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"Okay, should I be worried?"
"Not at all." I forced a smile, reaching over and lightly squeezing her hand.
Sienna beamed at me before buckling up, and I pulled onto the road.
Trying to act like everything was fine was a battle. I was setting the table at the house when Sienna came up to me with a bottle of wine and two glasses.
“Alex, what's wrong? I don't think either of us are going to be able to enjoy our dinner until we discuss whatever it is that's going on because I can tell something is bothering you.” She sat the wine and glasses on the table and took a seat.
I took a deep breath and took a seat next to her. “I'm afraid after the conversation, we may not enjoy our dinner either. Depending on how it goes.”
“Well, we won't know until we talk. Tell me what's going on, please?”
“I'm setting you free.”
“What?” Sienna looked surprised.
“I'm not going to hold you here against your will any longer.” I reached out and gently took her hand before meeting her eye. “I want you to stay. I don't want you to go anywhere. But I can't keep you here against your will anymore. You deserve to be happy.
“I know things didn't start with us in a conventional way and we've had a lot of ups and downs. And I can't pinpoint it exactly but somewhere along the line I fell in love with you.”
Sienna's eyes lit up with surprise. She opened her mouth to speak and closed it. She opened her mouth again and hesitated, making my heart race and pound against my chest.
“Say it. Whatever it is just say it,” I encouraged her.
Her expressions softened, and she smiled softly. “I love you too.”
I couldn't believe what I was hearing, and I looked at her in complete shock, my jaw hanging open and eyes wide. “You do?”
She nodded shyly. “I'm not sure when it happened either but somewhere along the line you managed to make your way into my heart.”
“That's incredible.” My heart felt like it was going to burst through my chest, and I jumped out of my seat, kneeling down beside her and kissed her. “So, you'll stay?”
“Alex, I...” Her pain-filled words faded off as she turned to break eye contact with me. That wasn't the look of a woman about to tell me what I wanted to hear. That was the look of a woman who was about to send my world crashing to the ground.
“I don't know. I had a life before. I was independent. How do I throw all my independence out the window?”
“You wouldn’t,” I argued.
“I need time before I can make that kind of decision. On my own. To make sure that I'm thinking clearly. I don't want this to wind up being some type of crazy Stockholm Syndrome. I want to know if this is real. To do that I need time back home to think and to be me again.”
Her request was not unreasonable under normal circumstances, but she didn't realize that just going home was going to turn everything upside down and that there would be no coming back from that. But I couldn't tell her that. If she wasn't one-hundred percent sure that she wanted to be with me, and she needed time to think, then that's what I had to give her. Even if it meant not telling her that once she was gone, chances were good that there would be no me to come back to, not in the same way at least.
I nodded, setting my mind to what I had to do, and forced a smile. “I understand. I will take you to the airport tonight.”
“Tonight? Why does it have to be so fast? I could leave at the end of the week.”
“No. I can't risk anyone else finding out before you leave.”
“Why not?”
“It's complicated. If you don't go tonight, I don't know if I'll be able to let you go again. If you're going to go it needs to be tonight.”
“You're not making any sense. One minute it's because you don't want other people finding out, another, it's because you don't really want to let me go. What's really going on Alex?”
“You said you want to go home, so you're going. I'll call your father's nursing home and have one of their staff meet us at the airport.”
I stood and headed for my bedroom. Sienna scrambled to follow behind me. “Where are you going?”
