“Nico—”
“Don’t say another fucking word to me right now, Elena,” he snapped.
Something grabbed my heart and ripped it into two pieces.
After what I had done, I didn’t have it in me to defy him. Nothing but tire noise, the outside sounds of the city, and my painful heartbeats filled the car. All I wanted was to go home, press my face into his chest, and apologize. To promise I would never keep anything from him ever again.
My papà kept his bank information locked in a safe not even Tony had the code to, and then Nico’s had been lying there on the counter. It was too tempting, maybe my only chance. Men like him were all supposed to be the same. Stealing from Nico should’ve been like stealing from my papà, but it didn’t feel that way. It felt like the worst sort of betrayal.
We weren’t going home. I didn’t dare say a word, but as the awareness settled in of where we headed, a hollow ache in my chest grew emptier every mile.
He parked, and I got out of the car and followed him. I stood side-by-side with him in the elevator, but he’d yet to even look at me. A ping sounded, and the doors opened to the penthouse apartment. Every shallow breath hurt.
A dark-haired man in a suit stood in the small hallway. I vaguely recognized him, but couldn’t put a name to the face. He gave my husband a small nod.
Nico unlocked the door and flicked on the lights. Numbly, I stepped inside behind him.
He stood by the open door, his gaze focused above my head. “James will be outside. He has a phone you can use if you need anything.” His voice was cold and distant.
I wanted to say something, anything, so he would look at me. “I want my own phone.”
His volatile eyes finally came to me. I ached for him to touch me, for the roughness of his hands on my face, his deep voice in my ear.
“You had a phone. You chose not to use it.”
“I will now,” was all I could think to say.
His jaw tightened. “I’ll have one brought to you then.”
He’ll have one brought to me.
He was done with me then? He hadn’t even let me explain. Maybe he didn’t care. I stole from him, and that, he couldn’t forgive. My eyes burned, and I blinked to keep the tears at bay. “Thank you.”
His bitter laugh was quiet. A small shake of his head.
“Luca will bring your bag by soon,” he said, turning to leave.
“Nico.”
He stopped with his back to me, his shoulders tensing.
“I’m sorry,” I breathed.
A few seconds passed, and when I thought he might respond, he walked out and shut the door behind him.
I stared blankly until the numbness turned into despair that scratched at my chest, stole my breath, and bubbled up my throat in sobs.
“So the lover must struggle for words.”
—T.S. Eliot
MY HEARTBEATS SHATTERED ONE BY one, sending a raw ache through my chest.
My vision blurred behind tears and the shimmer of the sun on the marble floors. Once the crying began, it flowed like I’d just opened a dam that had been closed off for years. I stood in the middle of a beautiful apartment and felt nothing but cold and empty. The emptiness expanded until it threatened to eat me alive.
How fitting my belief had been that Nico was an addiction, because this felt like the worst sort of withdrawal. I was beginning to realize it was more than that—it was love, and this was heartbreak.
I went to the master bathroom, turned on the shower, climbed in, and cried some more. My mind spun with desperate thoughts of how to fix this, but they all ended on a hopeless note when I thought of his coldness today.
Nausea rolled in my stomach.
I’d tried not to fall in love with him, and I’d fallen so hard I was physically sick at his rejection. I could have laughed if I’d had any energy leftover from crying.
I got out of the shower, wrapped myself in a towel, and walked into the bedroom. My bag lay next to the door, and my heart clenched at the sight. A weak sense of vulnerability coasted through me at the thought of Luca hearing me cry. Any other day it would have been humiliating, but as a numbness settled in, the thought drifted away.
Instead of wearing something of mine, I found one of Nico’s plain t-shirts in the dresser and slipped it on. He could be done with me, but I wasn’t ready yet. I missed him already, with a physical sense of loss that ached.
It was still midday when I climbed into bed. It felt too large without Nico. I’d been sleeping with him for a week and now there was a big void on the mattress where he should be.
I wondered if he would let some other woman sleep in his bed. My chest tightened and burned at the thought. I hated any woman who got to touch him, to hear his voice in her ear and have his full attention. I hated her so much and she wasn’t even real yet.