AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The more days he spent with the de Konigh paragon, the more Marcus realized that she was literallyeverythinghe wanted—-
But he couldn’t have her.
Even though she was older than him by a year at nineteen, age meant nothing when one considered the type of life he had led, and the kind of person it had shaped him to be.
Anneke was innocent in ways that he could never be – the kind of girl he could never hurt.
When he made himself accept this, Marcus knew the nicest thing he could do was to leave her.
But he couldn’t do that either.
So instead he settled for the next best thing, and that was her friendship. It was enough to be Anneke’s friend, and every time he went to bed, he would repeat this to himself until the pain in his crotch would go numb.
Anneke could only be his friend.
He would jerk himself off in the shower, and he would repeat the words in his mind.
Anneke could only be his friend.
But somehow a part of him remained unconvinced. A part of him remained selfish, wanting more, and Marcus couldn’t be quite sure if it was the stain in his soul telling him this or something else –
Something that he had lost –
But whatever it was, he had been too young when he had lost it, and too young to understand what it was.
****
IF NOT FOR FEDERICORavelli’s death, Marcus might never have found the strength to leave Anneke behind, her virginity still intact and her innocence untainted.It was quite the irony really, Marcus would later come to think. His father had done nothing for him when he was alive, but his death had become a blessing in disguise, with the way it left Marcus no choice but to part from Anneke’s side.
During his father’s funeral, Marcia and Marcus were both stunned when his mother also came to pay her respects. As far as they knew, there had been no communication between Marcus’ parents ever since their divorce, and there certainly had been no love lost between them.
And when he finally saw her up close—-
She hadn’t aged well at all, Marcus had found himself thinking. The woman in his memories had been a slim, vivacious beauty, one who was always elegant and smiling, one who used to heap praises for every little thing Marcus did.
But the woman in front of him now was nothing like that – her hair was dyed a rather cheap shade of blonde, her makeup too thick, and her overweight body forced into a dress at least two sizes smaller than her current frame.
What the hell had happened to her?
“Le mie condoglianze.” Raquel spoke bitterly, her gaze not meeting either Marcia or Marcus’ eyes.
The wiser half of his brain told Marcus to let it be. She had not given a damn about him for a decade. Why think it would be any different now?
But the foolish half of his brain had won, and Marcus had found himself slowly following his mother when she left the chapel.
And as he continued to follow her, Marcus’ heart started pounding in a familiar way, and cold sweat began to envelop his skin. He could feel something inside of him splitting—-
His soul tearing into two.
Just as he could feel his mind breaking—-
Dwelling on the past did no one good.
Marcus caught his mother just as she was about to step inside her car, and as soon as his fingers wrapped around her arm—-
Marcus whitened.
And he remembered.
