Chapter 32
Chapter
Thirty-Two
RAYNE
Dammit! I told him I love him, and while that is true, I still shouldn’t have said it. He shouldn’t have said it either, because it complicates things way too much.
Tomorrow we can pretend it was just the endorphins talking. People do all kinds of stupid stuff when they’re high on orgasms. I’m sure we’re not the first people whose brains have temporarily relocated to their groin areas and had us declare our love by accident.
The sex was incredible—but then, we never had any issues in that regard.
From the moment I gave him my virginity on my eighteenth birthday, we were pretty much nonstop and couldn’t keep our hands off each other.
He was my first, and I thought he’d be my only.
It’s funny how life doesn’t quite turn out like we planned.
The hot sex I can handle. It’s this making me question my sanity. Me lying in his arms with my head on his chest while he trails his fingertips over my side and makes me feel like the most important person in the whole world. This is not so easy to walk away from.
“Hey.” He cups my jaw in his hand, possessive yet gentle, and tilts my head up to look at him. “I can practically hear you overthinking. You want to talk about it? Any of it?”
I shuffle onto my side, resting on my elbow. I don’t want to talk about Enzo and me and the mistakes we made, but I do want to talk about something. “Did you kill him?” I ask, not wanting to say his name aloud and give it any power.
He nods.
“For me?”
He kisses my forehead. “For both of us, cuore mio. And for Tommy. But I made him suffer for you.”
“So many times I thought about revenge. About coming back here and slitting his throat while he slept. Or running him over with my car, but I guess I was…” I blow out a breath because this is hard to admit.
“I was scared, Enzo. What if I saw him again and I just froze? And then what if he…” A sob steals the rest of my sentence, but I swallow it down. “What if he hurt me again?”
He offers me a single nod, his dark eyes filled with guilt and regret.
“And then as time passed, I realized it was much easier to not think about him at all. To close myself off to that whole time in my life and focus on my future. So, that’s what I did. And I built myself a nice little life in San Francisco.”
“Do you have friends there? People who’ll be missing you and wondering where you are?”
I shake my head. “Not really. I kept to myself mostly. Some people might view it as lonely, but for me it was peaceful, you know?”
“Jesus, Rayne.” He pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Don’t you dare feel sorry for me, Enzo Medici,” I warn him.
“I don’t, baby. I am sorry though, that I was such a fucking fool that I didn’t see what was right under my nose.
Ethan told me everything. How my father and Carmine set it all up just to get you and Tommy out of my life.
To secure my fucking loyalty to the family.
Like I was ever fucking disloyal to them. ”
It’s a surprise to me that I’m not more shocked by that revelation, but it makes perfect sense.
In a very messed-up way of course. Tommy and I gave Enzo a glimpse of a different life, the three of us had even talked about starting out on our own, in a legitimate business.
It was only ever talk, but even that was too much for them.
Neither his father nor Carmine wanted him to have a life of his own. They wanted all of him.
“What are you going to do now?”
He kisses my forehead. “Tomorrow. Can we talk about that tomorrow? Tonight, I want to focus on you. It feels redundant to ask if you’re okay, but…”
I offer him a smile. “I’m okay. Surprisingly okay.” I trail my fingertips over his abs, over the distinct pink rose tattoo—the only splash of color in a sea of dark ink. I noticed it before, when he was on top of me, but it didn’t seem the appropriate time to ask. “You kept it?”
He brushes his own fingers over his hipbone.
He got it the same day I got my daisy tattoo—a design I picked because it was cute and simple.
He picked a pink rose because it’s my favorite flower and he bought me eighteen of them the day after we first made love.
“Yeah. Every time I saw it, I thought about you.”
Even more reason to have covered it up, I would think. “Didn’t it hurt to do that though?”
“Yeah, baby. Like a motherfucker. But it reminded me that you were mine once.” He wraps me in his arms again. “I’ll never let anyone hurt you ever again. I swear.”
I know he means that, but the irony is he is the one person who hurt me the most. “I guess I should go back to my room.”
“No.” He holds me tighter. “Not tonight, Rayne. Stay.” His voice is thick with emotion, and I can practically feel the guilt oozing from his pores.
I get it. He knows he let me down, and I believe he’s sorrier than he can ever express.
But it doesn’t change what happened. It doesn’t mend my shattered heart.
My shattered heart wants to stay though. To pretend that this is real and that we can somehow forgive each other. I do love him, and I think I always will, but I can’t be sure I’ll ever look at him and not see how badly he hurt me. “Tonight changes nothing, Enzo.”
“I know,” he says, sounded resigned. Defeated. “Just give me one night where I get to imagine what we could have had.”
I imagine all too often the future that we lost. The house we were going to fill with children, how my only dream was once to be his wife and have half a dozen of his babies.
It seems silly now, but back then, it was all I wanted.
To create the family I’d never really had.
“It will only hurt more in the morning when we have to go back to reality,” I remind him.
“Then let it fucking hurt, cuore mio. Let it burn me up for eternity, because it’s no less than I deserve.”
I slide my arm around his waist. “I’ll stay.”
I wake in the night with Enzo’s arm around me, my back flush to his chest and his hard length nestled between my ass cheeks.
He’s sleeping though. I can tell by the steady rhythm of his breathing.
It’s nice waking up like this with him, even if it has to come to an end soon, why shouldn’t we enjoy while we still can?
I push my ass back against him, feeling him stir.
He hums softly, nuzzling my neck. “Are you okay, baby?”
“I can’t get back to sleep. My brain won’t switch off.”
He chuckles, his warm breath ruffling my hair. “Shall I distract you with orgasms?”
“Yes, please.”
He groans, a sound filled with need. Then his warm, firm hand glides over my thigh, and he lifts my leg, hooking it over his before he lines the crown of his cock at my entrance.
“I love it when my girl needs fucking,” he growls, sliding himself inside me in one smooth stroke.
“And I love fucking you when you’re already full of my cum, baby. We feel so good together.”
Yes, we do. A deep, throbbing ache builds in my core, and he eases it with every roll of his hips.
It’s slow and easy and sensual, our bodies entwined together and nothing but the gentle rocking of the bed and the wet sounds of him sliding in and out of me filling the room.
I’ve missed sex like this, slow and easy and unhurried.
It’s the kind of sex you can only have with someone you have a deep connection with. At least for me.
His mouth rests against my ear. “Tell me this is real, Rayne. That I’m not dreaming.”
“It’s real, Enzo.”
He slides back inside me like he belongs there.
And I allow myself the folly of pretending that we’re exactly where we’re supposed to be, that we can move past our hurts and forgive each other.
That we might find some happiness amidst the cruelty of the world we live in—just for a few hours, while the night is dark and the sunlight isn’t shining on our reality.
Lies are always easier to believe in the dark.
So, I let myself believe in the biggest lie of all—that our love is strong enough to overcome anything.