Robert, Her Billionaire Widower

Chapter 13

Robert was sitting on the edge of his bed. It was a nice change from lying down but he did not like it for long. He got back into bed and started to think about all of the things that he had been thinking about for almost two months.

Time did not seem to pass anymore. It felt like it had been years since he had been normal. He thought back to that fateful night when he had had s*x with Vanessa. He regretted it so much, mostly because it had ended up hurting her so much. He had had to extract himself from her life afterwards, he could not bear the thought of hurting her anymore and if he was anywhere near her she would probably end up getting hurt because he couldn’t seem to get better no matter how hard he tried. He couldn’t seem to get past his dead wife even though it was soon going to be two years since she died.

He wanted things to be normal. He wanted to get better. He wanted to slowly be able to peel back the layers of his grief, the layers that were currently covering him, suffocating him. He wanted to be normal again.

When had had s*x with Vanessa, he had felt completely and utterly normal. In fact, he had never felt so normal in his life. He had felt like everything in his life made sense again in a most beautiful way, because while he was having s*x he did not think of Marie at all. The only thing that had mattered had been Vanessa. The only thing that had mattered had been pleasing her, making her feel good, making her feel like everything she was doing was perfect because she was perfect to him.

However, when he woke up in the morning and he saw Vanessa, he realized something that concerned him quite a bit. He realized that he loved her. This concerned him because he had not been ready to fall in love. Even though it had been so long since Marie had died, he still did not feel ready for these emotions.

When Vanessa woke up he had smiled and tried to act normal. He had tried to pretend that everything was okay, but he simply couldn’t do that. Not with Vanessa. Not with someone he actually loved. If she had just been some girl that he had been fu*k

ing, Robert would have pretended with ease and broken down after she had left, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that with Vanessa.

And so, he had told her that he couldn’t get over Marie. He had told her the truth. It had probably hurt her immensely but it had been necessary pain. It had been pain that had, hopefully, allowed her to start hating Robert. It had been pain that had hopefully stopped her from feeling the love that Robert had seen in her eyes, love so pure and gentle that it had made him want to cry.

That had been what had truly got to him. The fact that he saw so much love in her eyes. He had wanted to say it to her, but he knew that if he said it to her it would have resulted in him having a nervous breakdown. He had not said those words to anyone for the past six years except for his wife Marie. He had not told anyone that he loved them except for Marie, at least not in a romantic sense. It was not the kind of love that he was ready to feel for anyone else, which was why its presence concerned him so much and made him feel like he was doing something wrong instead of doing something that was natural and in fact very healthy for him.

He wanted to get over Marie. That was all he wanted in the world. He had tried to call Vanessa in order to tell her that he was sorry, to tell her the reason why he had said the things he had said, to tell her that the reason he had suddenly panicked was because he had realized that he had loved her, and that he had not loved anyone this way since Marie, and that obviously made him feel like he was doing something wrong.

However, when Vanessa had not replied, Robert had realized what had truly happened. He had slid back. He had slid back, yet again, into something that he had tried to break out of. He had slid back into his old self, the self that he thought he had started to distance himself from. He had not escaped from his grief. He had not moved on even slightly if he could not tell a girl that he truly loved how he felt about her. If that was the case then Robert was lost, truly lost. There was no hope for him at all, and when he realized this, he realized he needed to distance himself from Vanessa. He needed to be away from her so that she would not be harmed by his toxicity.

She had had enough terrible relationships in her life. She had had enough people break her heart. Although it was true that Robert had now been added to the list of people that had broken Vanessa’s heart, the alternative had been far too terrible to think about. The alternative had been that she start a relationship with him. That would never lead to anything good no matter what. He was far too damaged for that. He was far too damaged to be in a relationship with anyone, and he was never going to subject Vanessa to the kind of mental torture that would eventually come with being in a relationship with someone that was as mentally unstable as Robert was. He wanted to save her from him, he wanted to keep her away from all danger of unhappiness and if that involved keeping her away from himself, well then that was just what he needed to do in order to do the right thing.

And so, he had disconnected all of his phones. He had stopped going to work as well, which had led to the board of directors removing him from his post as CEO. He did not care, however. He had stopped wanting to work at his company a long time ago. He was still the majority shareholder in the company so he would still earn a great deal of money through dividends. However, at the same time, he would not have to worry about work while he was trying to heal himself.

No longer having his job made it a lot easier for Robert to disconnect himself from everybody. It made it a lot easier for him to separate himself from the people that cared about him, and that included Vanessa. It was all for the best, that was what he told himself while he was trying to keep himself from contacting Vanessa somehow. He just kept telling himself that it was for the best that she had absolutely no contact with him whatsoever, that it was all for the purpose of keeping her safe.

He missed her terribly, though. He missed her so much that the thought of her consumed him. He spent entire days thinking about nothing but her. He spent days imagining situations in which he was not so messed up, in which he was more able to give Vanessa the kind of life she deserved. He spent days imagining situations where she would be able to be with him and be happy, because, at the end of the day, that was all he really wanted. He wanted Vanessa to be as happy as possible. He wanted her to be with him as well, but if that came at the cost of her happiness well then that was just too bad. He would have to deal with it. He would have to deal with the fact that she was completely and utterly outside of the limits of decency. He had to come to terms with the fact that he would never be with her no matter what, and that he would not be able to fulfill the fantasies that he was seeing in his head.