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“And I believe I owe you some answers,” he stammers, remembering.
“You do,” I agree. Taking the book from behind me and setting it down with more grace than previously. “I would like to know why you took it from that book appraiser.”And how I ended up with it hundreds of miles away.I want to add but decide to wait. One question at a time.
“May I?”
Blinking, for some reason the question catches me off guard, or maybe it’s because I’m more preoccupied with watching the way his throat bobs.
My stomach dips the longer the silence grows between us. I haven’t answered and he hasn’t overstepped, waiting with his fingers interlocked. I’m convinced they’re webbed together so tightly to keep his shoulders from shaking.
They very visibly are on the verge. He’s rattled.
Eventually, I give in with a sharp angle of my chin. “As long as you explain everything I want to know.”
I’m alive and vulnerable, watching as he sucks in a pointed inhale, agreeing and reaching between us.
Those thick brows pinch together with concentration before they jump. Widening the longer his fingers skim the page with the inscription.
“You can start anytime.” My smile is tight. Patience dwindling.
His eyes sober as his attention is pulled away from below him and back up at me. A melancholy of something plaguing his crumbled exterior.
“I took it because he wouldn’t sell, and I was too impatient to try and track down another,” he says. “I didn’twantto wait.” Clarifying like I should know what that means.
I don’t.
“Was it that important?”
Abram cocks his head, the leather of his chair squeaking as his posture widens, now he’s the one studying me.
“Yes.”
“Yes?” I spit, confused.
“Yes.”
“What was so critically necessary thatyou, the man who has an endless fortune, had to resort to theft?” If my words come out disgusted, it’s because I am. Utterly and completely mortified.
A fondness settles in his gaze unaffected by my tenacity. The softness in his demeanor is the complete opposite of everything inside me.
Irritating me more the longer I’m thrown off guard.
Why do his eyes have a slight gleam to them? A shiny-like texture flickering in their depths.
“This book,” he reiterates, tapping it to his palm before once again sliding it between us. “It was meant to be given to your mother. I wanted to propose to her with it.”
The air in my throat turns choppy, but I don’t dare look away. Those words written inside immortalized in my brain. Carrying an entirely new meaning now that I knew the author and their intention.
A closed chapter does not mean the book is finished. We make our own endings.
“What?”
“I wanted to marry Lillian,” he clarifies. Reiterating it like my ears still weren’t ringing and my chest wasn’t pounding from the first time he’d said it.
My mom? He wanted to be with her. This whole time? My entire life she’d blamed me and now I find out he wanted her all along.
The fuck?
“Would you please stop messing with that thing on your wrist?” He barges in, cutting through my thoughts. “It’s…distracting.”
