CHAPTER 19
Roxanne
Iwas leaning against something solid. Familiar. Steady.
Marcello.
His arms wrapped around me, lips brushing the sensitive spot beneath my ear—kissing, teasing, grounding in the way only he knew how.
I leaned into him without thinking. My fingers slipping into his hair, pulling him closer. His hands moved—waist to thighs—parting them, slowly.
Then—everything shifted. The warmth changed. The touch changed.
My breath caught.
A different presence. Different touch. Rougher. Firmer.
Calloused fingers sliding up my thighs. Soft kisses trailing upward.
My body didn’t move away. It arched, welcoming, betraying me.
And then I saw them.
Grey eyes.
Waiting. Like they’d always been there. Watching me like they already knew how I’d respond.
Heat flooded low in my belly, sharp and immediate.My back arched as his mouth dragged to the apex—
I jolted awake with a gasp. And I woke—hands between my thighs, breath ragged.
“What the fuck was that?”
My room was still dark, the sun slowly lighting up the dark sky.
For a second, just one second—everything was quiet. Normal. But it wasn’t just the dream that stayed.
It was the feeling.
Memories crashed back like a tsunami—violent, sudden, impossible to outrun.
All of it. All at once.
His mouth.
His touch.
The way he held me—like if he loosened his grip, I’d slip right through his fingers and vanish. And the way my body reacted—
I pressed my palms into my eyes, hard, until I saw stars.As if I could force the memory out and replace it with a more tangible reality.
It didn’t work. It only made it sharper.
The heat of his mouth. The way he’d pulled me closer like there had never been space between us to begin with.
The way my body had responded without hesitation before my mind could make sense of what was happening.
Like I had been waiting for it, and it was just a matter of when, not if.
And worse, I didn’t stop him. Instead I moved against him, shameless, needy, like an animal in heat.
“Fuck…”
The word slipped out under my breath. I swung my legs off the bed, the cold floor grounding me instantly.
This was a mistake. That’s what I’d said. And it was. It had to be. It was a mistake letting him stay, going soft on him.
It was a mistake falling apart in his arms, not worrying for the consequences. Because anything else would mean I had crossed a line I couldn’t come back from.
And I wasn’t ready to look too closely at what that meant.
But my mind knew exactly what last night was. A boundary I should’ve held. A madness I should’ve stopped.
But my body—didn’t agree. It remembered him. Too quickly. Too easily. Before I could think. Before I could choose.
Like it had always known what he would feel like. And some part of me had recognised him before I ever gave myself permission to.
Ever since Santino had forced his way back into my life, I’d barely been sleeping well. I was always on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop—when he would walk out and never come back again.
That’s exactly how I felt yesterday. Until the kiss—
And now I didn’t know what to think.
I was raised not to want too much. To not be loud or careless, in ways that demanded unwanted attention. I learned early that attention wasn’t always a good thing. And I’d learnt early on that wanting came with consequences.
It was repeatedly drilled into me until it etched itself into my bones. Be good. Be grateful. Be satisfied with what you’re given. Anything more than that—invited trouble.
And for a long time, I believed it. Maybe I still did.
Marcello had been the first man who made that belief feel small. Irrelevant. He never asked me to shrink. Never asked me to be less. He steadied me in ways I didn’t even realise I needed. He held things together effortlessly—like the world couldn’t touch me as long as he was standing between us.
With him, I was safe. Not chaos. Not fire. Safe.
But safe didn’t mean free. Not completely.
I still measured myself with him. My words. My reactions.
The parts of me I let him see. Not because he asked me to. But because I was afraid of what would happen if I didn’t.
There were things inside me I kept folded away. Sharp edges. Dark corners. The kind of thoughts that didn’t belong near someone so good.
Because what if he saw them? What if he looked at me differently? Worse—what if he left?
That fear had never gone away. No matter how gently he held me. No matter how many times he told me I was his and that he loved me.
And then there was Santino.
With him I didn’t think. I didn’t measure.
I didn’t soften myself into a version easier to hold.
Instead, I was louder. Sharper. Unfiltered in ways I didn’t even recognise until I saw it reflected in his eyes.
I could push him. Call him out. Say things I’d never dare say to anyone else.
And he never—not once—made me feel like I had to take it back.
He didn’t try to hold me together. He didn’t try to fix the edges. He let them exist.
And when he walked away, it didn’t just feel like distance. It felt like a piece had been ripped out of me. A part I didn’t even realise I had given him. A truth I didn’t want to recognise.
And now he was back. And everything I’d carefully kept in place started slipping. Because being around him made it harder to lie to myself.
Why did my body have to react that way? Why did I lean into Santino instead of pushing him away?
I didn’t understand it. I didn’t want to understand it.
I stood up and pushed myself to the bathroom. The reflection in the mirror showed another woman. My lips looked swollen. Bruised—evidence of last night’s betrayal.
I stripped and stepped under the spray without waiting for it to warm. The cold water hit like a shock instantly. I needed that. Needed a force stronger than memory.
But even with the water, even when my skin turned numb, I could still feel him. His hands in my hair. His mouth. The weight of his palm on my breast. The unmistakable hardness of him against me.
Awareness swept through me instantly again.
Traitor.
My breath stuttered. I braced my palms against the wall, head dropping forward.
Why him?
Why now?
I had everything. Didn’t I?
Marcello—the man who loved me.
The kids—who look at me like I’m their world. A life I had built back from nothing.
Wasn’t that enough? Wasn’t that supposed to be enough?
So why did one moment, one damning moment of weakness, one kiss—feel like a fundamental shift?
Why did it feel like Santino rekindled fire in me that refuses to settle? The very thing I’d spent years trying to bury.
And every time I thought of the way Santino looked at me, why did my chest tighten?
A faint tremor ran through me before I could stop it.I pressed my palm flat against my stomach, grounding myself, trying to steady the feeling of being pulled in two directions at once.
There had always been a cost to wanting. A quiet one. The kind no one spoke about. The kind your body remembered long after your mind tried to forget.
I could stand here under the cold spray and think all day. But thinking wouldn’t help. If anything, it was making it worse.
Enough.
I shut the water off abruptly and got dressed quickly. My gaze drifted toward my phone on the nightstand. I hadn’t touched it since last night. Didn’t want to. Because I knew exactly what I’d see. Messages from Marcello. Maybe a missed call.
Normal. Reliable. Predictable. And I didn’t trust myself to respond without my composure cracking open.
I picked it up anyway.
A simple message sat there.
My chest tightened painfully. I stared at it longer than necessary, thumb hovering over the screen.
Call him. Tell him everything. Confess it all.
The thought hit and disappeared just as fast.
I couldn’t. Not yet, not because I didn’t trust him. But because saying it aloud would make it real. And a small part of me feared, what if he walked away again?
And this time didn’t come back at all? That wouldn’t just hurt me; it would break me. And I wasn’t ready for that.
I ran my hands through my hair. Heat prickled under my skin, sweat beading at my temples, the thought alone enough to make my body rebel.
Instead, I dialled another number. Someone I’d been avoiding. And this time, I didn’t hesitate.