Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 95013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
I let myself inside and stepped into her living room. “Who the fuck do you think you are?” I didn’t intend to yell at her when I got here, but holy hell, I was fucking mad. I’d never yelled at her like this, ever. Never yelled at a woman like this in my life.
She flinched when I raised my voice, like she was fucking scared.
Good.
“You come into my family’s restaurant. Mine.” I slammed my hand into my chest. “And you have the nerve to insult my family. So, let me ask you this again—who the fuck do you think you are?”
She was paralyzed in fear, like a cornered deer that was too scared to try to run. Her eyes were frantic like she wanted to find an escape from this terror, but there was no way out of this. Out of this fucking hole she’d dug with her own shovel. “Hearing the news from other people was a shitty way to find out—”
“So that justifies you coming into my family’s restaurant and insulting the mother of my child? Please, explain that to me. Explain to me why that justifies calling my future wife a bitch.” I crossed my arms over my chest and waited.
“I—I didn’t mean for it to go that way.”
“I think you fucking did. Aurelia tried to make peace with you, tried to break bread, extend a goddamn olive branch, because she’s twice the woman you’ll ever be, and you tear her down and call her a bitch. She’s known about our twisted, never-ending drama since the beginning, and she’s never once cared about it because she actually feels sorry for you. She thinks I overreacted to the whole thing. She was able to humanize you and see the good in you, and you can’t even be polite to her. So what the fuck is wrong with you?”
Her eyes started to water.
I didn’t give a damn. “I’m actually asking you, Isabella. Because you’re clearly irrevocably fucked in the head.”
Tears immediately streaked down her cheeks, and she started to sob.
Okay . . . maybe I took it too far. “Look, I don’t owe you anything. I don’t owe you an explanation. I’m not going to text you about my personal life like you’re still a part of it, because you aren’t. And if that really pisses you off, then you take it out on me and not her.”
She continued to sob in front of me, covering her face with her hands and turning toward the wall.
I should have felt worse about what I’d done, but I was still ripe with anger from how she’d treated Aurelia. Cross my girl, and I was the least compassionate motherfucker in the world.
“I’m—I’m sorry. Okay?” She breathed between her sobs. “This has just been really hard for me. Life didn’t work out the way I wanted, and I always believed at some point we would find our way back to each other. But knowing you’re going to have a baby . . . when I always thought we would have kids together . . . it just hurts. It hurts more than I can even describe.” She kept her back to me as she cried. She tried to calm herself a couple times, but after a short pause, she would just cry hard again.
I listened to her and continued to feel nothing. “I hope you can find peace. I hope you can move on. Because our families are very much united, and I don’t want to change that. I don’t want to cut you out of my life. But treat Aurelia with anything other than respect, and I’m done with you—and my mother will stand with me on that.” I would hate to put my mother in that situation, but she’d taught me the meaning of loyalty, and if I told her how Isabella had treated Aurelia, she’d cut Isabella out of our lives with a pair of meat scissors. Would burn that bridge with her best friend because blood was thicker than wine.
She took several deep breaths as she brought herself to a sense of calm.
“I wish we hadn’t slept together—biggest mistake of my life.” I didn’t mean to hurt her more, just wanted to take responsibility for my error in judgment. “I’m sorry I let that happen. Maybe all of this wouldn’t have gone down the way it did otherwise.”
She slowly turned to face me, her face red and puffy and splotchy. “Then why did it happen in the first place?”
I felt my heart drop in unease.
“If there wasn’t something here, then why did it happen at all?”
My arms remained tight over my chest, and I could feel the beat of my heart against my flesh. I felt the discomfort of the pending conversation, but also felt the relief of the closure I was about to obtain. “For a long time, I’d wondered if I made the right choice with us. Years passed, and I didn’t meet anyone who meant anything to me. There was nothing wrong with the women in my life, so I started to wonder if there was something wrong with me. If I’d been too harsh with you, if maybe you were the person I was supposed to be with and I was too stubborn to admit that.”