Alessio shrugged. “At the end of the day, I’ll always be the second choice. To everything else, I come second, and you just made sure to really let me know here.”
No.
If it were possible for a heart to split in two from nothing more than someone’s words and their pain, then that’s what Corrado’s did. He wished Alessio could see himself through Corrado’s eyes. He wasn’t so good at this thing they had, and he screwed up, but that didn’t change what they were at the end of the day.
It didn’t change what he felt.
Alessio couldn’t be his second choice when he had already been his first.
“That’s untrue,” Corrado said, refusing to back down on that. Ever. “Don’t say that, because you know it’s not true, Les.”
“I know you made it clear here. With her, yeah, you made it look like fucking crystal to me, Corrado. I see it far too well.”
“You don’t know any—”
“I know enough!”
“You won’t let me talk!”
“I told you why that is. I don’t care to hear what you have to say.” Alessio took one step back from him, but it still wasn’t enough. A part of Corrado wanted the room to breathe, but another part of him wanted this man as close as he could get him. That heartache was still there, bright and clear, and vicious. Ready to hurt. “I came here looking for something tonight, but I haven’t found it. I don’t know if I will, or if I even want to anymore.”
Corrado let out a shaky exhale. “Don’t say that; you don’t mean that.”
Alessio rushed forward, pressed against him, and stared him down again. Teeth clenched, body coiled, and emotions ready to go to war.
Corrado didn’t move an inch. “If all you wanted to do was fuck her, then you could have told me, but that’s the thing, isn’t it? That’s not all you want from her—that’s not all you want to do with her. And that’s why you didn’t tell me about her, Corrado. Just say it.”
“I won’t deny that, but it’s more than that, too.”
A nod answered him back, but Alessio wasn’t hearing him. He was too fucking mad, and ready to strike out because of it. That was the thing about him—once he reached his point of no return, it was over. He couldn’t be reached.
Corrado simply had to weather the storm.
And what a fucking hurricane Alessio could be.
Violent, destructive, and raw. Unforgiving, willing to devastate, and unrelenting as he tore whatever was in his way apart piece by fucking piece. Even if it meant tearing apart the thing that he loved while he did it. Anyone caught in his path when he was like this would be lucky to survive, and if they did, they certainly wouldn’t come out of it the same as they went into it.
Corrado was not an exception to that rule, but he earned this. Alessio was due this. So, he let him have it. Corrado let him do what he needed. Even if it killed him by the time his lover was done.
It wasn’t about Ginevra, really. It wasn’t that Corrado found a woman he was attracted to, or felt something for. It was the betrayal in it—the trust Alessio never gave to anyone, but that he willingly handed to Corrado.
It was that, and not the rest, even if Alessio used everything else as a backdrop to spell it out for Corrado. He’d always been good at reading between the lines, and he didn’t need help now to see it written like black ink on white paper. Alessio was the paper. His eyes, his words, and his anguish became the ink.
“I’m so glad you found something in someone else,” Alessio murmured, that betrayal coating every word and each breath he took, “because God fucking knows you never found what you wanted in me.”
Fuck him for saying that.
It wasn’t even close to being true.
Corrado had everything he wanted in Alessio—he’d found things he never knew he needed in the man looking like he was ready to burn him to the ground right where he stood. And he loved him more for it, too.
That’s what made this hurt worse.
Because he couldn’t explain why this happened at all. He would never be able to explain Ginevra, the things he felt for her, or why it happened at all ... not when he already had what he wanted and needed from Alessio.
Not that it mattered.
Corrado had crossed Alessio’s one line.
It was already too late.
“So, is that what you need to do, then?” Alessio asked, dragging Corrado from his thoughts as lightening streaked across the sky in the window behind him. “You want to fuck her, Corrado? Then fuck her. Have her.”
28.
Ginevra
“You want to fuck her, Corrado? Then fuck her. Have her.” Alessio’s bitter laughter filtered down the hall to Ginevra’s spot where she leaned with her shoulders against the wall while she stared down to the dimly lit office. She could see them in the doorway, standing too close, both seeming ready to strike out at one another. “That’s our deal, right? I just have to know about it, and now I do. So, you want her, now I know, and you can have her.”
“Les, it’s not like—”
“Not what, like I think it is?” Even if Ginevra were able to see more of Alessio’s face in the shadows of the office, she bet he would be sporting a sneer. It couldn’t be missed in his tone. “It’s exactly like what I think it is, and you can’t deny it.”
“I don’t want to deny it, but that doesn’t change us, either.”
“Us?” Alessio scoffed. “Us?”
“That’s what I said, wasn’t it?”
“What is that?”
Ginevra lifted her gaze again to watch the scene playing out down the hall. She had no business standing there, and it certainly wasn’t her place to watch this whole thing play out like she was a fly on the wall.
And still, she couldn’t move.
She was compelled to stay.
The two men stood toe-to-toe in the doorway of the office, their bodies angled toward one another like one was waiting for the other to strike, but neither knew which one would do it first. She didn’t even think they realized their fight had been this loud, or that it had almost moved entirely out into the hallway.
“What is what?” Corrado snapped.
“Us—what is that, huh? Because you haven’t known, or you sure as shit didn’t wanna say before, so let’s not pretend like you do now.”
“Low blow, Les. That’s a low fucking blow, even for you. You’re mad, so you’re saying shit you don’t mean because that’s how you deal. And I get that, but that’s low. You’re pissed—so fine. I crossed a line—yeah. None of those things are untrue, but it doesn’t change what this has always been to me.”
“But all of them mean one fucking thing for me, Corrado.”
“Stop saying that.”
“What, you don’t like having your bullshit thrown at your feet for you to unpack?”
“That’s not it at all. It doesn’t matter how many times you say it, it won’t make it true.”
“Then, what? Go on, tell me. I’ll wait. Surprise me for once, please. I’ve had five damn years doing this with you, so what’s one more night, right?”