“You will one day,” I stated as I stood to my full height.
“Do you really think a pitiful apology fixes what you did to me? Tell me you’re not that arrogant.”
“Maybe I am, but no, I don’t expect a pitiful apology to fix anything.”
“Good, because it won’t,” she said, pursing her lips.
“But it’s a start. You being here is a start.”
“There is no starting over for us, Reed.”
“You know what’s crazy? Not once in all these years have I ever stopped thinking about you.”
“I told you we’re not doing this.”
“I looked for you in every single woman I encountered. None of them ever compared to you. No one laughed like you, no one ever challenged me like you. Not one of them could ever make me feel?—”
“Reed, stop it! I don’t know why you insist on rehashing ancient history.”
“Hmph, you’ll never be history to me. Not when you’re the only thing that makes me feel whole. You’re very much the present for me. I’m pretty sure that’s evidenced by you sitting in front of me right now. Please don’t tell me you aren’t real, because you’re the most real thing that’s ever been in my life, Faith. It fucked me up to know what was ahead of me, when the best thing for me was right in my grasp, and I lost it.”
“You don’t get to say that now. You made your decision.”
“I didn’t make anything. I tried to be the man I was raised to be and accept my fate. I knew what my life was supposed to look like. I knew what was expected of me. It was all planned for me before you walked into my life and gave me something authentic.”
Her eyes dropped from mine, and for the first time, I didn’t immediately want to demand to have them back on me. Faith needed time to process what I was saying. The fractures in her demeanor made me want to go in for the kill.
“I couldn’t stomach the idea of ruining your life.”
She scoffed again as she looked up at me with fiery eyes. “Yet you ruined me anyway.”
Her words hit me harder than I expected. Under the weight of her confession, I could only accept her reproach. There was no immediate quick-witted response. Instead, I sat withher revelation and let it destroy me in the same way that I’d destroyed the woman I proclaimed to love more than anything.
“You broke me. You made me feel safe and cherished when you were no better than the other guys. I told you how I felt, and you used it against me. At the end of the day, you were worse than any of them. At least they made their intentions clear from the beginning. You misled me all the way up to the point to where I found out the truth. Then you left me standing there looking crazy thinking I imagined everything between us, while you rode off into the sunset with another woman.”
“Zenia was never my woman, and we didn’t ride off anywhere.”
“Oh, excuse me, fiancée.”
“It was an arrangement!”
“It doesn’t matter what you want to call it. You fucking lied to me, Reed!”
“I didn’t know how to tell you. I didn’t meet you with the intentions of falling for you.”
“Oh, I apologize that that happened.”
“No, that’s not what I mean, Faith. When I realized that I was falling in love with you, I decided that I wasn’t going to go through with the arrangement. There’s a process to get out of it. I thought I had more time to fix it.”
Her eyes narrowed, and that hesitation made me greedy.
“You think being all sweet and charming is going to get you somewhere, but don’t forget, I already know you. You’re still trying to manipulate the situation.”
“I may be, but I meant every word I said.”
“You are unbelievable,” she said, shaking her head.
“I’m in love.”
