Explaining I needed to go to back to Chicago today, I ask her if she can take care of my apartment. By either giving away, or selling everything I’m leaving behind. Betty assures me she’ll handle it.
Going into Rosie’s room, I’m not really surprised it’s almost completely cleared out. All the pictures of Tony in here are gone. I wince with embarrassment as I wonder what he thought when he saw them all. Was it a good thing or a bad thing?
In my room, I start packing. I’ve already gotten rid of everything I didn’t wanted to pack for the long drive. Pretty much everything but our clothes have been sold or given away in the last few weeks. Rosie hadn’t liked it, but the promise of seeing her Papa was enough of an inducement to give all except her most favorite toys away.
I spot the picture I kept of Tony; it’s been moved on my bedside table. Rosie doesn’t come into my room while I’m at work. Tony saw it and picked it up. For the last few weeks, I’ve gone over every minute I was with him, I stopped often at the moment in the closet after I pulled the gun. The warning he gave me of getting one chance with him, just one. How I would regret using that chance...I’d used the chance. It wouldn’t matter to him I have spent the last five years regretting it already. How badly is he going to make me pay for what I’ve done to him, to our daughter, to us?
16
Christy
The front door opens, before I can even knock. Tony fills the open door. After five long years, the sight of him rocks my very foundation. It's still there. My chest tightens painfully. All I want to do is touch him to assure myself he’s real, this is real and not another damn dream. He is all tension, a wall of muscle that hasn’t softened an inch in five long years. There is nothing but ice in his blue eyes.
He steps back for me to enter the house. I hear him reset the alarm as I look around. Nothing has changed since I left. He walks toward his library, and I follow. He closes the door behind me with an ominous click.
“Rosie?”
Tony stalks me, stopping so close I’m forced to look up at him. Heat and anger emanating off him in waves that burn as they flow over me. “She's fine. Right where she belongs upstairs in her room.”
“I'm sorry.” I don't know what else to say. All the other things I planned are frozen in my throat. Again the need to touch him fills me, except I don’t dare afraid I’ll be burned by the fire in him.
Shaking his head, he does the exhale laughing thing. I can't take my eyes off him. He's gained new lines over the five years, and pain stabs me because I know it’s from what I did. A thin beard covers his face. I hate the way it covers him up.
“I was coming back. I knew I needed to come back,” I push the words out.
“Rosie mentioned that.” Why does it seem to make him angrier? His eyes flick over me.
I’m wearing a black wrap dress he once tore off me for being too sexy. I’d loved him doing it and had the small tear at the zipper fixed but hadn’t worn it again before I left. There is no doubt he remembers the dress. I’m also sure he knows I wore it, as a way of reminding him of the desire I pray he still feels for me. The dress is a little tighter, my body has changed since having Rosie. I wonder what he thinks of it.
“How many men have touched you? Did you allow someone to touch what is mine?” he growls low in his throat. His hand goes around my wrist as he spots the ring on my finger. The ring I’ve kept all these years, never taking it off when I knew I should.
Thank god, he’s jealous. It sends a thrill through me. “No one. You're the only one I ever wanted.” Something flickers in his eyes, and pain sharp and bright, hits me. “You can't say the same.”
He drops my hand. “No, I can't. There have been so many women I lost count. Lisa, for one.”
I blink back tears I don’t have the right to shed. Tony didn’t cheat on me. I walked away. If I hadn’t left; he never would have touched another woman. His loyalty was never in doubt. This pain is no one’s fault but my own. Yet I reel away from him, not wanting him to see the tears.
Tony’s hand is on my arm, forcing me back to him. “But none of them were you. I closed my eyes and tried to pretend, but none of them were you.”
His hand wraps around my hair pulling it back hard, forcing my eyes to his. God, I'm so messed up. I'm aching, longing for him. Even though his touch is punishing, filled with anger. And I shouldn't respond to it; it shouldn't turn me on—it does.
“They whimpered, the way you did. Pleaded for more, just like you. But none of them were you, and I hated them for it. And I hated you even more for wanting them to be you when you fucking walked away from me.” He brings his mouth so close to mine, I breathe him in. He doesn’t kiss me the way I need him to.
Rough hands slide under my dress, tearing my panties off. I’m ashamed of how wet they are. He chuckles darkly as he brings them up to his face. “I was starving, and I fed, but I never got full. And I hated you more with every woman I fucked. You felt it, didn’t you? At the darkest hours of night when I laid there craving you, hard for you?”
I nod, blinking the tears fall
