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“I know it didn’t.” She narrows her eyes. “So why? At least have the balls to say it, Maverick.”
Fuck. I hate that she backed me into this corner. I go to run a hand through my hair and instead find my bare scalp.
“I had a score to settle,” I admit. “But it’s not like I brought a fucking gun to the arena to blow his head off. It’s completely different.”
“What if he had killed someone you love?” Her voice breaks and tears shine in her eyes. “The person you love most in the world?”
I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. The best night of my life, followed by one of the worst mornings.
“I wouldn’t get myself killed or sent to prison,” I say, reaching for her hand. “It’s not going to bring him back.”
“I know that.” She pulls away from me and wipes the tears away from her cheeks. “But it’s what I’ve been working toward for eight years. My dad mattered, and this is the only way for Will Roan to pay for what he did.”
I shake my head. “I’ll bet he pays a big price just by waking up in his own shoes every day.”
“You don’t know shit!” She picks up her heels and grabs her purse. “If you really understood love, you’d know…I have to do this.”
She walks over to the door and I follow, saying, “Gia, don’t.”
Pausing with her hand on the doorknob, she sighs softly. “I thought you knew me, Maverick. I thought you really knew me. I’m not like other women. My dad raised me to live by a code of honor.”
“I live by a code of honor, too. I get why you feel this way. But this isn’t the way to handle it. You’d be better off…I don’t know, hiring a private investigator to gather evidence against Will Roan and turn it over to the police. It sounds like crime is his way of life.”
She won’t even look at me. Hair curtaining her face, she says, “I have to go.”
“Not like this, Gia.” I put a hand on her shoulder. “You mean so goddamn much to me. Don’t walk out like this.”
“What else is there to do?”
I shake my head, my frustration giving way to deep disappointment.
“This is all you wanted, isn’t it? Just this one night and then you’re off to blow some guy away and ruin your life.”
“I can’t do this, Maverick. I’m not who you want me to be.”
“Yeah, you are. I know you. And I love you. But you don’t love me back, or you’d stay and give us a chance.”
With a sob, she turns the doorknob, opens the door and leaves. This isn’t what I saw for our future, but I’m too hurt and disappointed to keep trying to change her mind. This is the end of us.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Gia
“You can lay your head on my shoulder if you want,” the heavyset, middle-aged guy who just sat down in the seat next to me says.
“I’m fine, thanks,” I say shortly.
I considered driving to Philly, but decided I’m not up for a solo cross-country drive. Too much time to think. Flying will be much faster. Since Maverick and I fought two days ago, I’ve done nothing but think about our conversation and cry a little. Okay, cry a lot. I’m not sleeping well now that I’m back at my apartment. Every time I walk past the suitcases I still haven’t unpacked, I’m filled with regret.
He was right—I was stupid. Am stupid, actually, in this exact moment. I shouldn’t have spent the past eight years carrying around a grudge against Will Roan. The grief and loneliness of losing my dad were a heavy enough burden on their own. If my dad had died of a heart attack or a stroke, I could have grieved and moved on. But there’s someone responsible for his death—someone still walking around, still alive. Will Roan can still laugh and play poker. He can still travel, the way my dad always wanted to. He robbed my dad of those things, and so much more.
“Are you sure?” the man next to me asks again, leaning close. “I’m pretty cuddly. Kind of like a pillow. You can just—”
“I said no.” I cut him off with an icy glare.
He scoffs and turns to the man next to him, who is engrossed in a paperback.
“Tell you what, you can’t even be nice to women these days. You try to be a gentleman and—”
The man looks up from his book, his eyes narrowed. “No, that wasn’t gentlemanly at all. That was straight-up gross. You seem like a nasty old perv.”
I revel in the silence that follows. When the stewardess walks by with a drink cart, I’m buying that guy in the aisle seat a drink.
“Guess I’ll just sit here and not say shit, then” the man in the middle seat says, scoffing.
