broken heart (engl version)

HE WHO KNOWS

Chiara tremblingly opened the door with the keys he had given her as soon as she arrived, then threw them on the glass table and went straight to her room to immediately pack her suitcase.

He didn't want to stay under that roof a second longer.

She could even tolerate being blackmailed by Daniele, but she would never accept such humiliation from Carlo. Not after what had happened between them.

Just s*x, that was just s*x, nothing more, she tried to convince herself through tears as she threw objects and clothes haphazardly into the trolley.

When suddenly he heard the roar of an engine that unfortunately he knew well.

Carlo was there and after a few seconds he threw open the door to his room.

Its fantastic spicy scent reached Chiara's nostrils and she continued undaunted to pack her suitcase.

"Don't tell me you ditched your little friend for me," she said acidly, without even deigning to look at him.

At that point she felt herself grabbed by two strong, familiar hands that forced her to turn around to stare into his terrible, fiery eyes.

"Do you want to understand that I don't give a s**t about other women?"

She had never seen him so upset and it wasn't because of what he had drunk. It was because of what was boiling inside him, as inside her.

With one finger he slowly caressed Chiara's face until he reached her lips, then he grabbed her mouth with an urgent kiss that tasted of tears.

She didn't want to kiss him, she didn't want to trust him, she didn't want to love him so deeply and yet she let herself be taken once again, perhaps for the last time.

Without speaking, almost without breathing, just looking straight into each other's eyes, holding each other close so as not to fall into that absurd vortex that was life.

That hurt, it wasn't just s*x.

Unfortunately it was love. At first he hadn't heard the ringtone on his cell phone because the music at Felix's house was too loud, plus he was trying to keep one of the two blondes his friend had picked up at bay. I mean, it was true that he had drunk almost a bottle of tequila, the problem was that he still had a perfect connection and above all he remembered how many minutes Chiara had been with that squalid being of her ex.

Chiara's voice seemed to come from beyond the grave and in the general chaos the only words he could hear were "home" and "f**k you". Not exactly a good combination.

Without even saying goodbye, he jumped on his Ducati and ran every red light to get home as quickly as possible and find out what the hell was going on.

It was almost four and he really wanted to understand why she was so late and above all he was dying to see her again, to touch her, to know that she was there with him. When he arrived, she didn't even give him a glance, continuing to put something in her suitcase. But how? Was he the one who should have been pissed off because she had been with her ex for over seven hours doing who knows what and the one who seemed furious was her?

Until she made a sarcastic joke about the background noises during their phone call and he realized it was his crazy jealousy talking. He tried to penetrate her gently, but he just couldn't. He wanted her to understand that she was his and that he didn't want any other woman on the face of the earth but her.

They had never done it like this, standing against the wall fully dressed.

Carlo must have been really drunk in his brains to break all his damned rules, mainly the one about not falling in love. But that wasn't worth it with her, he reflected in a moment of mad lucidity. Because he had always loved her.

"Do you want to understand that you are mine," he whispered in a strangled voice as he sank once again into her welcoming intimacy. She wrapped her legs around him, panting for that devastating pleasure.

"Mine or no one else's," he continued possessively, sucking the life out of her with his kisses.

Chiara responded by arching her back against the wall to take him all inside her, then she slipped her fingers into his hair, pulling it, blinded by lust just like him.

Every time they had made love it had been an earthquake of emotions, yet this time it was even more intense and sublime.

Her fresh scent entered him, along with the sweet smell of her wet s*x vibrating around his.

After which they collapsed on the bed still inside each other, destroyed by that total embrace of body and soul.

It was a sleep tormented by an atrocious doubt, however.

"Why were you packing?" he asked her anxiously as soon as they opened their eyes again.

She hugged him tightly for protection.

"I have a plane to Palermo soon."

Those were exactly the words Carlo never wanted to hear.

He sat up on the bed and looked at her in disbelief.

"Are you going back with him?"

She curled up in a ball with a funereal expression on her face.

"He threatened me that if I don't return to Palermo with him, he will tell my brother about us and cause a row."

The boy couldn't believe his ears. How dare that weakling make such a ridiculous blackmail?

He jumped to his feet, his jaw clenched, determined to restore the right order of things.

"Now I'm going to give your little professor a lesson so he can learn how to make threats. I'll bring Felix too, so he can remember it better."

If he had had it in front of him at that moment, there would have been nothing left of that bookworm.

He looked for his cell phone to call his friend when he was stopped by Chiara's trembling voice.

"No... That's right, he's right."

What?

The world collapsed on him and he didn't move.

"Have you gotten back together?" he asked, shocked.

"Absolutely not and it will never happen," she declared with conviction, then covered her mouth with her hand in a desperate gesture. "But I still have to go back to face my life, my family, I can't run away anymore. You made me understand that I have to fight to make my dreams come true and that's exactly what I intend to do."

He looked in despair at the broken face of the woman he loved and imagined her far away from him, on another continent, perhaps in the arms of some unknown man. How could he accept all this without trying everything? He had never prayed to a woman, but for her he would have done that too.

He bent down before her, taking her shaking hands in his.

"When I imagine you far away, I feel a pain here in my chest," she looked up in amazement.

"Don't do it. Stay here with me."

His strangled voice touched the girl's heart and she immediately hugged him, almost suffocating him with tears, then looked at him with her incredible mottled eyes.

"I wish with all my heart that I wasn't your best friend's sister, so that I could be your woman. Because being yours is the most divine feeling on earth," she brought her forehead close to Carlo's until it was touching, then continued in a broken tone. "But precisely because I've always loved you, I feel that I have to leave you free to have a normal life, to find a good girl to start a family with one day. That can't be me, I'm sorry."

They remained like that with their foreheads joined, their fingers intertwined, their breathing labored and their gazes prostrate for several minutes, until Carlo realized the terrible truth. He felt her get up and did not stop her, he saw her close her suitcase and call a taxi and he let her do it. All the images had blurred and faded outlines. She was leaving.

He still couldn't understand the sudden catastrophe that had struck him, he only knew that he wanted to hold her hand until the last second, even if it meant twisting the knife in the wound.

So he did. He drove her to the airport in a taxi, holding her close as if she were dying, and in fact something inside him was truly ending forever.

She also hugged him tightly, continuing to sob desperately. She never wanted to see that beautiful face transfigured by so much pain.

As soon as she caught sight of her ex-boyfriend waiting for her at customs, Chiara pushed him towards a secluded corner to kiss him for the last time with her eyes open as always.

"If I can't be yours, I'll never be anyone else's," were her parting words.

Then she walked away on her own and Carlo felt as if something was being torn from inside him.

He was shocked by that kiss, especially by that declaration of love, and as soon as the harsh reality hit him, he ran after her.

He couldn't, he didn't want to let her go like that. He felt a blind and devastating rage rising inside him that he vented, as soon as he got home, by smashing everything he could get his hands on with the baseball bat.

If he could he would have demolished the entire building because it was all useless by now.

Perhaps the only thing that could help him was his beloved motorbike.

Yes, she could help him end it all forever.

As he accelerated recklessly he felt the salty taste of tears on his lips.

A part of Carlo truly died that day in early October in Los Angeles.