Page 2 of Remember When We
I looked on at the man standing on the first floor level of the old parking lot.
I looked on trying to process what I was seeing, trying so hard not to hope that it really could be him.
Gio …
The man who had the power to make me feel alive and break me all at the same time.
The man who’d held my heart and crushed it. Not broken so I could pick up the pieces and try to fix it. Crushed completely, so that it was practically irreparable, but for the few tiny fragments that remained. The fragments that kept me holding onto that thin line which I knew would snap very soon.
It was him.
It was him ... Gio.
He was back.
Back in Philadelphia.
I didn’t know why he was back, but that man down there was definitely Gio Bianchi. When he left, I never thought I’d see him again.
I looked on at him and my heart betrayed me, longing for those days when he used to make me feel so alive. The days when he used to look at me and I felt like I was the most important thing in his world.
What would he think of me now?
Me with my body on offer, up on the table if Dad can’t pay his debts. What would he think of me if he knew I signed a contract stating just that?
What did that make me?
Marshall wasn’t killed in a gang shoot out. Someone had killed him before that and that was why I was here.
That was the only reason that I came back. To find the fucker who killed him.
No other reason and I had to remind myself of that.
I had to fucking remind myself that anything, or anyone else was not part of the equation.
No matter how badly I wanted it to be.
No matter how much I still wanted her.
Her …
Lyssa.
She still felt like a drug to me. I still craved her, still wanted her eight years later, even though I knew I was bad for her.
When you loved someone, you had to know when to let go. But when youtrulyloved someone, you had to know too when to leave. When to leave if you became toxic for them.
When to make the decision that would be best for them, because you knew they would never make it themselves.
I can’t think about her while I’m here. Leaving was the only good thing I ever did for her and it still had to be that way.
I looked at him and wanted so badly to scream for help, his help. Call out for him, because I needed him.
Yell out his name, because I remembered when he had promised to always be there for me.
I remembered when we laughed together and I felt I had everything.
I thought that was our forever when we made love under the stars.
