“This is our chance. Had I stayed, we wouldn’t have even that.”
I look at him in silence, no longer caring that tears flood my eyes and some of them drop on the tablecloth.
“You didn’t even ask me,” I say.
“You would’ve said no.”
My jaw is too tense to speak.
He tips his chin down, and briefly, his gaze roams over our hands.
“None of us could control how we felt back then. We were both still bleeding. Both tormented by our past and loneliness and the possibility that we had found our match. I knew how you felt. I knew how much you needed me, but I wasn’t stable enough to give you what you wanted.”
He gently strokes my hand as he smiles at a private thought.
“When you started to tell me about your life and how you were before you met me, you also shone a light on that part of me. One I never thought I had. Not for a woman, anyway. I kept that side of me only for myself and the few things dear to me. Emma and Sara. My drawings. Sometimes the words I cared to write down. I never imagined I could find a woman I could give that tenderness. And I never thought I’d found that kind of place in someone else’s heart. But you, like me, were not safe...” he says and smiles again. “You could sink into darkness at the drop of a hat and pull me down just as fast. I was no different than you.”
He pauses.
“The few days we spent in that cabin allowed me to see more of us. The way we could’ve been had we not been damaged. The way we could’ve lived had we not battled monsters, bad memories, and the wrath of our ugly past.”
His lips curve into a soft grin.
“But seeing that sobered me up. It made me aware of the hurdles lying ahead of us. It made me realize that no matter what my heart whispered to me, the reality was different. What seemed within our reach couldn’t be farther away from us.”
“You could’ve talked to me.”
He searches my eyes.
“Words couldn’t do what time needed to do.”
We both lift our gazes as the servers bring the plates of food to the table.
We’re waiting in silence as they set them down.
Jaden and one of the men exchange words that only register with me remotely, my mind still processing what he just told me.
He shifts his focus back, but neither of us begins to eat.
He pushes the plate farther away from him, his lack of appetite mirroring my feelings.
I don’t feel like eating, either.
“That very last night...” he says softly, resuming his story, “was like a crossroads to me. I didn’t see it coming because it hadn’t been planned. No one could plan something like that. Things weren’t as clear to me back then as they are now. I knew it would hurt both of us, but I had to do it. When I realized we were both captives of our past, and time wasn’t on our side, and that I was nowhere near being the man capable of pulling you up and you were nowhere near being the woman ready to heal my heart, I only saw one way out. Pull everything to a stop, smash everything to pieces and perhaps rebuild later. Let time do its job. Let our hearts find their way. And let myself be the man I wanted for you.”
“You were that man,” I say.
He grins.
A soft, beautiful smile.
“No, I wasn’t. I was the sole provider for my sister and my niece. I was also someone who worked for you. I had nothing in my name. I might've not been on the streets, but I was still a hustler. The world I had in my mind for you, and us, wasn’t within my reach. The world in which I’d be the stable ground for you wasn’t within my grasp. Money was only part of the problem, but there were other things.”
His face brightens with a grin as his eyes set on his hands.
“It was ironic in a way. I knew what you were missing. I used to have what you were missing. But I no longer had it. Therefore, I couldn’t give it to you. Besides, you lived in a different world. One in which I had to find my way. One in which I was the poor boy while you were the rich girl. Both of us hated our lives, but none of us knew what the answer was. Was there a way to get out of it and find a different path? You thought you knew that but didn’t have the right answer either. At least it wasn’t the right one for me. That’s why I said I had to do what I had to do on my own. I also had to see if more was out there for us.”
He glances at me briefly before bringing his glass to his lips. The ruby liquid moistens his lips, making them glisten.