AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“The reverse?”
With a small smile, he stared at the dusty attic floor between them. “That Vanessa was the love of my life but I would never remember what that felt like. That I’d never be able to move on until I properly mourned our relationship. Now I know all I had with her was a dysfunctional marriage that I can put behind me. The future seems a lot brighter knowing that the best relationship of my life is yet to come.”
The cloud of pain seemed to lift from his features as he spoke, and she couldn’t look away from his expression. It was fresh, beautiful, hopeful.
His strength was amazing and it bolstered hers. “I like the sound of that.”
He tipped up her chin and feathered a thumb across her cheek. Lovingly. She fell into his gaze, mesmerized, forgetting for a moment that things were still unsettled between them. Then it all crashed down again: the disappointment, the heartache. The sense that they’d both cleansed a lot from the past but the future still had so many question marks.
Did she have what it took to put the affair behind her, as he seemed to want her to? As he seemed to do so easily himself?
“Caitlyn,” he murmured and hesitated for an eternity, his gaze playing over her face as if he couldn’t make up his mind what to say. Finally, he sighed. “I’m miserable without you. Can’t sleep, can’t eat. I deserve this purgatory you’ve cast me into, but you have to know that our relationship isn’t going down without a fight.”
“I’m miserable, too.” She bowed her head. “But part of that misery is because I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about all of this. The revelations in Vanessa’s journal don’t change anything. Marriage is a sacred thing. Sex is, too. I have a hard time trusting that you truly believe that. I have a hard time trusting that if you and I fall into a rough spot in the future, you won’t console yourself with another woman.”
It was the old adage: once a cheater, always a cheater. Except she’d never thought she’d be wondering how true it was. People could and did change all the time, especially when presented with the best kind of motivation. Just look at her—she’d never envisioned being a mother, and it had taken a huge mind-set change to prepare for it.
He winced and nodded. “I deserve that, too. So that’s why I went to Falco this morning and spent hours locked in a room with Thomas Warren and the other executives to hash out the details required to sell Falco Fight Club.”
“You...what?” She couldn’t catch her breath.
“I want it gone.” Grimly, he sliced the air with a flat palm. “It’s a brutal, bloody sport. I’ve got kids now, and limiting their exposure to MMA is always in the back of my mind. But that’s not the reason I want to sell.”
Sell. The word reverberated in her heart and nearly made her sick.
“Antonio! You can’t sell Falco.” It would be akin to her announcing she wanted to sell one of the babies. It was lunacy. “That place is a part of you. I watched you fight. You love it. It’s as if you were born to be in the ring.”
“Exactly. I sign everyone’s paychecks. Who’s going to tell me no if I say I want to get back into rotation? As long as I own Falco, I have a guaranteed path into the ring.”
“You’re not making any sense. All of that sounds like a good thing. If you want to get in the ring again, I won’t stop you. I’ll support it,” she countered fiercely. “I’m not Vanessa.”
Caitlyn would never be so daft as to forbid Antonio to return to the ring if that was what he wanted. Love didn’t bind a man’s wings and then selfishly expect him to fall in line.
“No, you’re not.” He knelt on one knee and cupped her face in his hands, holding her steady as he treated her to a beautiful, tender smile. “That’s why I’m selling. I want to show you that I can stop fighting. Don’t you see? If I can shut off such a deep-seated piece of my soul, I can also remove the part that believed infidelity was okay.”
Her eyelids flew shut as she processed that. “Why would you do that just for me?”
“It wasn’t just for you. I need to prove it to myself, too.” His smile faltered. “As hard as it’s been to live without you, it’s been even harder to live with myself, knowing that I have the capacity to do something so wrong. This is the only way I can come to you again and ask you to reconsider being with me. How else could you believe me when I say I’d never have an affair again? I needed to prove in a concrete way that I love you.”
