Page 8 of Taking His Heart

Damned if I do, damned if I don’t kind of situation. If I stay, I’m sending the very opposite message to CJ that I want to be sending. If I leave, well, that makes me look like the bitch everyone in this house already thinks I am.

They don’t say it, but they don’t have to. I can see it in their gazes as they look at me. The only person who hasn’t treated me like I’m beneath them is Aiden, CJ’s little brother, and Mr. Bianchi, CJ’s father. His mother has been polite but I can tell she’s holding back what she really thinks of me.

I can’t say I blame any of his family for hating me. I did hurt him. No one knows why I had to leave the way I did, and they probably never will. It doesn’t make it any better, though. Even if they did know, they wouldn’t understand the choice I made for us.

At the time I was seeing CJ, no one even knew anything was going on between us. They probably suspected it, but we had never confirmed the rumors. I guess either he told everyone what a bitch I was after I left, or they came to that assumption themselves.

It hurts. Being here. Being this close to him and knowing that absolutely nothing has changed. I still can’t have him. Oh, but do I want him, so bad.

“You look like you have a million thoughts in your head, Daniella.” Aiden sits down across from me. His back against the wall and his butt on the floor.

“Your brother was just shot because someone pointed a gun at me. Yeah, I have thoughts,” I tell him.

“Who do you think is out for you?”

I lift a single shoulder up and down. “No idea, but I’m sure it has nothing to do with me and everything to do with my family.”

“Yeah, I’d say so,” Aiden agrees.

“I should go back to the hotel,” I say. I don’t make any effort to move, though.

“Why haven’t you?” he asks.

“I don’t know.”

“You do know. You just don’t want to admit it,” Aiden tells me.

He’s right. I do know and I am not admitting it to anyone, especially myself. I thought I was better. I thought I had figured out a way to get on with my life without thinking about him every other second. I thought I was going to be fine. And then I came here, I saw him, and it’s as if the past few years of moving on never even happened.

One glance at CJ and he was right back there. That spot in my heart that only beats for him. I need to find a way to build those walls back up. I need stronger mortar to stop them from crumbling again.

The door to the room opens and his parents step out. “Daniella, he’s awake,” Mr. Bianchi says.

“Is he… is he okay?”

“You can go and see for yourself. I’m sure he’d like to see you.”

“I doubt that,” I mutter under my breath.

“He’s going to be okay. If you want to go back to the hotel, Aiden can take you,” Mrs. Bianchi adds. Her tone is soft, neutral, but I catch the fact that she doesn’t want me here.

I nod my head, because I shouldn’t be here. I don’t belong here, and I sure as hell do not deserve to be anywhere near her son. I get it. I’d be mad at me too. I am mad at myself.

“You should go in there before he gets out of bed and comes searching for you,” Aiden says when his parents walk away.

“He’s not going to do that.” I shake my head, but then the door opens and I look up to see a very-pale and very-shirtless CJ staring back at me.

“What the fuck are you doing on the floor?” he asks.

“What the bloody hell are you doing out of bed? Are you stupid?” Jumping to my feet, I take hold of his arm and lead him back into the room.

“I can testify to the fact he is indeed very stupid,” Aiden says from where he’s still positioned on the floor.

“I can still kick your ass, Aiden,” CJ hollers back.

“No, you can’t. Get back in the bed, CJ,” I grunt.

“Thought you’d never ask, darling.” CJ smirks at me and then his face hardens. It’s as if he forgot momentarily that I am enemy number one here. “Why were you out there on the floor?” he repeats.