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Chapter Fifteen
The two women turned to him and Leo could see they’d been crying. They were holding hands.
Amelia’s brown eyes were brighter than he remembered. Designer sunglasses pulled her multi-hued blonde hair away from a face he once knew better than his own.
Her hair was long again. She wore low-hung jeans, a snug black t-shirt, and black high heels. A leather backpack was slung over her shoulder.
She carried more weight on her frame than he’d ever seen and it looked damn good on her.
His eyes flicked down and he realized the charm bracelet he’d given her so many years ago sparkled on her wrist. The sight of that, more than anything, felt like a punch to his chest.
The silence drew out but Leo didn’t break it. There had been no time to truly prepare for seeing her and he never dreamed she’d be standing in his house.
In his kitchen…talking to his mother.
Everything felt surreal. His mind was in chaos. It was as if the eight years since he’d last seen her simply fell away.
His traitorous mind drank in the sight of her and every cell in his body went rogue.
It made him breathless and incredibly angry.
His mother released Amelia’s hands and walked to him. She pulled him down and kissed his cheek. “Welcome home, Leo. Ye made good time.” He nodded, unable to form a coherent sentence. “I’ll let the two of ye talk.”
As if afraid Amelia would disappear into thin air, Leo couldn’t pull his eyes away from her. His mother patted his chest and left the room.
Robotically, he set his bags on the small kitchen table. They stared at one another without speaking for almost a minute.
Struggling for calm, he finally managed, “I’m sorry about your dad. Gil was a good man. He made mistakes but he was still a good man.”
“Thank you, Leo.”
Hearing his name from her lips expanded the physical ache inside him until he felt like he could explode. He wondered if she caught his flinch.
They were quiet again and he didn’t know what to do, what to say, or how to bank the chaotic fury that was like a fire on the back of his neck.
Twining her hands together, she asked, “Can we talk?”
A small bark of laughter escaped before he could censor it. He gave a quick shake of his head in disbelief.
“Sure, Amelia. We can talk. Give me a minute to put my stuff down and we can chat like old friends.” The anger in his voice was impossible to miss. He grabbed his bags and carried them past her to the back stairs.
Dropping them on the bench at the end of his bed, he was surprised to find her standing in the doorway when he turned. Having her in the last place he touched her made everything so much worse.
“O-kay…we can talk here, I suppose.”
“Get it out, Leo. You have every right to be angry.”
Crossing his arms over his chest, he stared at a woman he hadn’t seen in eight years and hated how much he wanted her. His need for her should have long ago faded from his mind and heart.
“Thank you for that, Amelia. For giving me permission to be angry.” He laughed bitterly. “You’ve spent eight years hiding, being someone else. Living your own life without me in it. Why the fuck do you care about my feelings now?”
“I’ve always cared, Leo.”
“Have you? That fascinates me...to hear you cared after you disappeared in the middle of the night.” Dropping his arms, he smiled tightly. “I appreciate that, Amelia. Now we can be civil, see your father laid to rest, you can go back to whatever it is that you do, and I can finally move on with my life…”
“No,” she whispered.
“No? To which part?”
