AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m not asking you to be okay with it,” he countered quietly with a glance at Annabelle who had pulled up on her crib with a loud squeal of achievement. “I’m not okay with it. And you should know, it wasn’t affairs. Just one. I told her not to contact me anymore. I don’t want anything to do with her.”
Did he honestly expect any of that to make a difference?
“I need to move back into my own bedroom.” Her throat hitched as she said the words and she wished she could take them back, but it was the smartest move for her sanity. “I can’t be with you anymore, not like we were.”
And there it was. She’d held this man in her arms, cradled him with her body, loved him, slept with him, tasted him. Never in a million years would she have imagined she’d be the one to call off their relationship. In the end, she’d been painfully spot on—she wasn’t the right kind of woman for Antonio Cavallari.
Grimly, he crossed his arms. “What will we be like, then?”
She shook her head blindly. “Parents. Roommates. I don’t know. I just know I can’t sleep in that bedroom. I can’t—”
A sob broke through, ending whatever she’d been about to say. Head bowed, she buried her head in her hands, squeezing her eyes shut. She sensed Antonio’s presence as he approached, but he didn’t touch her.
She wished he would. Wished they were still in a place where he could comfort her. But was glad he didn’t. It would only confuse things.
“Caitlyn.”
She blinked up at him through watery eyes.
His dark gaze zeroed in on her, overwhelming her with unvoiced conflict and soul-deep wounds. Even now, with these irreparable ruptures between them, she could read him.
“Will you fight me for custody of the children?” he asked softly.
She gasped. “What? Why in the world would I do that?”
“What kind of father could I possibly be?” Resolute and stoic, he stared her down. “I have an uncontrollable urge to decimate other men in the ring. I have amnesia. I defiled my marriage with a tasteless affair. Any judge would grant your petition to take my children and likely award you as much money as you ask for to raise them. If I were you, I would have already taken steps to remove them from my influence.”
“Antonio.” Her chest constricted as she searched his ravaged expression. “None of that makes you a bad father. Your children need you.”
I need you.
But she bit it back. She needed the man she’d thought he was, the one who made her feel treasured because he’d chosen her. Because of all the people in his life he could have reached out to, he’d taken her hand and asked her to stand with him when he had gone to Falco the first time. He’d asked her to see the doctor with him. He’d been alone and frightened and he hadn’t wanted anyone else but her.
Then he’d destroyed her trust by morphing into someone else. Someone who didn’t respect and honor marriage the way she did. Who hadn’t loved his wife.
If he couldn’t love Vanessa, what hope did Caitlyn have that he could ever feel that way about her? And she wouldn’t settle for anything less than a man’s love. Yet, how could she trust him if he did say that he loved her?
It was a vicious cycle, one she couldn’t find a way to break, no matter how many times she went over it in her head. All this time, she’d thought he couldn’t tell her he loved her because his heart still belonged to Vanessa. The reality was...indescribable.
Antonio glanced at the babies, and all the love she knew he felt for them radiated from every pore of his being. He was capable of love. Just not loving her.
“No, I need them,” he said. “As long as you’re not going to take them from me, I can handle anything else.”
It was a strange reversal of some of their earlier conversations, when she’d been terrified he’d find a way to dismiss her from her children’s lives. She knew what that clawing, desperate panic felt like and it softened her. More than she’d have liked.
A harder, more cynical person might have taken the information he’d laid out and run with it, ensuring that she got exactly what he said—custody and Antonio’s money. It would be a fit punishment for his crimes.
But she wasn’t that person, and as she stood close enough to touch him, close enough to smell his heady masculine scent, her heart twisted.
She still loved him. Nothing he’d said to her today could erase that.
“I will never take your children from you,” she promised and her voice cracked. “But I can’t have a romantic relationship with you. We have to figure out a way to live together as parents and nothing else. Can we?”
