Chapter 21

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

DANTE

S he’s sobbing. I’m at the bathroom door, unable to wrap my head around how badly I just fucked up. I don’t know what to do.

I hadn’t meant to do that. Fuck, I hadn’t even thought I could come so fast after she’d just sucked my dick. Everything with her is so different from anyone I’ve ever been with.

Rules and bodily functions seem to go awry around her. Then, I made it worse with what I let slip out of my mouth.

“Alyssa,” I whisper through the door’s crack, but she doesn’t hear me.

The ceremony is over, and the church is letting everyone out to throw birdseed at Slate and Brynne, so I clear my throat and blend into the crowd, giving a backward glance as I leave Alyssa broken and upset in the bathroom.

“Everything alright?” Antonio asks me, clapping me on the shoulder.

I nod.

“Where were you during the ceremony?”

“With Alyssa. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I wouldn’t think so; you’ve got cum on the front of your pants.”

I look down. “Goddamnit.”

“Go home. I’ll cover for you. Change and get yourself together. I’ll see you at the reception hall.”

I look back at the church doors, praying Alyssa will come out and make eye contact with me, but she doesn’t.

“Fuck.” I scrub my hands through my hair as Slate and Brynne enter a blacked-out limo and head off with cans and tissue paper trailing behind them. “Fine. I’ll see you there.”

I rush home, feeling the emptiness of the car like a weight around my throat. I go through the motions of cleaning up and spending too long in the shower as I run over the day’s events, getting changed into something decent. I hear a sniffle as I head back to the door to leave.

Alyssa stands at the coffee machine, head bowed as she waits for the brew cycle to end.

It’s only four p.m., but it feels like it’s been the longest fucking day of my life already, so I know she likely feels the same.

“Can we talk?” I ask her, setting my keys on the island.

I don’t know how she got back here, but she has Pauly’s number, so I’m guessing he brought her.

“I’m just waiting for my coffee to take this pill, and then I’m going to the reception.”

“Pill?”

Walking into the kitchen, I see the Plan B box sitting on the counter next to the coffee pot, and I nearly stop breathing.

Anna and I discussed having kids early in our relationship, but our marriage was cut too short to see that dream come to fruition.

I’m fucking torn to bits seeing Alyssa so conflicted and hurt by what happened earlier, but I’m also torn on how to feel about the knowledge that she’s about to take the pill to avoid being pregnant by me.

I’d open the box for her if she were any other woman. It’s shitty to think about, but it’s the truth. Part of me wants to fucking rage and toss it in the trash. The other part of me knows that it’s her body, her choice.

I swallow.

“Don’t you dare try to talk me out of it,” she says, her voice could cut through glass if she weaponized it.

“Even if I want to, I won’t. I’m so sorry about what happened, Lyss. I should’ve made myself pull out even if you said not to. I’m sorry.”

“It won’t happen again,” she says, and I feel her words like a knife to the throat. I swear my jugular is open and bleeding all over the kitchen, and she can’t see the blood spurting from it.

“Also, your choice.”

“Is it, Dante? Is that true? Because I’ve been true to myself this entire time, and you’ve been forcing me to change. Forcing little bits of you and your bullshit into my life. I told you who I was from the beginning, and you decided somewhere along the way that you wanted me, and that’s all that mattered from there on out. It’s like a fucking game to you. I’m a fucking game!”

“No, you’re not!” I shout back without thinking. “You’re the best fucking thing that’s happened to me since I lost my entire life to the sound of one fucking gunshot, Lyss.”

“Yeah?! Well, you’re the worst fucking thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“Are you fucking kidding me right now? This is how you’re going to act? It was an accident, Alyssa. And if you wanted to be safer, you could’ve asked me to wear a fucking condom!” I step into her, and she turns her back to the counter. “I think you like the way my cock feels in your pussy, raw and unfettered. You’re just scared. Can’t you see that? You’re so afraid of becoming your mother that you won’t let yourself be the slightest bit happy or free of the shadow of her divorce!”

Her slap comes hard across my cheek, pain stinging long after her small hand has connected with my skin. “Fuck you, Dante. Fuck you to fucking hell!”

She turns, opens the box, and downs the pill with coffee. Turning, she throws the box at my head and storms off, grabbing the keys to my Range Rover and marching out of the apartment.

For the longest time, I stood there, perplexed at how everything went so wrong today.

While Slate married the love of his life, mine went to fucking shit in a handbasket.

Now I have to pack said basket up and act like it’s full of fucking roses and go back to the reception.

I grab the keys to another car and lock the apartment up before getting on the elevator.

I don’t care that she’s taken my car; she can have my entire life if she wants, but she can’t see that.

She can’t see what’s right in front of her through her fear and trauma.

“Fuck,” I groan, looking at myself in the mirrors surrounding me in the elevator. “You really fucked this up, man.”

The reception hall is mid-party already when I arrive back.

I congratulate Slate and Brynne, both beaming at me now that they think Alyssa and I are becoming something. I know Brynne wants to see her best friend happy, but I don’t know if she realizes how closed-off Alyssa is.

I knew I had to trudge carefully with her. I knew that if I made one wrong move, she’d build her walls even taller around her heart and likely never let me near them again, and I still managed to fuck everything up anyhow.

“Hey! Mr. Casanova himself has graced us with his presence, Antonio. Look!” Lorenzo says as I approach the bar and order a full glass of whiskey.

“Damn, maybe Casanova is having relationship issues already, Renzo,” Antonio says.

The two laugh as if they’re best fucking friends, and my fists clench at my side.

“Fuck off, the both of you,” Alyssa says.

She’d been standing behind Lorenzo the entire time, and I hadn’t spotted her.

“Oh, come on, Lyss. We were kidding,” Antonio says in apology.

“You’re always kidding. Neither one of you can be serious to save your fucking lives!”

“Damn, I guess shit did go sour between the two of you already. Guess you’ll be glad to be rid of him tomorrow, then,” Lorenzo says, and I wince.

Fuck.

“What did you just say?” Alyssa asks, and Lorenzo repeats himself.

She looks at me and then back at him. “What does that mean? What happens tomorrow?”

“Well, you’re moving out, right? Slate said he told Dante your apartment is ready for you to move. Brynne set it all up; we’re supposed to come and help you move tomorrow morning.”

She looks at me, seething.

“When were you going to tell me? Or were you just going to turn them away at the fucking door and keep me hostage?”

“Oh, fuck,” Lorenzo says, and he and Antonio move away from us, sensing a blow-up about to happen.

“Well, we were having such a good time the other night, and I didn’t want to ruin it…”

“The spam text,” she realizes. “Of course. You know, you’ve just proven to me my worst fears. Men only care about themselves, and they’ll always fucking lie to you. No matter if they say they love you.”

“Alyssa, that’s not fucking fair…”

She steps forward and tosses her drink in my face. Bourbon drips off my skin as my features contort.

“That was uncalled for.”

“So were all your fucking lies. I’m so glad I saw the truth before letting my walls down further. Guess it’s time to batten down the hatches, huh?”

She turns and grabs her clutch, hurrying for the door.

“Alyssa!” I shout through the crowd and music. I turn back and see Slate eyeballing me with a grin, nodding once, as he knows I will follow after her.

I nod back, turning and bolting after her.

I get out to the parking lot, which is veiled in darkness now as she hits the fob to the Range Rover, unlocking it.

She opens the door as I reach around her and shut it, caging her against the driver’s door.

“Dante, let me go, or I’ll fucking shoot you.”

“No, you won’t, tesoro.”

Her clutch drops as she pulls a gun from it, turning on me as she places the barrel on my head. I hear the safety click off, and blood fills my cock. The very cock that got us into this fucking mess in the first goddamned place.

“Alyssa,” I warn.

“No. You did this to yourself,” she says, fresh tears forming and spilling down her flushed cheeks. She hadn’t bothered with reapplying her makeup after she had showered earlier. She looks so gorgeous as she threatens my life that it hurts. “You did this to me. To us.”

She sounds like she’s mourning what we had, which gives me hope. I hope she was further along in her feelings towards me than I gave her credit for because I have something to work with.

It’ll still be hard. A woman who’s been hurt shuts down, and once you’ve hurt a woman to that point, it’s hard to go backward. They never forget what you did. She’ll spend the rest of her fucking life with the shadows of how you hurt her looming in the back of her mind, waiting to pounce in a moment of weakness.

“Please,” she pleads, “let me go.”

I swallow, my own eyes burning. “I can’t let you go, Lyss. I love you.”

She gasps, backing herself into the car more like she wants to become a speck in the paint rather than stand here and listen to me confess my feelings for her.

“I have loved you since I locked eyes with you next to Brynne’s desk. Love at first sight, they call it in the movies. It’s real. You and I are proof.”

“You don’t love me, Dante. You love the idea of someone filling the hole Anna left behind.”

Her words hurt, as they’re meant to, but I steady myself in their pain.

“You can’t tell me how I feel, Alyssa. I know myself. I love you. I don’t care if it hurts you to hear that.”

“No, you don’t,” she counters. “You don’t care about anything but your selfish wants and needs.”

Now, those words fucking sting, and I snatch the gun from her hand and turn it on her, pressing it to her temple. “Watch yourself, tesoro. You forget who the fuck you’re talking to.”

She tries to hide the ripples of fear breezing through her eyes and fails.

“Dante,” she pleads.

I shake my head, pressing the gun inward. “No. You want to say hurtful shit all because you’re afraid, I’ll add to that fear.”

“You won’t hurt me.”

“Won’t I? According to you, that’s all I’m good at.”

“I didn’t say… I didn’t mean…”

“Don’t backtrack now, tesoro.”

She swallows.

“Admit it,” I snarl.

“Admit, what?” Her voice shakes.

“Admit you’re afraid.”

She scoffs. “Of course, I’m afraid, Dante! I’m afraid of becoming my mother and letting a man lure me in so deeply that I can’t swim my way out, even long after he’s gone off with the bimbo he cheated on me with. I’m afraid of becoming another fucking statistic. I don’t want to have children with someone, only for their father to leave and start an entirely new life without them, never looking back or giving a shit at how they struggle in the wake of his happiness. All of these fears are fucking valid, and you can’t belittle them or take them away just because you spew the same three words to me that he did my entire life. He told me he loved me, Dante, and left without a backward glance. He cheated on her, tore her down, and left her a shell of herself, and he told her he loved her every fucking day! Words mean nothing!”

Tears are pouring down her cheeks, and her body is shaking.

“Lyss,” I manage, clicking the safety back on the gun and shoving it down the back of my pants.

“No. Nothing can take it away, Dante. I tried with you, I did. I’m not suited to become her. Men will always hurt me. He taught me that early on.”

I sigh. “Relationships aren’t easy, Alyssa. Things are going to happen. If you go into them with preconceived notions, you will find things wrong at every turn and give yourself an excuse to quit. You can’t compare me to your father. Where he walked away, I’m right here. Fighting for you, saying I fucked up!”

“But it’s too late,” she breathes, and my world shatters.

“How is it too late? Huh? Tell me. Because just a few hours ago, I was the one helping you battle this bullshit, helping you avoid a fucking panic attack. I was the one beside you, Alyssa! The one inside you!”

“Yeah, you were. Until you ruined everything.”

I step back, defeated and lost for words, as I hear Brynne shouting Alyssa’s name.

Someone saw us fighting and told her, no doubt, and now I’m all around a fuck up, ruining her wedding day by worrying about my selfish want for Alyssa.

“Maybe you’d better go,” Brynne tells me, a sour look on her face as she pulls her best friend into her body for a hug.

Alyssa’s cries get louder in the comfortable hold of someone she loves.

Someone she’s let behind the walls I’ll never see the interior of.

“Yeah, maybe I’d better.”

I hear Brynne shushing Alyssa as I slam my car door and beat the steering wheel a few times before cranking it and driving off into the night with a penchant to make something fucking bleed.

I just lost the love of my fucking life, and it’s because of a man who hurt her before I even knew she existed.

It’s then and there that I promise myself if I ever have a daughter, she’ll know only kindness from me. I’ll be the example that her boyfriends must live up to, not ruining her idea of men altogether.

I’ll be the one setting the bar higher, not lower.