It hits me then, that he loved her. I thought he did when we were in the courtroom. He looked like a man who’d lost his love. Seeing him now, there’s no question. He loved her.
“How long were you together?”
“About a year and a half.” He doesn’t hesitate. That little fact tells me more than anything.
“You loved her?”
He shakes his head once, but he doesn’t speak. He doesn’t say it out loud. “We were lovers.”
My heart breaks in this small way watching him deny it. Suddenly I feel like a mistress, like an imposter posing on his arm. And I don’t want it. Glancing at the restaurant and then back to the man denying the obvious, I no longer have much of an appetite.
“Did you come here with her?” I don’t want to be here if that’s the case.
“No. No, this place is new. But my friend suggested it.” He doesn’t pick up on what’scome over me, thankfully. I don’t understand it fully myself and before I can think much of it, Zander kisses my knuckles.
“Thank you,” he says between kisses and then stares deep into my eyes. “For coming with me today.”
I melt for him, for the side of him he doesn’t want to accept. The side that loves and breaks. The vulnerable bits that turn us crazy and allow us to fall into a well of emotion we can’t control. I ache for him. Because I feel it. No one can deny the fact that I feel every bit of it. And then there are people like him, men who pretend they don’t when it’s so very obvious that they do.
I wonder if he would ever admit that he loved me. If he ever did fall for me. Would he say it? Would he tell me, or would I just have to know it and be complete with that?
“You’re certain you want this?” he asks as he finally shuts off the car. “Knowing I’m a little fucked up too?”
“Yes.”
“Show me,” he commands and leans across the console of the car, taking my chin in his hand and kissing me deeply. So passionately it shocks me at first, my lips parted, granting him access and my world tilted. All because of him. Because of what he does to me.
Not a damn bit of it I can control.