and clearer. “We attack his present. We tell them why he’s doing this. He’s not a crusader for truth. He’s a man who hurt me, who got cast out when people saw who he really was, and now he’s trying to burn down everything I’ve built since. He’s trying to hurt the man who stood in his way.” I held Aiden’s gaze, my voice steadying. “We make it about him. About his obsession. His cruelty. We turn his scandal into his confession.” 

A slow, dangerous smile touched Aiden’s lips. It wasn’t pleasant. It was the smile of a king who’s just found his enemy’s throat. He brought our joined hands to his mouth, pressing a hard, deliberate kiss to my knuckles. 

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Chapter 130 

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“Then we burn him with it,” he said, the vow vibrating in the air between us. “Together.” 

He stood, pulling me up with him. My legs were still unsteady, but his arm around my waist was an unbreakable 

support. 

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