No Strings Attached

Chapter Twelve

“I really am sorry, you know,” she murmured softly, looking back at him, “I’m sorry I never told you ...”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” he exhaled slowly, “I’m sorry I had too much damned pride to chase after you and for us to just ... run away like we planned. I’m sorry you harboured our child alone, and gave birth to her. I’m sorry you were alone when they told you all of this. I’m sorry you took all of the pain, and cried all of the tears. I’m sorry you did all of this alone ... I had to put it into perspective last night that, even though I was so angry – so fucking broken that I had a daughter I never even knew about, that was taken away so quickly and for no reason at all – you had so much more to be resentful of. I can’t climb up on a pedestal, here, and I don’t want to – she was taken from both of us. Shit, I don’t know. It’s an odd feeling, I’m still ... I don’t know, I just wonder, who would she be now? Whose smile would she have? Whose giggle would she make?” he stroked her hair away from her eyes, “I wonder how very different all of this would be if she’d made it, if we’d still be here – or if there’d be more, and I’d be waking up next to you every morning – or if I’d never have seen you again at all.”

His eyes darkened as they looked over her, his lips touching the crown of her head softly, “Last night made me realise something. You’re right in one way – we were children, and we were playing in a pond that was way, way too big for us. I thought, if I told you to go, you’d go, and I could get my situation in order – get myself respect and protection – and we could be together again. I figured that everything would go just like that because that was exactly how I wanted it to go. I never thought you’d leave – run out of town – I never thought you’d be pregnant, it never once crossed my mind. I didn’t realise how long it takes to build the kind of respect that I wanted – the kind of money I needed, for Tori, for us. By the time I did, you were long gone – and all I got were pictures.” He spat out the last words bitterly, his eyes far away in thought.

“Pictures?”

“Yes, fucking pictures. The same pictures everyone else was looking at – my woman – decked out in swimwear, loungewear, sportswear,” he growled low in his throat, “Fucking lingerie. It felt like you were trying to rub it in my face – what I’d lost. That’s what made me so mad – when I saw you, you were cold – when I saw you for the rest of the world, you were warm, inviting, seductive. I’d hear horny grunts from random men in the club – guys checking in their cars at the garage with your pictures open in their wife’s magazine, or newspaper, on the passenger seat. It was like living in purgatory.”

She didn’t have an answer for that statement – she couldn’t apologise for trying to make a livelihood the best way she could – that was all he’d done, that was what he said to Tori, when they first found out about all this messed up shit with the mob, or whatever they were calling it, “I just gave you the life that Dad would have wanted you to have ...”

She’d had no education, no form of training for anything – all she’d really been able to work with was her looks. And she’d been somewhat successful, she wouldn’t apologise for that.

“What we had,” she started instead, almost regretfully, “There was just ... too much in the way. First my parents, and then ... all this shit with Franchetti. You were in over your head, I get that, but there was Tor to worry about as well. If I’d have come to you then, you’d have been forced into a decision between me or her. It would’ve killed me to do that to your family. Maybe we just have to sweep it all away – just call it fate, and take away all the blame and the hurt and stuff.”