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So… was it fair to say he’d lied to me? Yeah, it was. And he should’ve told me the truth from the start. But when I’d all but offered him a way back in, he’d said no even though the desire had been plain to see in his eyes.
Some cynical part of my mind told me he probably knew in that moment that I’d find out the truth sooner or later. Maybe he was a cheating dickhole, but even he had to be above taking advantage of the gap in my memory to sneak in one last fuck.
Still, it made me think. It made me wonder.
What if…
What if Matteo reallywassorry for what he did? What if he really did regret it and wish he could change the past?
I rubbed my aching, gritty eyes. I needed to talk to him. One way or the other, we had to sort this out, or we were both going to be hunting down fae and paying for amnesia just to keep from going insane.
Small problem, though: I didn’t know where he lived.
I didn’t even have his number anymore. He’d given it to me yesterday, and while I’d been drunk and crying last night, I’d deleted and blocked him again. I had him on social media now, since I’d unblocked him, but for as long as I’d known him, he’d kept push notifications turned off for almost everything.
Lucky me, though, his work cell was on the clinic’s website. I hemmed and hawed a few times, wondering if this was a good idea. Did I really want to know what he had to say about any of this? My current situation put that in some perspective, I supposed—maybe I didn’t want to know, but at the same time, not knowing was killing me. I didn’t know what I’d thought or felt over the past year, and I hated that. It was like I’d been tearing open wounds I didn’t even remember getting, and it was confusing and impossible to find anything close to closure.
Did I want to know? Probably not. But Ineededto know.
Hoping he was on call or at least checking his messages, I sent a text:
Owen:Can we talk?
Chapter 8
Matteo
Owen wanted to meet someplace public. Maybe to force us to keep this conversation civil; we both had professional reputations that didn’t really agree with public blowouts that got the cops called or something.
So, he’d picked a restaurant. One we’d been to a million times because it was right across the street from the condo. It was probably comfortable and familiar for him, and it was close to home in case he decided I could go fuck myself and he needed to bail.
Fine. I was happy to do this on his terms. Anything he wanted as long as I could see him again and maybe—hopefully—do some damage control.
I texted him from the parking garage,Just got here. On my way in.
He replied,Give the hostess your name.
That meant he probably already had a table. No surprise, since he lived so close. And either way, I was glad, because this would be less awkward than standing in the waiting area, twiddling my thumbs while anxiety threatened to melt my brain.
Sure enough, after I’d given her my name, the hostess showed me to the table where Owen was already waiting. I nervously took the seat across from him. We each ordered drinks in addition to the ice water that was already there, and once we were alone, we locked eyes.
Owen’s expression was hard and closed off, but the hurt lingered in his eyes. Or maybe that was just the red.
Owen wasn’t one of those guys who cried easily. He was as in touch with his emotions as anyone, just not prone to waterworks unless something really hit him in the feels. His grandfather’s funeral had made him choke up. He’d cried the day we’d visited his aunt in hospice. The day that stupid basilisk had dropped me, I’d been shocked to see a few tears because, I mean, I was fine. I was okay. But it was a close enough call that it had shaken him, and he’d cried a little while he’d hugged me after I’d told him about it.
So I’d seen him cry a handful of times in the years I’d known him, and it killed me that the worst of those—past and present—had been my fault. I’d never seen him as broken as he’d been the day I’d confessed my sins and ruined our relationship, and that was a memory that would haunt me well into whatever afterlife was waiting for me.
And then he’d had to relive that for the first time yesterday. Alone. It killed me that he’d found out that way instead of hearing it from me. As much as it tore me apart to tell him what I’d done, I didn’t deserve the mercy of him finding out without me being the one to say it. He didn’t deserve to stumble across the truth instead of me looking him in the eye and confessing.
Or maybe none of that made sense. Did anything make sense these days? Because nothing really had for me since I’d ruined everything in Toronto.
The waitress brought our drinks and rattled off the specials. Neither of us felt like ordering yet, so she left us to it, and the stare down continued.
I couldn’t take it anymore, and I finally said, “For what it’s worth, I really am sorry. For what I did, and for not telling you.”
His lips thinned.
I fidgeted in my chair. “I honestly was trying to figure out when and how to tell you the truth. Or if I should tell you.”
