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He held her hand against his cheek. “Because I love you,” he said, pressing a kiss to her palm.
“Just wanted to hear you say it. I love you, too.” She grew serious again. “Go.”
“I just want to know one thing.”
“Why I didn’t tell you that we’d met before.” Her hand twitched in his and she went to pull free, but he held on.
“Yeah.” He heard her sigh and turned to face her more fully.
“At first, obviously I couldn’t talk to you at all, so I was hardly going to spill my guts, was I?”
“No.”
“Right. Then when I got to know you, I started wondering why you never called. Then, I had to put that behind me or it would torture me. I couldn’t be friends with you and keep that wondering going.”
“So why didn’t you tell me when we got to know each other?”
“Three reasons, I think. I didn’t want to know if you hadn’t called for a shitty reason. I mean, it was a pretty big deal for me at the time, which you clearly didn’t remember. So what if the shitty reason was that you were faking it.”
“I wasn’t.”
She gave a small smile. “Okay.”
“What was the second reason?”
“I knew when you told me about your ex, that you’d think the worst of me.”
“Leah.” He had no idea what to say.
“You did.”
“I did. But only for a fraction of time. But we’ll come back to that. What was the third reason?”
“If you had some genuine reason for not calling, you’d feel bad about it, when you knew it was me. If you remembered me.”
“I remembered you.”
“You didn’t.”
“I remembered that night. But I didn’t know you and that beautiful girl were the same person. I thought your name was Annie and I was hardly expecting to find you in Blessed Inlet. So I never put two and two together.”
“Fair enough.”
“Do you believe me?”
She looked at him for the longest moment. “Yeah, I do.”
He blew out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Good. Why did you tell me your name was Annie?”
She surprised him by rolling her eyes. “The stupidest reason, really. My parents didn’t know I was out.”
“Huh? You lied to me about your name because you thought I’d tell your parents?”
“I said it was stupid. Georgie gave me shit for it, too.” She laughed.
The sound was music to Callum’s ears. “Okay. That’s me done.” She went quiet. Callum braced himself. He knew what she was going to say.
“Why didn’t you call?”
