“Talk to me,” he pleaded.
“I want you to leave me alone,” I said hoarsely, my words sounding weak to my own ears. “Stop fucking with my head Anthony. I can’t take it anymore,” I said, running my fingers through my hair as I pulled my eyes off his and looked away from him.
“Whoa, where the fuck is this coming from?” He asked taking a step back looking at me as if I had lost my mind. Maybe I had. Who the fuck knows anymore.
“I can’t do this dance with you anymore,” I turned my head and found his eyes. “I don’t have any fight left in me.”
“I’m not looking to fight with you.”
“No, of course not. That’s just it. I’ve been fighting for you, for us for ten fucking years and all the while, I’m fighting, you are fighting against me. You push me away and pull me back in at your convenience. I can’t do it anymore. You’ve made it clear you and I are done and the minute I accept it, we spend Christmas together. You gave me one of the best Christmases of my life by just being you, by being there and being with my son. Then you disappear and I have to learn to accept we are done all over again. My heart can’t take it anymore.”
“Baby, I had to go away for work.”
“You’re a gangster not a fucking war hero, give me a break. You could’ve called but no, you didn’t and you know why you didn’t? You have no fucking intentions of making things right between us. You get lonely or maybe sentimental, you think of me, of what could’ve been, and then you push it so far out of your head I become a stranger you don’t want to think about.”
“Adrianna…”
“No!” I shout, holding out my hand to stop him from taking another step closer. “You’ve been charging in and out of my life for years, Anthony. You’ve been my whole world for over a decade. There isn’t a day that goes by I don’t find myself thinking about you, thinking about us, and it’s eating away at whatever is left of me. You want to know why I ran after we had sex? Probably not, because I didn’t speak to you afterwards for a month. I’m going to tell you anyway, I left because I can’t watch you walk away from me again. I physically can’t stand it.”
“You want to end up like Maryanne Valente? You want Luca to live a life like Mike?”
I shook my head, I’ve heard this all before and it doesn’t matter. Not all the excuses in the world will ever heal my broken heart.
“I don’t care.”
“I love you,” he said. “So help me God, I love you with everything I am. You’re everything to me, Reese’s but I’m no good for you or Luca. Not with the way, my life is now. I’m like a junkie, fighting against the temptation to just take what is mine, to take you and marry your ass and raise that little boy together.” He closes his eyes as if he were fighting a battle within himself. “It would be so fucking easy but then I remind myself that I left you alone for three years, grieving for a baby we never even got to meet. I very well could end up back there and you would be alone again and your son would grow up hating me or you could be standing in the cemetery just like today, watching as they lower my body into the earth. Either way you’re alone. Either way I fuck up your life. Either way Luca loses.”
Tears streamed down my cheeks and though I hated to admit it, I understood his logic and I loathed it. I wanted to say I hated him, that, he ruined my life but I would never hate him. The truth was he didn’t ruin my life he only ever tried to save it.
“Look at me, Reese’s,” he whispered.
“Please, don’t…don’t say goodbye again,” I pleaded.
“I think you’re the one finally saying goodbye,” he said softly, staring at me sadly. I couldn’t look him in the eye because the blue depths of his irises bared his fractured soul. “It’s just me baby, you can look at me.”
“A part of me never wants to quit fighting, I just wish you’d fight with me and not against me,” I whispered.
“Mama!” Luca wailed from his car seat and I snapped back into mother mode, turning around to make sure he was okay. “We go home.”
“Yeah baby, we’re going home,” I said, sweeping a hand over his brown hair as I bent down and kissed his forehead. I took a step back and closed the door, turning back around to see Anthony had successfully closed the demon carriage and put it my trunk. He closed the trunk and walked around my car coming face to face with me. I opened my mouth to say goodbye, meaning I’d see him later, but I didn’t want him to think I was actually saying goodbye. As much as it killed me to keep playing this game with him, it would’ve shattered me to end it. I snapped my mouth closed and turned around, climbing into my car and closing the door without a word.
“Ant nee!” Luca exclaimed joyfully as he pointed his chubby finger towards the window.
I started my car, tears streaming down my face as I pulled away leaving Anthony in the rear view mirror.