“I don’t know about that,” he says, putting his other hand on my waist. “But your leaving has changed a few things.”
“What changed?” I ask.
“Ezra said I was a fool for letting you go, so we had an argument that evening, and I defended your position. He said I was crazy, and we ended up eating all the food, drinking all the wine, and exchanging tips on how to make women happy.”
A smile tickles my lips.
“You did not.”
“Yes, we did. And then we spent the rest of the week together. He reconnected with his girl, and we spent New Year’s Eve together as well. I never thought we’d do that without tearing each other apart. I learned a lot about him. And he was happy with how I was. He still believed I was crazy for not calling you. I explained to him that time would do its magic thing, as things were out of my hands. He couldn’t understand why you left andblamed himself for making you leave. I told him that wasn’t the case, and it had nothing to do with him while having everything to do with me. And then… As he went back to his life, I got to spend some time alone and worked around the house and made it more homey while thinking about you and the time we spent in Florida. I missed you a lot and the opportunities we had lost as we couldn’t make things last.”
A knot forms in my throat.
His eyes are heavy with emotions, too.
“I put two more fireplaces in the house and installed proper lighting inside and outside. It looks nice.”
He looks down, his jaw tense.
“The reason why I didn’t go as quickly as I wanted to with you and tell you a lot of stuff about my life wasn’t Ezra or me being unsure of you. It wasn’t even Margot.”
He raises his eyes, and a stern man looks at me.
“There is more to me than meets the eye. More than even Elisa knows. She knows a lot, but not the things you’d know if you were a part of my real life. I couldn’t tell you that for a thousand reasons. First off, it’s a security matter, and there are rules I can’t break, not even for you. And then, I can’t ask a woman to accept that. Normal women don’t say yes to it, while people like me are born into it.”
Silence follows his words while my brain is frantically trying to make sense of his words.
And then, from the foggiest corner of my memory, Sammy’s warning about him comes to life again.
How blind I was.
How blind I wanted to be.
No, it can’t be that.
Look at this house, these people. Elisa and Colton. And Elisa’s husband.
These are normal people leading normal lives.
I feel like fainting.
The truth was always there.
Like his name.
Like everything else.
Why did I refuse to see it?
Because I cared. I cared about him.
And something inside me told me he was more than that.
He was this nice man who did nice things for me, not even my husband used to do.
So how could I pull away from him if I didn’t do it when things were fresh between us and ties easier to sever?
“What can we do about it?” I murmur, my voice gliding over the edge of tears.
