Page 107 of The Tempted

Tears well in my eyes and I looked away from him. He surprises me though, walking towards me and taking my hands in his, squeezing them gently.

“I said some pretty cruel shit to you, did some fucked up things, hoping you’d hate me,” he started, and I looked up at him.

“When are you going to realize I could never hate you?” I shook my head, biting on my lip, hoping I could stall my tears. He stared at me for a moment, releasing one of my hands to brush his knuckles along my cheek. I closed my eyes at his touch, savoring the moment. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt him touch me in such an intimate way.

“Baby, listen to me,” he whispered gruffly, forcing me to open my eyes. I blinked away the tears clouding my vision, letting them fall down my face. His hands went to work, wiping them away with his thumbs. “You need to move on, get on with your life,” he said leaning his forehead against mine.

“You need to forget about me.”

A sobbed escaped me as I shook my head in defiance. He cradled my face, his hands holding my face still as his watering eyes pierced mine.

“Forget about me, A. Focus on that baby of yours,” his voice trailed off, and I lifted my hands to wrap my fingertips around his wrists, holding onto him for dear life. “Be the best mom you can be. Give that little boy the best life you can, keep him away from all this bad shit, raise him to be a man who can hold his head high.”

“Anthony…,” I whimpered.

“I’ll always love you, A,” he admitted.

“Until my dying day,” he vowed, his tears finally falling.

“But we’re over baby and it’s time we both realize it.”

“What about you?” I managed through my sobs.

“What about me? I’m going to do the only thing I was ever any good at doing.”

“That’s not true,” I whispered, knowing he wasn’t being fair to himself. He sighed heavily, pulling away from me, his eyes trained on the coffee table. I looked in the same direction and saw the gun that rested on the center of the table. The tears stopped falling, and I told him the only truth I’ve ever known–he was better than this life.

“You’re good at loving me,” I closed the distance between us, wrapping my arm around his neck. “You’re so good at loving me.”

“Yeah, I am,” he agreed, his hand resting on my hip. “But that’s not enough, A. It’s not just you and me it’s that boy of yours too.”

I froze for a moment. “Is it because he’s not yours? That I had a baby by someone else?” I asked, holding my breath as I awaited his answer.

“Reese’s, you could have a tribe full of kids for all I give a damn. I’d love them all simply because they were a part of you,” he reassured me as he shook his head. “When you told me, you were pregnant with our baby, I remember thinking to myself how I had to get out of this mess. I wasn’t going to have my kid become a victim of this lifestyle. I would’ve searched high and low for an out, just so I could give our kid a shot at a decent life,” he looked down. “Your son deserves no different than our baby did.”

“Anthony…,” I tried to find the words to reason with what he was saying.

“Don’t, A. You know better than anyone I’m right. Think about it, was growing up as Victor Pastore’s daughter all it was cracked up to be? Did you suffer because of the choices your father made?”

I was robbed of everything that had ever mattered because of my father’s choices. Throughout my entire life, my childhood, my teenage years, even my adult years I had never had the normalcy others had. I couldn’t have friends over and the few that did were forbidden to be around me after Val died. I had one beautiful thing, and that was Anthony’s love but the mob took that too. Our beautiful baby that never had a chance, ripped from me. The only thing I had left was my son, he was the only thing not tainted by my father’s business.

I looked at him sadly, surrendering the fight I had been battling for over a decade, the fight for everything we meant to each other, the fight for us. He saw the light fade from my eyes and gave me a slight nod.

“Let’s sacrifice this thing of ours for that boy of yours,” he whispered, as we stared into each other’s eyes. I couldn’t look at him anymore, I couldn’t look into his eyes and see how much he was suffering, how much he was sacrificing for my son.

I dropped my face into my hands and sobbed uncontrollably. How was I going to forget him? Forget every kiss, every touch, every goddamn I love you?

I felt his arms envelope me as he pulled me against his chest. He pressed his lips to the top of my head and just held onto me as I cried. I wondered for a moment if I’d ever again feel as safe as I did whenever his arms wrapped around me.

I don’t know how long we stayed like that, him holding me, me crying into his chest. It could’ve been seconds, minutes, or hours but when it ended, it felt as if it was too short a period. He pulled back, his hands cradling my face and stared at me as if he was memorizing every single feature of mine. His thumb brushed along my lip, tracing back and forth while he battled his conscience and his heart. In the end, his heart won because his mouth fell over mine in the most bittersweet kiss he ever placed on me.

I knew all those years ago nothing would come close to making me feel the way I did whenever Anthony kissed me. Even when he was kissing me goodbye he made me feel like he cherished me. I believed him when he said he’d love me forever, his actions speaking louder than his words. I hope he knew I felt the same way.

I angled my head, giving him better access to devour my mouth. The thing about kissing someone goodbye is you don’t get a second chance to do it right. In that moment, you have to put everything into one kiss and that’s exactly what we did. The last several years, everything we had gone through, everything we had felt for one another entangled in this kiss.

I savored his taste. I memorized the way his teeth felt scraping against my raw lips, the gentle lap his tongue took across them to soothe the sting. I didn’t want him to take away the sting, wishing I would always feel the burning sensation that prickled against my sensitive flesh as a reminder of my Anthony.

His mouth left mine and kept going back to press butterfly kisses against my lips before dropping his hands to my shoulders and taking a retreating step backwards. I swallowed as I dared to meet his gaze.

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