I'm too fucking stunned to know what to do and when her eyes lock on mine, I'm certain this is going to get worse.
“I've always known, Enzo. And it makes no difference.”
Adriana turns as my mouth falls open and I'm left staring as she walks away. She doesn't look back as she heads deeper into her dream and the paradise I've created for her wraps around her, shielding her from her reality.
It doesn't protect me from mine. Adriana destroyed me, eviscerating me as surely as if she'd unleashed the fires from the infernoes of Hell. I'm devastated and bleeding in everyway that matters, rejected, as if everything I'm offering her is meaningless.
I've given her all I am and all my gifts, laying wonders at her feet. And she's thrown them back in my face, refusing to give me the only thing I want in return.
She gave me hope and then she extinguished it, torturing me with more venom than even I could suffer. This is agony. This is pain. This is hell, and I want it to stop.
I fucking need it to end and my feet betray me—just as she has—racing after her before I can stop them.
“Tell me how to make this right, Adriana. I'll give you anything. I'll do anything.”
My perfect girl stops and turns around, more beautiful than the paradise surrounding her. The flowers frame her in a backdrop that's pure magic and she's still the most enchanting, bewitching thing here.
“Take this collar off and end our bargain.”
I shake my head as she asks for the one thing I will not do.
“You'll leave, sweet girl. And I cannot lose you. I'll give you anything but that. Anything, baby.”
She smiles sadly. “It'll never be enough, Enzo.”
The heart I didn't know I had shatters as she walks away. I've lost her in every way that counts and the dream I dared to dream turns into a nightmare as the only thing I want becomes the one thing I can't have.
28
WITH YOU, NOT ME
ADRIANA
He doesn't follow a second time.
My heart judders as it struggles to keep going and it's left beating out of habit. My ribs ache and my lungs burn and I stutter a ragged breath, refusing to shatter.
I'm alone with nothing but my thoughts for company. They're as much a yoke around my neck as this goddamn collar. His goddamn collar.
There's no escaping either of them.
I drag my sorry self along the path, ignoring the wonder Enzo conjured for me. It is the paradise I've always dreamt of and a garden worthy of Eden, but it's more than I can bear tobask in its glory and enjoy its beauty. He's done this for me and I can't stand it. It's too perfect. It's too heavenly an act from someone who's so demonic.
The garden thins into a beach and its pure white sand is as vast as the sentence I'm facing. My feet indulge themselves as the warm sand sinks between my toes and I walk along the water's edge.
I'm playing in the warm water, at the limit of the sandy beach. It's where the ocean meets the earth, where two opposing forces collide. One forces its will on the other as it wears the other down, swallowing it beneath its beautiful and mysterious waves.
I'm disturbing the balance and I cannot find mine.
I certainly won't unless I figure out what the hell it is I'm actually feeling. My emotions are hurtling around me and I'm caught in the center of their tornado—and it's far from calm. I'm being thrown around in the storm they're creating and I won't survive this gale unless I find a tether.
I want it to be Enzo.
As despicable and unbelievable and truly terrifying as that is, it's a truth my heart knows it can't deny. My soul knows it's true and I feel it in the marrow of my bones and the blood that makes my body sing as it courses through it.
I am his.
I've been his for a while now.
