❝ 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐢𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐧𝐞. ❞
When Ricardo Esposito bursts through a door and finds a girl handcuffed on the floor, he decides to take her in and give her something she never had.
A fam...
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Some preferred the painful truth, others to be kept in the dark. If given a choice, I opted for the latter, but while sitting alone in Antonio's living room, I wished for clarity.
After we embraced, Antonio led me into his living room and disappeared upstairs without saying a word.
I still believed it was a mistake to come here. Knowing Angelina Moretti, she could have planted cameras somewhere or bribed the guard to inform her as soon as I showed up. And if I did not regret it because of her, Antonio still had the opportunity to make me regret it.
My phone was off, and I did not spot a clock in the room; wristwatches were not my thing, so I was not sure if hours went by without me moving and listening for Antonio coming down the stairs or if it just felt like it.
After a while, I decided to muster up my courage and got up to look for him, even though all the signs indicated that he did not wish to see me.
Hugging me might have been a moment of weakness before the memories came flooding back to him. Or maybe he was occupied; with someone else. On my way upstairs, I tried to figure out what would hurt me more, if he was mean to me or if he had company. I could handle mean words, but it bugged me that the thought of him with someone else felt like a stab in the heart.
I knocked on his bedroom door, once, twice, but I heard nothing; no sounds or voices, so I slowly pushed down the door handle.
He was not there, neither alone nor with company. I heard the shower running, so I figured he was in there. Knowing that, I should have turned around and left; instead, I sat on the edge of his bed.
My gaze wandered around the bedroom, where I detected no changes, to his bedside table. On it was his phone and a packet of cigarettes, and out of curiosity, I leaned over and reached for the pack and opened it to find 12out of 20 cigarettes inside.
Antonio came up behind me and kissed me on the cheek as he tossed the packet of cigarettes onto the table.
"It's not good for you, you know?"
Besides working out, smoking was a way for him to relieve stress. And while he was still away from being an addict, having him not smoke was better than having him reach for a cigarette now and then.
Antonio smiled. "You have any idea what might be good for me instead?"
"Yeah, you could... mediate," I proposed, knowing that my way to release stress was to jump around on beds. Or trampolins.
"You are good for me," he whispered as he trailed kisses down my neck, and I tried my best to stay focused.
"So..." I trailed off.
"So...?" he repeated, pretending he had forgotten what we were talking about.
