Chapter 0020
Chapter 0020
Such an easy option. My best option. My only option.
And I couldn’t touch her. I felt nothing for her—not even arousal.
Maybe it was the feeling of my own fate slipping out of my control, but I couldn’t … I couldn’t do what she wanted, what I needed. What my family needed.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured, and I slipped past her for
the door.
Layla
I’d long ago stopped believing there was a man out there in the world waiting for me. Waiting for my love. Waiting to shower me in his own affection.
I didn’t expect love. Hell, I didn’t want it anymore, either. Being alone had made me who I was- strong, determined, independent. Dare I say fierce? I had my family, and I would do anything to protect
- it.
And I loved that about myself.
So why did my chest ache now, like I was the one who’d been shot? Why did my breath leave my lungs in ribbons? Why did I hurt?
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Because I still loved Aldo.
The answer came to me in a cold wash of realization. I still loved him. I’d always love him. And that’s why everything about this hurt so much.
When he spoke, it left me shredded. When he stared at me with no expression in that cold, dead gaze, I could only remember when he’d looked at me with love overflowing from those same eyes.
Aldo–Vasco–was an unhealable wound in my
heart.
And I ached for him. Would always.
The realization followed me to bed, so I buried my face into my pillow and I cried. Cried as I hadn’t done for eight years. Cried as though my heart had been broken all over again, because it had. Because the band–aids I’d used to tape it all back together were coming unglued.
You couldn’t mend a broken heart with band–aids.
A doctor should know better.
So, I cried. I cried and cried and cried, because my broken heart had come apart at its band–aided seams. And when the tears ran out, I lay, hollow and empty, in bed to watch the sun rise through the pale curtains.
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Chapter 0020
And finally, when I could lie still and deny the coming of the day no longer, I got up. Showered, dressed, wiped the tears from my eyes and set the band–aids back over my heart to hold it together for another day.
They’d held for eight years. They could hold a few
more.
I hoped.
I traipsed down the hall and into the massive stone- and–granite kitchen in search of coffee. I’d found it there the previous morning, and I could smell it now
I stopped dead in my tracks in the doorway to the kitchen.
It wasn’t empty.
In fact, it was far, far from empty. Aldo Marcello, the man I’d spent all night crying over, mourning, the man who’d broken my heart, stood in the kitchen beside the coffee maker.
And at his side was the breathtaking Italian beauty he’d left me for.
Aurora.
She laughed, tipped her head back and laughed, at something he’d said. And his answer was a wide,
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Chapter 0020
white smile, one that for the briefest moment, let me see beneath his carefully constructed mask, to the Vasco that still lurked beneath.
She’d made him smile.
The breath halted halfway from my lungs, and my knees felt suddenly weak. My fingers gripped the doorframe, like they might hold me up against the pull of gravity my legs seemed no longer able to resist.
She’d made him laugh.
She’d made him Vasco again.
I turned from the doorway and headed back down the hall. I could get coffee at the hospital, because I surely wasn’t getting it from that kitchen. I
couldn’t stay in this house, let alone walk into that
room.
It wasn’t until I stood at the front door, hand on the knob, that I realized I wasn’t alone.
Aurora came to a stop just behind me; the sweet flower scent of her perfume churned my stomach. But I didn’t turn.
“You still love him,” she murmured.
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Chapter 0021
