Divine in Lingerie (Lingerie 9)

“Don’t make me look at you again.”

“I just…” I didn’t want to leave things this way. All I’d done was yell at him for the things he said and cry, but I’d never told him I wanted him to be happy. He could say it to me, but I couldn’t say it to him. This was the last chance I would ever get. “I want you to be happy too…” That was the most I could say. That was the only blessing he would ever get from me. He could interpret it in whatever way he chose.

He took a deep breath but still didn’t turn around.

“Griffin…”

He finally dropped his arm from the car door and rotated, coming face-to-face with me. The strong man I saw just a moment ago had disappeared. His detached expression was gone, his indifference no longer evident. With wet eyes showing a tint of redness, he wore an expression I’d never seen before.

The look killed me, put a bullet right in my heart. His sadness destroyed me, made me feel worse than I already did. The strongest man I’d ever known had been reduced to brokenness. Tears burned in my eyes even more, and the sobs started to rack my body.

He kept control of his emotions better than I did, didn’t let a single tear fall. But the buildup of moisture was there, the redness in his eyes apparent. The skin around his eyes started to become puffy. He was too proud to cry, but not strong enough to hide the evidence of his impending tears. He’d been shot dozens of times, had suffered more than any person I’d ever known, and not once did he cave to the sadness. But this moment was the one that broke him. He cupped my cheeks with both hands and pressed a kiss to my forehead. His lips lingered a long time, warm and soft. The hair from his jaw brushed against me, making me think of all the times it happened before. “Goodbye, Vanessa.”

Two

Vanessa

After Bones left, I didn’t open the letter.

Watching him drive away and disappear down the road broke me in a whole new way. I immediately went to bed, lay in the sheets that I shared with him every night. The bed smelled like him, and in some ways, it felt like he was still there.

I stayed in that spot for a long time. I cried on and off. Sometimes, I fell asleep. When I woke up, I cried again. I became a woman I didn’t recognize, someone so weak and pathetic. Before Bones, a man had never had such an intimate hold on me. I didn’t refrain from walking away if I didn’t like him. If he had the audacity to say something insulting, I didn’t hesitate to insult him back. I never lost sleep over a guy, and I certainly never cried over one.

But Bones was different.

Over the span of a few days, I hardly moved. It wasn’t until I got a serious migraine that I realized I hadn’t eaten in several days, so I forced something down my throat. My phone never rang, but I didn’t expect Bones to call me.

He never would.

We both knew that would make this so much harder.

I wondered where he was. He’d probably returned to Lake Garda, his favorite retreat in the world. The snow was long gone, but it was still his favorite hideaway. It was preferable to his apartment in Milan, which still had all of my things.

After I showered and had a small breakfast, I finally opened the letter Bones gave to me. I hoped it wasn’t a heartfelt goodbye because I couldn’t go through that again. Bones had never been big on words, so I doubted he had much to say.

I read through the words, but I squinted in confusion. It was just an address in Florence along with a single iron key. There was no message. He didn’t even sign it. I turned it over to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, but there was nothing there.

What was at this address?

I didn’t have a car, so I called a cab and got a ride into Florence. My parents had a lot of extra cars at the house, but I refused to ask them for anything. My anger and resentment would last a long time. As a Barsetti, I was stubborn and emotional. Just like my father, I had a poor temperament. If I came face-to-face with him right now, I would have nothing nice to say.

The cab pulled up to a two-story building in the center of town, and I stepped out and checked the address one more time. I was in the right place, so I looked at the large window in front of the building. It seemed to be a shop of some kind.