Serafina
The drive home felt like navigating a world made of glass—every breath, every blink, every heartbeat sharp enough to cut me from the inside out.
The city lights blurred through my tears, smearing into streaks of gold and red against the windshield.
My hands trembled on the steering wheel, the imprint of Adrian’s shattered expression burning into my vision no matter how many times I blinked it away. His voice still echoed through me: “I don’t know if it survives this.”My stomach twisted violently. Matteo’s devastated whisper tangled with it: “I never stopped loving you.” Between them, I felt carved open, hollowed, bleeding, and somehow still full of a thousand unbearable emotions.
By the time I parked outside the estate, my legs were shaking so badly I could barely step out of the car. The night air was cold, harsher than usual, as if the universe itself had turned its back on me. I forced myself up the steps, forced myself to open the door quietly, forced myself to breathe even though every inhale felt like dragging glass into my lungs. The house was silent. Too silent. Adrian wasn’t home. Of course he wasn’t.
“Mom?”
Leonel’s small voice pulled me back from the edge. He peeked around the corner, hair mussed, eyes sleepy and confused. My heart clenched painfully.
“Leonel,” I whispered, forcing a smile that felt like a lie against my skin. “You’re awake?”
“I heard the door,” he said, padding toward me. “Are you okay? You look… sad.”
The innocence of his question was a knife. I knelt down quickly, pulling him into my arms before he could see my face break again. He hugged me tightly, small, warm, grounding—reminding me of the one part of my life untouched by deceit and longing.
“I’m okay,” I whispered into his hair, though the truth trembled beneath the words. “Just tired, baby. Very tired.”
He leaned back, searching my eyes with a seriousness far beyond his years. “Did you and Dad fight?”
My breath caught. “Why do you think that?”
“Because he left earlier… and he looked sad too.” Leonel chewed his lip. “I don’t like when you’re both sad.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Neither do I.”
“Is Dad coming home?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
And that truth nearly broke me.
Leonel hugged me again, harder this time. “I love you, Mom.”
I closed my eyes, letting the words steady me. “I love you too.” More than anything. More than this chaos. More than my own broken heart.
“I’ll go back to bed,” he said, pulling away. “You should sleep too.”
“I will,” I lied.
He kissed my cheek—innocent, unburdened—and disappeared down the hallway.
When he was gone, I stood slowly, bracing myself against the wall as the full weight of everything slammed into me again. My body felt too heavy, my mind too loud, my heart—my heart was a battlefield torn between two men I had spent years trying to separate.
I stumbled into the living room and collapsed onto the couch. The silence pressed in on me until my chest felt too tight to contain breath. I pressed my palms to my eyes, trying to hold myself together.
But I couldn’t.
A broken sob clawed up my throat.
Adrian’s face appeared in my mind—the devastation in his eyes, the way he stepped back when I reached for him, the way he said he couldn’t breathe in that room. He had sinned first, yes. He had drifted, lied, sought comfort elsewhere. But I had taken that wound and carved it even deeper. I had let Matteo into the cracks. I had let the past ignite something in me I should have extinguished long ago.
But God, Matteo—Matteo was a living scar. A reminder of the fire that once consumed me. A reminder of the girl I had been before I learned how to survive. His voice earlier—raw, trembling, confessing he never stopped loving me—kept echoing through my ribs. And the truth I had fought for years now tore free:
Part of me had never stopped loving him either.
That truth burned.
Adrian represented everything I had built: stability, safety, devotion, a partnership rooted in respect and the love we painstakingly created together. He was my present. He was comfort, growth, a future that made sense.
Matteo represented everything I had survived: fire, chaos, a love so passionate it scorched us both. He was my past. My youth. My first everything. A connection that never fully released its grip, no matter how deeply I buried it.
They were opposite halves of my fractured heart.
And tonight had proven one thing: I was still entangled in both.
I pressed a shaking hand to my mouth as my body curled forward, grief wracking through me. “I can’t choose,” I whispered into the empty room. “I can’t choose between them. I can’t tear myself in half.”
Tears spilled freely now, hot and relentless.
Adrian’s anger, his heartbreak, his betrayal—they weren’t undeserved. And Matteo’s longing, his confession, his desperation—they weren’t imagined. They were real. All of it was real. And I had pretended I could manage these two storms without drowning in either—only to discover I was already submerged.
I dragged a trembling breath into my lungs, forcing myself to acknowledge the truth I’d been avoiding since the night everything began unraveling:
“I love them,” I choked. “I love them both.”
The admission tasted like guilt and longing and surrender.
But saying it didn’t bring clarity. It only brought deeper confusion.
Choosing Adrian meant stability, forgiveness, a future for our children—but it meant burying the part of my soul that still burned for Matteo.
Choosing Matteo meant fire, history, unfinished business—but it meant destroying the life I built with Adrian, the man who had stood beside me through everything.
I couldn’t choose.
I wouldn’t.
Not when each man held a different piece of me—pieces I couldn’t amputate without losing myself entirely.
So I sat alone in the darkness, tears soaking my hands, the clock ticking mercilessly in the background, and I whispered the truth again—not as a confession, but as a sentence:
“I cannot choose.”
The house offered no comfort.
The silence offered no answer.
The ache inside me grew unbearable.
And somewhere out in the night, Adrian was breaking.
And Matteo was waiting.
And I… I was unraveling.