Proof of love.
But nothing had arrived. And the bricks of acceptance had begun to form inside of her. So too the ability to take hurt and rejection and calcify it into something strong and permanent, adding to the wall of strength that she knew she’d need in life.
This pain, though, was something else. Despite her best efforts, despite everything she knew about life and love and all the warnings she’d given herself, she’d fallen hard in love for Dante San Marino. And he didn’t love her back.
He liked her.
He respected her.
He loved sleeping with her.
But where she had failed in the pledge she’d made herself, he’d held fast to his, keeping his relationship with Charlotte in the exact same box it had been in all along.
When she’d got home from his place, she was utterly exhausted and it was only as she flopped into her lumpy bed that she realised she’d left her bags at his place. With her toiletries, her toothbrush and the beautiful teardrop diamond necklace Allegra had insisted she have.
Tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes, as she accepted yet another failing. Another person who’d found a chink in the wall she’d thought was impermeable and worked her way into it.
Because Charlotte had come to love Allegra, too, and their beautiful home in Tuscany. Damn it, at some point, she’d started to love them all. To love the life she thought she and Dante might share.
Pain seared her, familiar but foreign, because she loved Dante more than and differently to anyone she’d ever known.
And she could never, ever be with him.
All night, Dante thought about Charlotte. All night, he tossed and turned, and fumed, and swore, and then tossed and turned some more, because nothing made sense and everything was wrong.
Everything.
Sometime around dawn, he gave up on even attempting to sleep and made a strong dark coffee, carrying it onto the terrace, staring out at the street with a heaviness in his chest he couldn’t shake.
He drank it and thought about Charlotte. He also thought about Jamie and the mistakes he’d made in his first marriage. He thought about how he’d tried to be the husband she needed, instead of thinking about if he was the husband she deserved. Because he hadn’t loved Jamie enough—not to withstand what life had in store for them—and she had deserved so much more.
Just like Charlotte did.
But whenever he considered that and contemplated Charlotte being with someone else, someone who could love her without hesitation and reserve, his brain practically exploded. His heart, too.
How could anyone else love her more than he did? How could anyone else give her more than him, when Dante was willing, he realised, to give her his entire life and soul if she’d accept it.
He cursed into the early morning air, draining the last of his coffee as he turned and stalked back into his house, pausing only to pull on some clothes, before storming out onto the street and towards—he hoped—his future.
Charlotte had slept hard in the end. She supposed because she’d worn herself out crying and feeling and bitterly regretting everything. Wishing she hadn’t said anything to Dante. Wishing she’d stuck with their marriage plan. Wishing she’d just gone through with it and kept her feelings hidden, because at least then she would have been with him.
And surely that would have made her happy, on some level?
Except it wouldn’t have. Because she’d done enough of that in her life—loving someone and walking on eggshells because you knew their feelings for you were conditional.
She couldn’t do it again.
Not with Dante.
Not with a man she loved as she loved him.
How stupid she’d been to let it get so far.
Then again, what choice had she had? She realised now that she’d probably fallen in love with him that night they met. What else explained the uncharacteristic way she’d gone home with him? And then hooking up with him again and again and again. Throwing caution to the wind and craving someone as if her life depended on it.
She’d told herself it was just physical because she’d needed to believe that. She’d told herself she couldn’t stand him, because that had felt safe and sensible. But both of those things had been lies.
She had to put this behind her. She had to start fresh. She had to prove to herself she was strong. That this wouldn’t break her—even when it felt as if it was pulling her apart completely.
