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I’m giving myself tonight. This one night to mourn what can never be between us. Come tomorrow morning, as the sun rises on the first day of the new year, I’ll leave it in the past. I won’t let myself look back.
But, for now, a hollow feeling has taken over. Bottomless heartbreak that’s familiar from the last time we went our separate ways. It’s the cruel realization that even if I’d like for things to be different, we’re never going to work out. The real world and circumstances of who we are and where we’re from will always break us up. One way or another. That’s what it always leads back to. After three attempts, how can we possibly believe otherwise?
Even more depressing is the truth in Salvatore’s words—everything he had to say about my exeswastrue. I was too pissed to admit it in the moment, but he was right. None of them were worth staying with. Most of them legacy types from families similar to mine. Any marriage would’ve been more of a business contract than out of genuine love.
Garrett had been the best of the worst. We had been... lukewarm at most. We looked good together and got along well enough that I could swallow the idea of a future with him. Marriage and children and successful careers. We’d become one of the power couples in the city, attending galas and other special events with our equally esteemed friends.
We had no passion and little connection outside of our lifestyles. Sex with him was mechanical. It wasscheduled.
When he proposed and I saidyes, deep in my heart, I knew I wasn’t in love with him.
But Salvatore...
I swallow the last of the champagne, forcing myself not to finish the thought.
It doesn’t matter what I feel, because I’m going to have to move on.
My only regret is that I hurt him. I regret what I told him. That he could never be a normal man. That he was basically incapable of love.
I could never love a man like you. You’re not the kind of man who can ever be normal.
Salvatore had looked at me differently, as though I’d succeeded in the impossible. I had pierced the deep, unfeeling armor he wears every moment of his life, and I had hurt him. He didn’t show it like most people would, but I saw the shift immediately. His jaw pulled tighter and his expression hardened even more than usual. The subtle warmth he possessed when around me—only me—had vanished.
He’d spoken to me like a stranger.
I’ve been the one person he believed cared about him and I’ve crushed him. Is it possible to be sorry for something you’ve said but also be pissed at that same person you said it to?
He still invaded my privacy. He violated my trust. He kept a huge secret from me for over a decade and even sabotaged my relationships. I believe him when he says it was for my safety, but that doesn’t change the fact that it was also done for selfish reasons.
Salvatore believes I’m his. His territorial tendencies come out in full force wherever I’m concerned.
His infatuation. An obsession.
Twelve years he’s lurked in the shadows of my life, watching, interfering where he deemed necessary.
It’s not healthy. It…scaresme to know the lengths he’s willing to go to.
Just for me.
When the biting wind becomes too much, I leave the balcony and head back inside the hotel room. At some point between polishing off the last of the champagne bottle, indulging in a large slice of cheesecake, and flipping through more TV channels, I fall asleep. My dreams feel heavy and blank at the same time. Black nothingness yet filled with broken hearted longing.
If I do dream, I don’t remember.
I wake the next morning to my hotel phone ringing. I fell asleep on the wrong end of the bed with the TV remote in hand and no comforter covering me for warmth. The room feels like an icebox as I shiver and clutch my robe together so I can answer.
“Delphi sweetheart, I was getting worried,” Dad says. “I’ve called three times. I was about to have the bellboy come up to check on you.”
I yawn and glance at the time. “Nothing’s wrong. Just sleeping.”
“You’ve had an exhausting last few weeks. It’s best you take these next couple days to get your affairs in order before you return to work.”
“My affairs?”
“You can’t stay in a hotel forever. You can’t return to your old apartment. Get dressed and come down to the lobby. We’ll go apartment hunting.”
“Oh.”
I let a moment of pause go by. Dad is only worried about me because of the break-in. I haven’t helped matters when I told him I was afraid of going back. In typical overprotective Dad fashion, he sees it as his duty to make sure I have somewhere new to live that’s safe and up to standard.
