Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 154525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Carina didn’t let up, another tear falling in the meantime. “But didn’t you just do exactly that? In a way, didn’t you just weaponize my trauma against me to hurt me? Like a monster would, Salvatore. You were a fucking mon—”
“I am, and I’m sorry.”
That, at its core, was the truth.
He couldn’t justify it. He would not try to explain the things he said or why he’d said them. Even a possible relapse, which he had been so close to, couldn’t make right how he had treated her. None of it excused his behavior, so he wouldn’t use it to. He simply needed her to know he understood that, and it would never happen again.
“I was wrong, I will always be wrong for saying those things to you,” he said, playing with his wedding band while she cried and tried to hide it with quick swipes of her hands. “I know that, and I’m so sorry. And you will never hear anything like that from me again.”
She cried even harder, openly doing so now, and staring at the crystal chandelier overhead as her hand slapped her jean-covered thigh. “And see, I know you are. You don’t even apologize to God anymore for the things you do. I know you mean it, because between the two of us, we know who does the monstrous things. We know, Sal.”
“Hey, don’t.”
He stepped forward. She put that hand up fast.
“Don’t you dare, please. I just...I can’t. I cannot have you touching me, okay,” she muttered thickly.
Salvatore froze on the spot, and his hand remained outstretched for hers. “I just want to tell you—”
“If you touch me, I’m not going to keep being mad at you. If you tell me that it’s okay and you’re sorry while you’re holding me and look at me the way you always have, then it will be. And it shouldn’t be that fucking easy for you. It’s never that easy for me, is it? Shouldn’t you have to do the same? God knows you made me pay in years sometimes, Sal. There were years when you wouldn’t even touch me. I earned you back every fucking time. You know what I forgot to do over the last few days?”
His hand dropped to his side, trembling. “No, what?”
“Count. I don’t know how many days it’s been, I know it’s only a few more than—”
“Stop.”
He was a monster. Completely.
Her fingers found home clenching into his silk button-down shirt when he rushed her. Fuck all that noise about not touching or holding her, because that wasn’t really what she wanted or needed. Salvatore knew this woman, he loved her. He couldn’t not give her exactly what she was desperately screaming out for: him.
“Hey, hey, hey,” he chanted alongside soft kisses to her damp cheeks. The salt of her tears danced across his lips each time. “That doesn’t matter—that’s never gonna matter between us again, do you hear me? I promise, Carina.”
Somehow, she just cried harder. He kissed her forehead, holding her close in hopes she would calm. She didn’t.
“You don’t even know why I did it to you,” she said, words broken and soft with her tears. “The one in Milan, and then down in Haiti. In Chicago...”
He squeezed her tighter, never moving an inch. “It doesn’t matter. They didn’t matter.”
Her body shook against him. The tears continued.
“Just think about it, Sal,” she practically begged.
He didn’t want to. Her infidelity had been such a sore spot between them that the best he’d ever been able to do was just live with it until he could see past it to see her again. It was almost like she couldn’t control it at first when it all began, and every time, she came home and told him. Every single time. The last one, a little over four years ago, had been the worst.
“Babe, I don’t know what you want from me here.”
She shook her head against his throat. “Every time I ever fucked another man, I felt so dirty. I didn’t want you to see me like that, so I’d go and do something I thought would hurt you worse, so I could be disgusting from that, and not—”
“Giorgio,” Salvatore realized aloud.
The low wail that fell from Carina hurt his heart.
She didn’t have to say it, then. He understood implicitly. Her affairs usually followed family events or things where she’d be put in the same room with her adopted father. They all paid a price, in different ways, and they all put on the mask when the time came.
“I hated that it felt like when you looked at me beside him, me smiling while people took pictures, you saw that,” she whispered, so quietly he strained to hear. “It’s all I ever thought about. Were you seeing what he did to me? What he’d done? I didn’t want you to see that. It all made me feel so—”