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“You won’t be alone,” I whispered before he claimed my lips slowly. We clung to each other tightly, desperately kissing and losing ourselves in each other one last time. When he pulled away, fresh tears emerged as I felt my heart being ripped away from me a second time. His eyes shimmered with unshed pain. “Go, Taylor.”
“I’ll wait for you,” I promised.
“I will not come.” A sob escaped as I tried in vain to pull myself together.
“Taylor, go.” He gripped my neck as his mouth descended one last time, and all too soon retreated. “Please, go.” I heard the watery edge to his voice and saw the break in him. I climbed into the truck and braced myself as another wave of searing finality hit me. I studied Daniello and realized out of all the men in my life, he was the only one who taught me the truth about love.
He had come into my life as a threat to all my principles and fully wrecked my line of thinking. Order and excellence had their place, but so did passion, spontaneity, and love.
“I love you,” I whispered to him as he lingered at the door, his hands on either side of the frame. “Thank you for showing me it was still possible.” He closed his eyes tightly as if to keep what I said burned into his memory.
The driver shouted in warning and darted his eyes at Daniello in the rearview.
“Goodbye, Phoenix,” he murmured before he shut the door and the SUV sped away.
I didn’t return to Charleston, despite Daniello’s sacrifice to keep me safe. I had to be absolutely sure. And once again, that meant I had to keep my distance from those I loved.
And nothing about the life I left appealed to me without him in it.
The doctors had declared Amber out of the woods when she woke up. She would soon start therapy. When my sister opened her eyes, she was met with a new future. A man by her side who truly cared about her and a son to raise. She would never again be in the kind of danger that she’d been exposed to. She wouldn’t be a target for anyone or anything, except the bastard called life. And I knew without a doubt she could manage her way through the bad. She was well armed for that. She’d endured so much, her day-to-day problems would seem totally trivial. She would thrive, and so would her son.
“Where are you?” Cedric asked as I gripped my phone in another rented car.
“I’m home.” I looked up at the mansion I hadn’t visited in years as Cedric questioned me.
“You aren’t home.”
“I’m where I need to be for now.”
“If I ever see you again, I won’t know whether to kiss you or kill you.”
I heard the longing in his voice. “I’m sorry for what I’ve put you through.”
“Do you want me to come?”
“No. I need to just be alone for a while.”
“Back into old habits, huh?” It was a dig, and I knew he meant it that way. He was still angry with me.
“One day you’ll forgive me.”
“I gotta go.”
“Cedric—”
The phone went dead. I would let him have his space. I knew his love for me surpassed friendship a long time ago. I knew what unrequited loved felt like. I’d experienced a good bout of it on my own by the man who owned the mansion I stared at.
There was a chill in the air, alerting me to the arrival of fall in Memphis. I let down my window, and a few leaves drifted across the hood. Automatic lights flicked on around the property, giving it a regal, white glow as I stared at the lifeless house and remembered the last time I saw Ray.
“I’ve arranged for you to have a brownstone in Boston. It will be easier if you don’t have to come home for break.”
“What?” I paused my packing and turned to him. He shrugged, indifferent.
He wore his usual suit and tie, as he looked over my luggage and then back to me. “No sense in coming back here, kitten. This isn’t your home anymore.”
“I can come back for Thanksgiving in a few months and Christmas. What about summer, Ray?”
Ray moved in front of my suitcase and resumed packing for me. “I assume you’ll be fucking some college Joe by then.” I moved to stand in front of him and ripped the T-shirt from his hands. “You know that won’t happen. You are the only one I want.”
