A Hunger for the Forbidden(57)

Matteo.

He made her heart feel like it was cracking apart. She wanted to reach him. Wanted to touch him. Really touch him, not just with her hands on his skin, but to touch his heart.

This was so close to what she wanted. A baby. The man she loved. Dio, she loved him so much. It made her hurt. Not just for her, but for him. For what she knew they could have that he seemed determined to wall himself off from.

A tear slipped down her cheek and she sat up, getting out of bed and crossing to the window. Now she was crying. She wasn’t really sure why she was crying, either.

But she was. Really crying. From somewhere deep inside of herself. From a bottomless well that seemed to have opened up in her.

Why did she never get what she wanted? Why was it always out of reach?

Her mother’s love had been there, so briefly, long enough for her to have tasted it, to know what it was. Just so she could feel the ache keenly when it was gone? And then there was Matteo. The man she’d wanted all her life. Her hero. Her heart’s desire.

And when her father said she would marry a Corretti, of course it was Matteo who had come to mind. But she’d been given to Alessandro instead. And then, one more chance, Matteo at the hotel. And she’d managed to mess that up.

In the end, she’d gotten Matteo, but in the clumsiest, most dishonest way imaginable. Not telling him she was engaged, announcing to the world she was pregnant, forcing him to marry her, in a sense.

And now there was this … this heat between them that didn’t go deeper than skin on his side. This love that was burning a hole through her soul, that he would never, ever be able to return.

“Alessia?” She turned and saw Matteo sitting up, his voice filled with concern. “Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”

“No.” She shook her head. And he hadn’t. She’d hurt herself. “I was just … thinking.” There was no point in hiding the tears. Her voice was wobbly, watery. Too late to bother with the fiction that she was fine.

“About what?”

She bit her lip. Then opted for some form of honesty. “I’ve been pretending.”

“What do you mean?”

“My whole life. I thought if I pretended to be happy, if I made the best of what I had, that I would be okay not having it all. That if I smiled enough I would get past my mother being gone. That my father’s most recent slap to my face hadn’t hurt me deeper than I wanted to admit. I had to, because someone had to show my brothers and sisters that you made a choice about how you handled life. We only had what we had, and I didn’t want them … I didn’t want them to be sad, or to see me sad. So I protected them from what I could. I made sure they didn’t know how hard it was. How bad it was. I’ve been carrying around the burden of everyone’s happiness and just trying to make what I had work. But I’m not happy.” It burst from her, truer than any words she’d ever spoken. “I don’t want to smile about my childhood. It was horrible. My father was horrible. And I had to care for my siblings and it was so hard.” She wiped at a tear on her cheek, tried to stop her hands from shaking. But she couldn’t.

She couldn’t stop shaking.

“I love them, so much, so I hate to even admit this but … I was willing to give everything for them. And no one … no one has ever given even the smallest thing for me. And I’m sorry if that makes me a bad person but I want someone to care. I want someone to care about me.”

“Alessia …”

“I’m sorry,” she said, wiping at more tears. “This is … probably hormones talking.”

“Is it?”

She nodded, biting her lip to keep a sob from escaping. “I’m feeling sorry for myself a little too late.”

“Tell me what you want, Alessia.”

It was a command, and since he was the first person to ever ask, she felt compelled to answer.

“I wish someone loved me.”

“Your brothers and sisters do.”

She nodded. “I know they do.”

Matteo watched Alessia, her body bent in despair, her expression desolate, and felt like someone was stabbing him.

Her admission was so stark, so painful. He realized then that he had put her in a position, as his angel, his light, and he had never once sought out whether or not she needed something.

He was taking from her instead. Draining her light. Using it to illuminate the dark and void places in himself. Using her to warm his soul, and he was costing her. Just another person intent on taking from her for his own selfish needs.