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"What is all this?"
He clears his throat nervously. "Dinner. Well. It was supposed to be lunch, but we got side tracked."
"I don't want all this, Kingsley. I told you..."
He puts the bowl down. "I know. It's over. I heard you. Trust me, heard you. But I think after everything we've been through, can you please give me a chance to explain? Five minutes. That's all. Please, Luna. Give me five minutes. And if after that, you decide that you can't"— his voice breaks—"can't keep doing this with me, I will walk away."
I want to say no.
That I don't want to hear what he has to say.
Because what if I actually decide that whatever he's going to sayisn't enough.
And he walks away.
And I have to let him.
Then sooner better than later, Luna.
Clasping my hands behind my back, I just give him a single nod.
Stepping out from the candle oasis, he steps towards me, taking my hand.
"Yes, I had a private investigator look into you. Your past. I had it done literally the day after we were in Watergate Bay, the night you came to stay at my house. At the time, I was just concerned with your trust. I still don't know if you've wrapped your head around how much your inheritance is worth, Luna. Ernest left you with half of everything he had. I felt... Ifeelsuch a responsibility in protecting it for you for as long as you let me. And part of that is knowing what threats there are to you. And while I could have just asked you, sometimes we're too close to an issue that we don't even know that something, someone is a threat." He exhales, running his hand through his hair. "Trust me, I'm living proof of someone having the ability to completelyannihilate everything you thought you knew about yourself and your life, and you never thinking that was possible."
He gently drops my hand, holding out a stack of documents to me.
"This is everything my private eye sent me in that initial report. Every word of it. It's a background check. And any official papers on you, anything in the media, your social media. I had him highlight the pertinent things, and the rest I just skimmed."
When I don't take it, he lays it down on the table in front of me. I've seen the things in that report. I still have the pages stuffed in my bag. I don't want to touch it. They're like a reminder of what he did.
He takes a breath and continues. "The thing I want you to know is that I haven't looked at it since that first week. I haven't reread it. I haven't studied it to learn about you. Everything, everything that makes you you to me, I know from the time we've spent with each other. I know that you take your coffee with more sugar than any human should or could possibly consume, that you hate tomatoes but you eat them anyway because you think that it's character building to eat sour things. I know that you know every single person's name who works in the Baxter building and probably their kids' names as well, that your memory is a scary thing and I would never play poker or blackjack with you, but that you remember things because you care so much. I know that your favorite thing for me to do in bed is the way I flick the very tip of my tongue over your clit, slow, slow, and then fast, and that when you're about to come, you always make a fist with your left hand first, and then your right, and that the way you clench around my cock actually makes me want to die. I know that you don't sleep well until I'm in bed with you, and that your favorite emoji is the heart eyes one, and that you have very strong views about the ending of How I Met Your Mother, that you had a crush on animated Aladdin, and Iknow that you could talk for days on end about your views on the supremacy of BBC's adaptations of Austen novels. That file was there on my desk because I collecting everything I had so I could shred it and get rid of it."
He stops to take another breath. And I wish he could take one for me as well.
"And I know that you always tease me about being in control, but this"—he reaches for my hand and pressed it against his chest—"lives and dies based on how brightly you smile at me first thing in the morning. And I'm sorry that I broke your trust. I'm so sorry. I've never been more sorry for anything. And I will do anything to earn it back. No matter what it takes. No matter how long it takes. Because there is nothing else that matters as much to me as you, Luna. Never has been. Never will be."
His hand cups around mine on his chest.
His heart beats, fast and hard under my palm.
His words sweep around me, a flurry of thoughts and declarations and promises and apologies.
But all I can think about is, how if I pull my hand away from him, I will be the one that will fall apart.
And no one will ever be able to put me back together.
Because for everything he said, I know that nothing has mattered to me as much as he has either.
My fingers curl against his chest, and it reminds of that night on his porch, my pulling his hand to my chest.
And how he'd just walked away.
A tear falls.
"Oh, sweetheart, I'm so sorry," he whispers, his voice a crackle of pain and hope, his thumb catching the tear on my cheek.
"You know so much about me, and I feel like I know nothing about you. You make it so hard to get to know you, Kingsley. I always feel like I'm one step behind, and you always have the upper hand. Trust is hard enough as it is."
