She continues to beat at my chest, and I let her. I let her take all her frustrations, all her anger out on me. I deserve it. I’m a fucking bastard. I could have waited. Logan and Quaid did. They didn’t want anyone else but her, and they were willing to wait for her.
The thing is, so was I, and that was what terrified the shit out of me.
I would have taken a vow of celibacy if she wanted me to. I would have done anything she asked. And because I knew this, my self-sabotaging ass did the very opposite. It was the only way I could protect my heart. In rebelling against my feelings and showing she didn’t have the power over me that she obviously had, I brought her pain.
“I’m sorry,” I hush, stroking her hair as she continues to beat me down. “I’m sorry,” I repeat, my eyes prickling with my own unshed tears behind them.
Fuck!
This is why I did what I did, because Valentina makes me feel too goddamn much. Watching her fall apart in my arms shatters me in ways I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to piece back together.
I continue to say I’m sorry until her rage is spent and she’s cradling her head on my chest, her tears now running down my bare skin.
“I hate you,” she utters in between sobs, but there is no sentiment behind the attack.
“Well that fucking sucks, since I’m fucking in love with you.”
She lifts her head up just a smidge, and I wipe away the rest of her tears, leaving my own water filled eyes in plain view for her to witness.
“So someone else had my body for a fleeting few minutes. You, Valentina, have my fucking soul for a lifetime. But can I say the same about you? Do I have yours?”
When she lowers her face and hugs me fiercely to her without answering me, I bite down on my tongue to keep my anguish from surfacing. But it’s no use. The masochist in me can’t prevent the burning question in my throat from seeing the light of day.
“You’ll never be only mine, will you?”
Each cut to my heart is tangible proof of how her silence is the loudest rejection she could have ever put into words.
Chapter 9
Now
_____________________________________
Valentina
We’re getting ready for a boating excursion when my phone beeps, and I look down at it to see a text from Lucas. My goodbye never seemed to sink in, and I have gotten texts and calls quite frequently over the last year. Sometimes I answered, but most of the time, I didn’t.
I still miss you.
That had always been the problem with Lucas. I didn’t ever miss him.
“Who the fuck is Lucas?” Carter growls from behind me, reading the text over my shoulder.
“Just a guy from the past,” I say sadly.
Carter misinterprets the pain in my voice for something that it’s not. He suddenly spins me around and pins me against the wall, holding my arms above my head as he presses against me.
“The three of us aren’t enough, Valentina? Are the others not keeping that greedy pussy busy enough?” he asks in a softly sinister voice.
My chest is rising and falling fast at his show of aggression. I’m insanely turned on, and my breasts are pushed against him, rubbing against him as I breathe and turning me on even more.
“You’re more than enough. You’re everything,” I tell him breathlessly. “What you think you’re hearing is me mourning the time I wasted on someone who in all the time that I dated him, never made me feel a speck of the passion that I feel in just a minute with one of you.”
I close my eyes as he begins to trace the tip of his nose down the side of my face and then down my neck. “I hated myself when I was with him. He was perfect. Everyone thought so. He treated me like I was everything. But he knew the whole time that whatever he did was never enough for me. We never fought because I never cared enough to fight with him. He never had the ability to break my heart, and that’s why I broke up with him when I found out that I was sick again. ’Cause I didn’t feel anything when I was with him, and I didn’t want to spend my last moments on Earth numb like that.”
Carter’s lips stop moving as I speak. He’s frozen against my skin, and I shiver, not just from the feel of him against me, but because I feel like I’ve lost something inside of me by telling him all of that. What does it say about our love that I would rather fight with Carter, Logan, or Quaid than experience any type of bliss with someone else?
These men are my fucking soulmates is what it means.
Carter seems mollified by my explanation, but he still shoots daggers at my phone when I slip it into my bag to take with me.
Although I don’t know why I’m even bringing it with me. There’s no one I would care to hear from at this point that isn’t with me right now.
We walk along the path that winds down the side of the cliff. I’m struggling, even though it’s downhill. It’s one of those moments where you’re trying to breathe as softly as possible so no one knows how out of shape you are.
Although I’m not out of shape. My body is just shutting down.
“You know about my past relationships,” I begin as I keep my eyes looking firmly at the water below us. I don’t even know why I’m going to ask what I’m about to ask. “Did you ever have anyone special in your life?” I ask Carter.
Carter lifts his eyebrow to ask if I’m really going there. I’m not sure why I’m doing it, but maybe I need the bite of pain today to help me feel more alive. I had a nosebleed last night in the middle of the night. It went on for hours, and I was almost to the point where I was going to wake the guys up to take me to the doctor, when it stopped as suddenly as it had begun.
“I don’t know that I would call anyone in my past a relationship,” he finally answers after thinking for a moment. “There were fuck buddies, yes. But no relationships.”
I wince at the term. I hate thinking about him fucking someone. Especially when he still hasn’t made love to me.
“You asked, Valentina,” Carter replies nastily after he witnesses my cringe. “And whose fucking fault was it that those women ever got that chance to be with me in the first place?”
My lips quiver at the vehemence in his tone. We’d been doing so good lately. But obviously, we still have a lot to resolve.
Carter stalks off down the path. Logan and Quaid both stay by my side though. “You okay, Princess?” Quaid asks hesitantly.
I sigh and nod, not trusting myself to speak because I know I’ll cry. I was a fool to think that a few weeks could fix ten years of heartache. Especially with Carter.
He feels things deeper than most people. I’m sure my betrayal and abandonment made its way down to his very soul. A mark on it that may not be able to be undone.
Quaid clears this throat. “You know…I think that one of the hardest things about life after you was the struggle to find anything else that could live up to your memory. I felt like I was going crazy sometimes. And in the process, I’m sure I broke a million hearts in my pursuit to touch anything that could hold a smidge of what we had together. But it was no use. No one could live up to the image I had of who you were in my mind. As time went on, I began to doubt whether what we had was really as special as I’d thought. I lied to myself, saying it wasn’t, and then the guilt and anger just got worse. Because I hated the fact that the ghost of you was better than anything real in front of me.”