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The second I blinked, two tears streamed down my cheeks. “How can you say that to me?”
His jaw clenched tighter.
“How can you tell me to be with someone else so calmly?” My voice broke.
“It’s easy.” With stiff shoulders, he stared at me with the same intensity as before. “If we can’t be together, the next best thing is you being happy. I’m not a sadist. I don’t get off on the idea of you being miserable forever. I want you to end up with a husband and kids.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and felt more tears stream down my face. “I don’t even want to think about that right now. I don’t want to think about you with some other woman. If you think I’m going to stand here and encourage you to get married and have your own family…that’s never going to happen. Maybe I’m selfish and petty, but it hurts too much to say those things. And it hurts even more to hear them.”
He broke contact and dug his hand into his pocket. “When I told you I loved you, I meant it. That means I want you to be happy—even without me. When you meet someone you like, I don’t want you to push him away because of my memory. Loving you means I have to do the right thing, even if my heart is telling me otherwise.” He pulled a folded-up envelope from his pocket and placed it in my hand. “Open this when I leave.”
I gripped it in my fingers and felt something hard inside, like a key. “What is it?”
“Just open it when I leave.” He opened the front door, taking this goodbye to the next stage.
More tears fell. “I can’t do this…”
“Yes, you can.” He turned back to me, his expression as stoic as ever. I was fighting for sanity while he was perfectly calm. Even when a gun was pointed at his skull, he didn’t flinch. He never panicked despite the severity of the situation. This moment was no different. It didn’t affect him at all. “I know you can.”
“This isn’t as easy for me as it is for you.”
“Baby.” He slid his hand around my waist, and he looked down into my face. “Trust me, it’s not.”
I pressed my face against his chest and cried, my hands gripping his biceps as tightly as possible so he couldn’t walk away.
He rested his chin on my head and stood there with me, listening to me sob and feeling me soak his t-shirt.
In that moment, I hated my father. I hated what he’d done to me. I hated myself for walking down that alley in Milan at the wrong time. My love for this man was so powerful that it cursed me in the end, and a part of me regretted it. If I’d just had a meaningless relationship with Mateo, I wouldn’t be feeling this way. If I’d never loved so fiercely, I wouldn’t feel this loss so fiercely.
Bones cupped my cheek and directed my gaze on him. “I love you. Always will.”
I locked my arms around his neck, and I kissed him, kissed him for the last time. “I love you…” Our kiss was mixed with tears, my words lost in the sorrow. “You’re the love of my life.”
He kissed me a little harder, his fingers digging into my hair. Our tongues moved in sync as our lips came together and broke apart. His hand shook slightly against me, his passion and emptiness combining.
Then he abruptly pulled away. He turned around without looking at me again. He was out the front door in less than a second and then headed to his truck in the driveway. He was careful not to look at me, to see the devastated expression on my face before he left our relationship forever.
I watched his shoulders shift as he moved, watched him approach his truck and prepare to leave my life. Since the moment he’d come home from meeting my father, he’d been nothing but calm. He accepted my father’s judgment without argument, and even when I wanted to be with him anyway, he rejected the idea. This separation ruined my life, but it didn’t affect him in the same way. He was either incredibly strong or incredibly heartless.
He told me to marry someone else without a single hint of pain.
How could he say that to me?
He arrived at the truck and opened the door.
“Griffin.” I was just in one of his t-shirts with bare feet, but that didn’t stop me from crossing over the threshold and stepping onto the gravel of the driveway. The small rocks hurt my feet, but that didn’t stop me.
He kept his hand on the open door but didn’t turn around.
“Griffin.” My feet crunched against the gravel as the early morning light stretched across the golden fields. It was still dawn, and not a single car was on the road. The birds were singing, welcoming spring. It was a beautiful day, but that beauty wasn’t strong enough to diminish this painful moment. I stopped behind him, staring at his muscular back in his t-shirt.
