Page 215 of Roberto

And…

To be honest…

I felt a little jealous.

Which was utterly fucking ridiculous.

Roberto had even said our first night together,If you told me about the first guy who got to sleep with you, I think I might go mad with jealousy.

I had made fun of him for it –

And yet here I was, getting gnawed at by the green-eyed monster.

That twinge of jealousy also made me insanely curious.

“What happened?” I prodded. “Did you break up?”

“Unfortunately, no. She’d had a traumatic life before we met and was an addict. Opioid pills – oxycontin, mostly. I paid for her to go to rehab, and she stayed clean for a year, but she relapsed. She didn’t tell me when she started using again. Maybe she was ashamed. Maybe she didn’t want me to stop her… I don’t know.” He tried to smile, but his pain won out instead. “Sometimes people’s demons get the best of them.”

He told me how she had overdosed and died…

And even though it was years ago, and he said he hadn’t loved her, I could hear the grief in his voice.

As he spoke, I heard the deep humanity and empathy in his voice…

And something in my heart broke for him.

The wall I’d been building for years – the wall I used to keep out other people, to keep them from hurting me –

It suddenly toppled down.

In that moment, I felt utterly exposed and vulnerable…

And I wanted him more than anything.

We kissed…

And we made love.

Not just sex – not just fucking –

But making love.

The sex before that had been amazing…

But this was different.

Roberto touched a place deep in my soul I had never let anyone else near.

As he looked into my eyes, and I cried out for him to come inside me, I felt something I’d never experienced before:

The overwhelming desire to never let him go.

As I drifted off to sleep in his arms, part of me wondered if I’d made a terrible mistake letting someone in past my walls.

But the rest of me didn’t care.

I just wanted him…

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