“Okay, that’s different.”
“How? I’m sure you didn’t tell him that you were trying to track down your old pen pal.”
“I didn’t really lie, though. I kept the details to a minimum. I told him that I wanted to see what the beaches were like in San Diego, which was true.”
“So, you lied by omission. Much like…”
“Don’t say it.”
“Much like he did,” she continues, louder, “when he avoided telling you his name.”
“It’s so not the same thing.”
“You also didn’t tell him about the letters. You were flirting with someone you thought was another guy while you were getting serious with him.”
“That doesn’t count. I was writing to him, and it’s his fault that I didn’t know it. Plus, I was trying to tell him about the letters last night when he interrupted me and told me who he was.”
“Maybe if you had told him about the letters sooner, he would have confessed sooner.”
I open my mouth to argue, but I realize she has a point. I had written that last letter to Luca hoping that he would show up at my door. I’m not really sure how I expected it to go from there. If he had turned out to be someone entirely different, then I would be the one in the wrong right now.
“Maybe you’re right,” I say with a sigh. “You should probably get back to work. I need to finish up here before I go on air.”
* * *
The last thing I want is to run into Luca while I’m still processing everything that happened last night and over the last few weeks. But of course nothing can go my way. He’s standing by Joel’s desk when I walk into the building after work. Both men are in the middle of a conversation that halts when I walk through the door. I keep my glance in their direction brief, and then I head the other way toward the mailboxes. I’m considering taking the elevator so that I won’t have to walk past them again. I’ll be buying my house and moving in just a couple of weeks and then I won’t have to deal with facing him anymore.
Before I can finish unlocking my mailbox, Luca appears next to me.
“Can we talk?” he asks.
Without looking at him, I open my mailbox and pull out the stack of mail that was delivered this morning. I sift through the envelopes. When I find a letter from him at the bottom of the stack, I pull it out and shove it against his chest. He’s startled by my action. He takes the envelope and looks at it before turning back to me.
“You’re not even going to open it?”
Ignoring him, I turn away from the mailboxes, but he steps in front of me, blocking my path. I hate that my heart rate picks up even now, like it hasn’t gotten the memo that I’m mad at him.
“Talk to me,” he says. “I know I fucked up, but this can’t be the end of what we had. We have something special, Naomi. I know that you feel it too.”
Ignoring my pounding heart, I glare at him, waiting for him to move out of my way.
“I think that somewhere deep down, you knew that it was me,” he continues. I raise an eyebrow, curious about where he’s going with this. He lowers his voice. “You said my name.”
“Excuse me?”
“You said my name while we were having sex. I think you knew that it was me.”
I had tried to bury that memory, but now he’s bringing it up and I can feel my face flush.
“I said your name because I was fantasizing about a person who I thought was someone else,” I say, trying to keep my voice quiet because Joel looks like he’s trying to eavesdrop from across the lobby. “Maybe if you were better in bed, I wouldn’t have had to do that.”
ChapterThirty-Two
BAD IN BED
“Ouch.”
This is Anne’s reaction to me telling her what I said to Luca yesterday. I feel pretty damn proud of myself for coming up with that, but Anne seems to think I took it too far.
