Chapter 28

Aron Curry narrating:

It's torturous to lie in bed and stare at the ceiling above me feeling empty, but I knew I'd have to get used to it. I need to get used to Laura's absence even though I still constantly fight to keep it from happening. The truth is an ironic thing, it always finds a way to show up and compromise all the lies I once threw at fate.

It's no kind of news that I've never been any kind of saint, a man who lives for love, thinks about the future, I can't even say that I knew love before Laura came with me to Milan, it was this love that ascended a kind of light inside me and made me see how dark I was all my life and regret bitterly about who I was, the problem is that nowadays it doesn't make any kind of difference anymore this regret, it can't change the past, who I was, and even less has the power to fix everything I ruined.

When my eyes met Laura's for the first time, her cold eyes, with the pain wide open in them seeing her father in a coffin, I knew at that very moment that I needed to have her, but I was too bitter a person to win the love of someone as naive as her, or deep down maybe I lied to myself, the great truth is that I didn't feel capable of loving her, I didn't believe I could love anyone and so I gave it to Edgar to love instead of me.

Still a part of me hoped to have her, maybe I manipulated her fate so much because I knew that one day we would be here. Anastasia, Laura's mother, knows my dark phase perfectly, and the very moment her eyes meet mine, she will make Laura hate me.

Anastasia was next to Laura's father when I shot him, she was holding a purse of money, the money he owed me. To save her husband, she sold her to one of my men to get the money, but I only learned about it, when she came to me distraught, broken in every possible way, punching my chest and wishing death, cursing me. Anastasia, was completely drunk, the only way I knew to cure someone's pain was drugs, I started giving her medicine thinking that this would somehow relieve her broken chest. The heart that I broke.

The way Laura hated that situation was clear, I saw it every time I followed her from afar, every night it was as if I couldn't go to sleep without knowing how she was, I stood under the window of her room, inside the car, wishing her. I made Magno pay for the rehab clinic, after I broke into her house, I remember to this day how the wind howled that night crashing against the window, all I wanted was money, when I sold the drugs I knew she wouldn't have the money to pay, she would be just another victim, leaving Laura alone to be saved, Anastasia was lying in bed, completely blacked out because of the alcohol that exuded from her body, it was such a strong odor that it spread throughout the room.

I put the gun over her head, but then I started hearing voices coming from the next room, I swore the house was empty, but I walked to the room and Laura was having a nightmare, she was mumbling about missing her father, it was clear that she with his killer, was begging for her father's life, I remember that my hands touched her face and started to calm down, a skin so soft that made me cease all the anger I had inside me, and somehow, my male voice made her think it was her father and fall asleep again, holding my hand, without realizing that it was the same one that shot her father.

I sat next to her bed, spent the whole night there watching her sleep and thinking that if she had another nightmare I would be there to hold her hand. How I wanted to hold her hand forever, like she was my cure, for the first time I started to wonder, that her hands were in mine, I wouldn't use them to shoot people.

Somehow, whenever I remember what we had today, I feel like it was just a goodbye, a good memory that I will always keep regardless of the directions my life takes, the goodbye I will be forced to make at the very moment she finds out the whole truth, there is nothing I can fix anymore and not even justify. I need to start understanding all the mistakes I made, to deal with the dark part that not even Laura's love will one day be able to make her die inside me.

Laura got in the car, I was so cowed by fear and regret that I didn't even have the strength to say goodbye to her, I just kept looking at her. Wishing her from afar as I always did.

''I want all the cars to follow her, don't take your eyes off Laura for any minute. Don't let her know she's being followed.'' I commanded Gerald as I ran out the back doors of the house.

I fell to my knees in the grass of the garden, I fell to my knees as my humanity fell with it, just as Laura's love was capable of creating life in me it was also capable of destroying me. Of bringing death to the point of making me wish for my own death, it was as if I wanted to start my life all over again, zero, with the good feelings I currently have inside me, as if I wanted to reset my life, simply go back to the beginning. But I can't, just like I can't change everything I've already done.

Looking at that Blue Sky I took the gun out of my waistband and cocked it, the pain that was deafening inside my chest was so screaming that it made me feel like there was nothing I could do but end my own life, die and wish that in the next life I could be someone good for Laura, that I could find myself and love her like she deserves. As if somehow this was the only solution for me to make Laura safe once and for all, maybe this is the greatest proof of love I am about to give, to fix the life I once destroyed.

In the evening, after seeing Laura in her nightgown in front of Jason, I relived all my past in the middle of a torturous dawn. Laura lay next to me at six in the morning, to pretend she had slept there, I know that today she will know the whole truth, Jason will tell, so before I need to see her leaving with my heart, I prefer that I go. Make sure she'll be safe, be able to take care of her mother, who knows maybe Jason really is the man who will make love born in her again, make her happy.

With the gun resting against my head, I cocked it, brought my finger to the trigger. I was so sure of my decision that I couldn't even cry, there was nothing to say goodbye to, surely there will be no one who will cry over my decision either.

But suddenly, a strong odor of sweet perfume invaded my nostrils, a perfume that I knew very well, but that I could not believe, not at that moment. I kept bringing my hand towards the trigger, until I heard the sound of heels crashing against the ground, in front of me I could see them clearly as I lowered the gun raising my face in disbelief.

''Samantha? I whispered.