The CEO's Hidden Love: Midnight Temptations and Deep Desires novel Chapter 853

Dorothy lingered in silence so long that she feared the voice that would eventually break it wouldn't even sound like her own.

"Then... don't come back."

Everett remained silent.

"Everett, go back to where you belong," she added.

He clenched his fists so tightly that the veins on the back of his hands stood out like angry rivers.

"How do you do it? How can you say something so heartless without batting an eyelash? Huh?"

His voice was hoarse, dripping with despair.

Dorothy had a knack for smashing his slowly gathered courage, his glimmers of hope, into oblivion, leaving nothing behind!

And just moments ago, everything was fine. They were holding hands in the cab back from the airport!

"Because I'm just a rock, I don't have warmth," Dorothy replied, her gaze piercing through him as she enunciated every word. "You should've known this by now. I'm incapable of love; I only stick to my convictions."

"I never asked you to change!" He had been trying his whole life to reshape himself! He was chiseling away, just hoping to fit into the mold she desired.

"But I truly don't want to respond to your feelings anymore. I'm exhausted. And Everett, doesn't it bother you?" Dorothy inhaled deeply, deciding to lay it all out. "Your father came to see me. Even though I didn't admit it, I think you knew. The photos he showed me, you've seen them, haven't you?"

Everett's lips pressed into a thin line. "Yes."

"Then, that day after you saw them, I noticed something off about you." Dorothy's smile was a twisted mimicry of warmth. "Tell me the truth, were you also trying to convince me to drop the criminal charges against your mother?"

"Yes..." He had considered it.

Even after those photos shook him, even when his father Jonathan's offer was tempting, he hadn't spoken a single word in his mother's defense.

"So what, I should be grateful? Overlook all the animosity and be with you? Everett, there's no reconciliation. Even if you killed your mother with your own hands, it won't change the fact that you are her son."

Just like now...

The Lopez family, despite their influence, couldn't change the fact that Everett's mother murdered Bella.

What's done is done.

"If that's what you truly think, then why did you go on vacation with me? Why did you share a bed with me?" Everett was desperate, grasping at her arms as if he were clinging to life itself. "There's still a part of you that's mine, right?"

"Yes." Dorothy knew denying it outright would be futile. "But honestly, the way you treat me, it's exhausting, it's suffocating."