Page 323 of Alessio

It’d been burning down all week.

In her chest, a constant inferno raged on, searing her from the inside out. She didn’t know how to deal with it because it wasn’t only her pain that was the cause of it. Instead, it was him, too. Corrado, and the things she saw him dealing with.

His struggle.

How he didn’t sleep.

Constantly watching his phone.

Running himself dead on the treadmill at night.

Day after day, and night after night. It never ended. He struggled all the time because he was without something he needed and wanted, and she didn’t want to see him in pain. That hurt her. She shouldn’t feel like that at all, though, because he didn’t deserve that.

Right?

She should have been pissed that instead of him wanting her, he was obsessing over someone who wasn’t even there. She shouldn’t want to give him anything—not her time, her attention, or even this here.

Except … Corrado was right.

This was complicated.

Emotions were a tricky thing.

“It can’t be simplified down to who I want,” Corrado repeated, his voice a hell of a lot closer to her than it had been before, “because that’s not the problem in the first place. I know exactly what I want here, but it’s the rest that makes it a mess for everyone else.”

She turned around slowly only to find he had come to stand right behind her in the doorway of the office. He was entirely too close to her, really, as she could feel the head of his body drifting to hers and smell that musky scent that he seemed to prefer. It only served to muddle up her mind and emotions more, but she chose to ignore it.

She was doing that a lot lately.

“But why?”

Corrado frowned. “Why, what?”

“Why can’t it be that simple? Pick the person you want.”

“And you want me to pick you.”

Ginevra blinked. “I didn’t say—”

“You don’t have to. It’s in everything you do. Everything you say, and the things you don’t say. I see it in your eyes, and in your silence. But you’re good, you know. In your heart, you’re far too good. Better than me, that’s for certain. Because in there,” he said, pointing a finger at the spot over her chest where her heart was beating far too fast, “… in there, Ginny, you don’t want to be selfish, so you say nothing, and you do nothing. That’s who you are, but I can’t say the same.”

“Or,” she countered, “it’s because I think love is—”

“Love?” Corrado scoffed, grinning a little too sardonically for her liking. “Let me tell you what I know about love, yeah? I met a man once, and I knew from the start he was going to change everything for me.”

Her eyes burned, but she refused to blink. Then, the tears that were starting to threaten her calm façade would fall, and he would know just how much this hurt. She didn’t want to do that—didn’t want to give him that.

“And he did,” Corrado continued, “he changed everything. That’s what I learned about love, but I wouldn’t tell him that. I kept that for me, and it hurt him. And then I met you.”

Air pulled painfully through her lungs, but still, she stayed quiet.

What choice did she have?

Corrado stepped forward, closing the inch or two between them until the soft cotton of her sleepwear dragged against his slacks and button-down shirt with every breath she took. “So, here you are,” he murmured, his head tilting down a bit as she stared up at him, “and I got that feeling again—that same fucking feeling like nothing was ever going to be the same because of you, but this time, I just ignored it altogether. Because that’s what I do, Ginny. I ignore, I pretend … I just don’t.”

“Corrado—”

“I take too much, I want too much, and I demand too much from people who only want to love me. And that’s what you’re standing here asking me to give to you. Do you understand that? You’re asking for me—this mess who is selfish and ruins the people who love him—to give those same things to you.”