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He’s asking about the day I left him, the day he broke my heart.
“How can you ask that?”
“Because from what I remember…”
“I don’t care,” I interrupt him, suddenly angry. “I don’t care what you remember. I don’t want to talk about it.”
I don’t even want to remember how we went from the hopeful, perfect love of our reunion in Florence, to the devastating heartbreak that followed.
“No. You’d just rather blame me.”
“Yes. I blame you for ruining everything then, just as I blame you for ruining everything now.”
Tristan’s mouth hardens. “You mean Matt?” He scoffs. “I’m okay with you blaming me. I kissed you, after all. But there’s room here for you to be honest with yourself. How long had you been dating him again? He couldn’t even call you his girlfriend.”
He meets my glare for one second before turning back to the road. “You wanted him to leave you,” he continues. “This way, you get to blame it on me, but you were never going to make it with him in the first place.”
“You don’t know anything about Matt and me.”
“Maybe I don’t.” He laughs bitterly. “But I know exactly what it feels like to…” He stops.
To what? He doesn’t need to say the words. To be with someone and have all your thoughts be on someone else, the one person you can never forget. To want someone you can’t have while trying to want the one you do.
My stomach feels hollow. It feels as if he’s reaching out to me with more than words, with a loneliness we’ve both felt.
I swallow. “You had all those other women.”
I hear him breathe. “They weren’t you.”
The admission silences me. A slow warmth suffuses my body and I take a few slow breaths.
I’m here for dinner, I remind myself as he pulls into the entrance of the hotel. I’m here for dinner only.
Only.
Who am I fooling?
The uniformed doorman opens the car door and I step out. Tristan hands the keys to a valet and comes around to take my hand.
I should pull my hand away.
“I’m only here for dinner.” This time I say it out loud.
His eyes search my face. “Okay.”
Inside the hotel, the thickly carpeted lobby isn’t exactly deserted, but I no longer care who sees me with him. I’m buzzing with a feeling I can’t exactly name, and when Tristan puts his arm around me, leading me to the elevator, I realize that I don’t want to name it, I just want to drown myself in it, to revel in it and take everything it offers, no matter what happens.
We’re alone in the elevator. He taps the keys for the penthouse, then stands across from me in the small space, his eyes never leaving me. I don’t move, because I know the moment I do, I’m going to be in his arms. I hold on to my last moments of rationality, of self-control.
I’m only here for dinner.
The lie sounds less convincing the more I repeat it.
The elevator stops and the doors slide open with a soft swish. A short walk in a carpeted foyer follows, then he stops at a door and swipes a keycard. We step into his suite. He closes the door behind me.
I’m looking everywhere but at him. My eyes fall on the archway into a living room, a painting of a lighthouse hanging on one wall, a gleaming white marble bust of a revolutionary war hero lit softly in an alcove…
He touches me first. A gentle brush of his fingertips on my shoulder. I close my eyes as my breath leaves me in a soft exhale.
