Bellissimo Rilascio (Beautiful Release): The Family Series #3 Read Online Free PDF Page A

here and still be by my side.
     
    “Why, baby? You could have come to me. Used me to deal with this. I would have listened, I would have been your punching bag.” I lean down over her, feeling her breath feather over my cheek, and I inhale. Her scent is mixed with the sterile smells of the hospital, but it’s still her. I tenderly place my ear over her heart to listen to the steady rhythm. She’s alive. She can heal. She will survive.
     
    As much as I want to kill Dakota, erase the memories from her mind and fill them with happiness . . . I can’t.
     
    Only she can.
     
    She has to travel this road and come through it. Find her way to the other side. She is the one who can determine which path she takes; I can only pray I get to walk by her side. “Bianca, you’re stronger than you know. Come stand beside me, walk next to me, and embrace our future. I love you,” I whisper in her ear, brushing my lips lightly across hers.
     
    Her eyelids flicker and open. She studies me for a moment, taking in her surroundings. “Heath?”
     
    “Yes, baby. I’m here.”
     
    Her silence is deafening. “Oh, God. What did I do?”
     
    “You let it out. You started healing. Now, finish. Please.” She blinks a few times, I don’t know if it’s to focus or to clear the tears. Either way, I have to leave. If I don’t, I’ll do everything in my power to fix her. To heal her. It would be a Band-Aid because the only person who can determine if she moves on or stays a shell of herself . . . is her. It has to be her decision, and it has to be her who takes those steps.
     
    Striding back from her bed, keeping my eyes to hers, I walk backwards to the door. Her deep intake of breath is the only warning I get before the sobs wash over her, cleansing her from the inside. “That’s it, Bianca. Keep fighting. Come back to me.” I turn and each cry is like a dagger to the heart, seizing my breath. Each step towards the door is like fighting gravity, betraying everything I want to do, but it’s everything I need to do. I can be her strength, but she needs to find her own. I can love us enough for both of us, but she has to want it. Time. That fucking four-letter word is my enemy again.
     
    I find Bronson, Callie, and Gianna in the waiting room. “Is she awake?” Callie’s voice is quivering, and I notice she is gripping Angelo closely, trying to absorb some of his innocence.
     
    “Yes.” I take a deep breath, “What the fuck happened? How’d she get to this point?”
     
    “Heath,” Gianna begins. “We don’t know. She doesn’t talk to us about what’s going on in that complicated mind of hers.”
     
    “If you wouldn’t have cut her out of your life . . .” Bronson is cut off by Callie’s stern look.
     
    “I didn’t. She made a choice that night. She chose him, and where the fuck is he? Drunk. The cause of all this.” My mind is not able to reconcile how we got to this point.
     
    “She didn’t choose him. Not then and not tonight. In an odd way, she is choosing herself.” Callie’s soft words are almost lost in the pounding of my head.
     
    “She needs to talk to someone. She needs to mend herself, and allowing him to be in her life isn’t the answer.” I look each of them in their eye. “Allowing me in her life isn’t the answer, either. She needs to find her way back on her own. It’s the only way she’ll ever be whole.”
     
    Gianna’s sobs break the tense moment. “I won’t abandon my daughter.”
     
    “That’s not what I meant. She can have your support, but you need to make sure you aren’t doing the work for her. She needs to struggle, to finally find the answers and resolutions she’s searching for.” I leave the hospital that night, feeling more lost than ever. My instinct is to find Dakota, tear him apart limb by limb, but that won’t solve anything. She’s not mine . . . but I’m hers, and I’ll do anything to keep her safe. Even walking away.
     
    “Are you ever going to