“Lovely. I’m sure he does,” he breathed out, sending hot tingles around my neck… and everywhere else.

My lips parted to say a snide reply when he roughly thrust my arse against his over excited sex. A loud moan escaped from my lips upon impact of his body. My fuck, was he trying to kill me with sexual frustration? It didn’t help that I was imaging how it would feel to have him drive into me, inching slowly in until his shaft was fully situated inside… filling my slicked walls…

Images of him pushing me against the wall and ravishing me on the spot sent me into a crazed frenzy. And when he spoke against my neck, right below my ear, I was almost panting with need.

“My Lucy… gorgeous, feisty, spitfire of a woman. I have wretchedly missed you—” he started to say, but I grunted in protest, not wanting to hear anything that would dispel me from this euphoric state of mind. “Shhh. Let me speak,” he murmured, holding me close as we swayed to the music while his right hand remained on the side of my hip and the other rested just below my stomach.

Using his sensually gifted fingers, he made barely–there, excruciating circles, touching about an inch or two above the opening of my slit. He was purposely trying to arouse my body, wanting me to climb the walls in desperate need of him to release me from this tortured pleasure and pain. I was dying for him to take it further…

If my pride wasn’t stopping me, I could’ve begged for him to ease the throbbing need he had created in my body… for the last time.

“I just want to say thank you for taking the blindfold off my eyes. For over a year, I had been aimlessly living an empty, unfulfilled life. Without you—I was lost. I was in despair. Always drinking myself into a stupor so I didn’t have to bear living another day knowing that you had left me. For weeks, I felt abandoned. It got worse at night… when I’m left alone with nothing to comfort me but my memories of you. Severely broken with no direction, I became reckless and unmindful to the people around me,” he cooed in my ear, lips brushing against my earlobe while I tensed, absorbing his painful words. “The ephemeral blindfold might be gone, but it only exposed me to the truth that I had tried and failed miserably to bury. After everything that’s happened—after the hurt and pain, the lies and half-truths—I had come to terms that I am blindingly and hopelessly in love with you.” He paused while I stopped breathing all together, waiting in vain for him to finish.

“I know this makes you uneasy, but I ought to tell you for the last time—before we close the door to the past and follow wherever the path may separately lead us—that, if there’s a small part of you blaming yourself because of what happened between us, I beg you, do not reduce your kindness to that. You were perfect and still remain a perfection, even though you try to portray this different woman.”

He softly spun me around to face him. In our darkened surroundings his eyes lit up, glowing before me with acute intensity, with electrifying passion. “I know the genuine person inside, so don’t let this unfortunate incident tarnish your beauty. I now understand that I don’t deserve you because I wasn’t man enough to protect you from my family.”

Tears welled in my eyes as I stared at him, unblinking as I felt this grave ache lacerating me—my heart and soul.

“Whatever you do from now on…” He paused, brows furrowing while his throat bobbed, his eyes reflecting my own pain before he gently reached to touch my face. Closing my eyes, I let my tears fall, quietly sobbing as I leaned into his caress, keeping it in my memory. “Just promise me to be happy, okay? Always follow what your heart and mind envisions and not what others expect from you. Can you promise me that?”

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I could only nod because my throat closed up, denying me the ability to speak.

He slowly drew my face towards him. “I’m sincerely sorry for hurting you, Luce,” he whispered against my forehead before brushing his lips across my skin. “Forever… I will eternally love you.”

He finally was saying his goodbye. He had never wanted to—he’d fought the best way he knew how—but it wasn’t enough. Now he was truly leaving me, taking the last step in closing the door on us. Forever.

His lips kissed my forehead once more as I closed my eyes, slightly shaking as he breathed me in before whispering, “Take care, my love.”

His muscular arms then wrapped around me, giving me a deathlike embrace, blocking the air from my lungs. When he released me, I trembled from it all, knowing that he had just walked away from me. What he had just done, crucially hugging the life out of me then freeing me from his hold, portrayed what it had been like between the two of us for the past year. Him, desperately wanting to hold on to what was left of us, and me, aggressively and insensitively driving him further and further away.

He was gone…

Three. Five. Maybe ten minutes had passed, possibly more, as I carried on crying with my eyes closed. I didn’t want to open them. I didn’t want to see the reality of what I had done. I had known this day was going to come, but as much as I had prepared myself for this very moment, I had doubted if anyone could ever be ready for the crushing feeling, knowing that life was never going to be the same again.

Everything was going to change…

I was sure I was going to remain the same, though—silently loving him from a distance.

Chapter 12

Toby

Ultra sound appointment on Monday. Ten a.m. Be here. We need to talk.

I stared at the message for a couple more seconds until I could comprehend what it meant. The baby was about six months in and in three months time, she would make her debut to the world. I supposed I was flying out to Spain tomorrow, and I also had to figure out how to discuss things with Amelia after the baby was born.

The baby. I had always referred to her as the baby or it. I couldn’t, for the life of me, acknowledge it as my baby or my baby girl because I didn’t want to get attached and have it all taken away from me by DNA testing.

It was a horrid thought to have of a woman, but this was Amelia after all. Had it been some other woman who didn’t have the uncanny ability to lie like it was part of their nature, I wouldn’t even doubt that it was my child for a second. And of course, had it been Lucy’s, things would surely be different.

Lucy…

God. Thinking about her had destroyed me a thousand times over after just that last thought.

Walking away from her as she stood with her eyes closed, silently weeping, had taken every ounce in me. Had that really been only an hour ago that each step had felt like shackles had been strapped around my ankles? Each step that had brought me further away from her had caused the fire within my heart to dim.




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