He’d imagined how it would feel once she left. He’d prepared himself for the sudden emptiness, for that stark silence of his life again. He’d get used to it, he told himself. He’d pick the pieces of his life back up again, like people did after a storm blew over.
But the reality was so much worse. Everything in him felt blank, silent, oppressively empty. As if she’d taken all of him with her. Given him back his ability to feel, such searing joy and crushing sorrow, and then taken it back.
The alternative was unthinkable. If he pursued a future with her, if he even indulged in the idea of it and then lost her…the pain would be unbearable. Worse than when he’d lost Violetta.
Because despite everything, he had barely been on the cusp of manhood when he’d lost her. He hadn’t known himself fully before he had become part of a couple, only to lose her. He’d been angry, resentful that the world didn’t bend and sway at his command, and he’d simply shut himself off.
This thing he felt for Sam…it defied definition. Refused to be caged into words. The love he felt in his heart was all encompassing, so vast that it turned all his assumptions into dust. It humbled him, restored his faith in everything around him.
Losing her was worse than any pain he had imagined from loving her and living with the fear that her heart might give out. Much worse.
But what did she feel for him?
Doubts unlike he’d ever known engulfed him.
Had it been easy for her to leave without saying good-bye? Had he truly been nothing but a part of her summer adventure?
“She said something’s up with her parents and she needed to be there. She also said…she did what she came to prove, to herself and her parents. That she was ready to leave, Alessandro. Nothing could’ve stopped her. She asked me if I could book her on an immediate flight. I didn’t know she hadn’t…”
Alessandro flicked a glance at his brother.
Whatever Matteo saw there, he swallowed and looked away. He wheeled closer to Alessandro. If not for the fact that his heart was shattering in his chest, Alessandro would’ve laughed at the role reversal.
His brother, it seemed, really had grown up. For he didn’t offer platitudes or suggestions. He simply stayed there in the darkness and kept him company as Alessandro fell apart silently.
He wanted that joy of laughing with her again, that glorious feeling of being alive when they fought, that sense of purpose he found when she let him look after her, that soul-deep connection when he slid into her welcoming heat.
He buried his head in his hands, feeling a desolation unlike he’d ever tasted.
How would he have borne seeing her walk away from him? How would he have felt knowing that she was moving on with her adventures, with her life, while he stayed stuck, standing still without her by his side?
Could he love her without suffocating her with his own fears? Without stifling her glorious spirit? Without making his love a shackle?
He wanted to love her for the rest of his life. And that meant being the bravest version of himself. For the woman he loved had the most courageous heart, and he wanted to be its equal.
Chapter Twelve
Six weeks later
SAM THREW HERbackpack under the console table in the small foyer of her parents’ house and kicked off her single sneaker with unwarranted violence.
Which made the grocery bag in her arms shake in her grasp. The salad she’d picked up at the deli fell to the tiled floor with a quiet thud. Which meant there was now lettuce and carrots and grape tomatoes scattered all over the floor with the dressing splattered and staring back at her. Which also meant her dad would have to clean it up because Sam couldn’t bend her left leg right now.
Sudden, indulgent tears filled her eyes, and she pressed her forehead to the door.
Her right hip ached with how much extra load she’d been putting on it to compensate for the giant bruise on her left hip. God forbid she be of use to anyone else. For once in her life, she wanted to be the one who didn’t need looking after.
But it wasn’t just the frustration of the accident she’d had since returning or the anger over how exhausted she was by the end of the week after juggling classes, her portrait commissions and schlepping home every evening from the campus.
It washim.
She wasn’t sleeping because she missed him in her bed. Missed being held by him. Missed his gaze on her, relentlessly digging and probing. Missed the warm curve of his mouth as he pressed it to her skin.
She wasn’t enjoying her college experience because everything felt colorless without him.
She had no appetite, but she forced herself to eat anyway because that’s what grown-up people did. Even when their heart was torn into pieces. Especially grown-up Sam because her damned heart couldn’t be trusted to not fail on her if she didn’t look after herself.
Just another week before she was free of the cast on her foot, she reminded herself.
