Page 599 of The Tempted

Chapter Twenty-seven

After my wife died I relived her death for six months straight. I’d wake up drenched in a cold sweat from the nightmare of looking into her lifeless eyes and being the one who forced them closed.

Whoever says history doesn’t repeat itself never walked a day in my shoes.

For the last month, since the night I ended things with Lacey, her face has haunted me. I relive the moment I looked into her eyes and told her she was nothing but her father’s daughter and a piece of pussy. It’s the look reflected in her eyes as she rears her hand back and slaps me that consumes me, night after night—the look of pure defeat and unexplainable heartbreak.

She loved me.

Heard that shit with my own ears.

And she’ll never know how much I love her.

I lived life without fear until I fell for Lacey and, Boots threatened to use her against me. Not once in all my years on this earth, have I been afraid of anything. But after that message came through on my phone, that picture of her at school—I knew fear.

I hurt her.

I bruised her ego and broke her heart.

I wounded her with my words.

I saved her from me.

I saved her life.

I can live with the guilt of my actions as long as she’s breathing.

As long as she’s safe.

If you can even call this shit living.

No, this shit isn’t living.

I know what living is and for a short while I lived and I lived hard.

Living is holding her in my arms.

Living is watching her face light up when I walk into a room.

Living is Lacey’s smile.

Her laugh.

The way she blushes when I tell her she’s beautiful.

Her kiss.

And her touch.

Living is watching the woman you love take what she needs from your body and as she’s doing it, she looks into your eyes and you can see forever.

Living is loving Lace.

This is death.

The death of a man wo was never good enough to live and share a memory with someone as pure as her.

I could’ve done it another way but even now, after time has passed, I can’t think of another way where it would’ve worked. Lacey saw through me, she saw past the demons and the self-destruction. She saw the remnants of my soul and a glimpse of who I wanted to be.

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