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“I’ll just have water. Rue?”
“Oh, same for me, please.”
“I’ll get those for you right away.”
“Thank you,” Rue says softly, turning back to me as he walks off. She bites her lip like she wants to ask something but is holding back.
“Whatever it is, Rue, just say it.”
“I don’t like upsetting you.”
“I’m not upset. And even if I were, I wouldn’t take it out on you.”
She nods before reaching for my hand. “Did we come here a lot?”
“I only brought you once.”
She seems surprised by my answer. “You have your own table. I thought…”
“I do a lot of business, and lots of clients are more willing to make deals when they’ve been wined and dined, so I bring them here. I would have brought you more, but we were keeping a low profile. You didn’t want anyone to put us together.” I chuckle.
She tilts her head, considering me. “You didn’t like hiding what we meant to each other.”
I close my eyes, questioning if I should tell her the truth or change the subject. With a sigh, I look at her once more. “I hated it.”
Her hand flies to her mouth, her fingers pressed against her lips. She listens to me admit what she once knew but ignored—for all the right reasons—even though it hurt us both.
“I know this is a lot. And I swore I’d go slow.”
A burst of laughter escapes her. “We fucked the first night I ran into you. I don’t think slow means what you think it does.”
I grin at that. She has a point. “I meant emotionally,” I say with a laugh. “I love you. I wanted the world to know just how much, but we had to hide it like a dirty secret, like I was ashamed of what we had when I was anything but.”
She tugs on my hand, so I lean closer. She reaches up and slides her other hand around the back of my neck, her thumb brushing over my tattoo. When I lower my head, she kisses me. She pours everything she can’t say into that kiss. Every note of heartbreak, every painful beat, all intertwined with the melody of us.
When she pulls back, we’re both a little breathless.
“If the only good thing to come from all this is that we don’t have to hide anymore, then it would have been worth it. I mightnot remember how we fell in love or have access to the million memories we made together, but I don’t doubt you were meant to be mine in my last life, in this one, and in the next. Even if I died tomorrow, I somehow know we’d find our way back to each other.”
“Don’t talk about dying,” I snarl before I can stop myself.
She jolts at my tone. My grip tightens on her hand.
“You won’t leave me again, Rue.”
“Again?” she whispers.
“You might be here with me now, but parts of you that are tied to me are still lying in that hole. The thought of losing any more of you makes me want to chain you to me, so anything that comes for you has to go through me first.”
Her chest is heaving, and her eyes glisten with unshed tears as each of my words dig their way under her skin.
“I’m scared I won’t remember all the things that made usus,but that doesn’t mean we can’t do it all over again. And this time, we can do it without hiding, without holding back, without pretending we mean less to each other than we obviously do.”
“Promise?” My voice is gruff as I hold back all the things I want to say.
“I promise.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
