I lifted my chin, refusing to skirt the truth. “The kids’ father.”
His nod was quick. Sharp as a blade. “Guessing you were filling him in on yesterday.”
My lips pursed. “Yes.”
“And?” Caution laced his tone, while that energy threatened to snap.
“He wants us to go back to Los Angeles to be close to him.”
His jaw ticked, and I could hear his teeth grinding from across the space. “And?”
Agony crept in through the seams I was barely holding together.
“And what do you want me to say, Leif? That I want to stay? That I want to stay here where you are? Would you accept it or would you run?”
It was a dare.
A challenge.
A plea.
He inched closer.
Tension writhed in the dense humidity.
The man sucking me into his orbit.
“You think I’m a flight risk?”
I turned my focus to the gate, figuring it would be a whole lot easier than gazing on his striking face. “You were going to leave, Leif. You’re the one who warned me nothing good could come of this. That you were going to ruin me.” The words dropped to nothing. “And you . . . you were apologizing the whole time last night.”
Rejection bottled in my throat, and that vacant space that he’d carved out in the middle of me howled to be filled.
“You think I didn’t hear that, Leif? Feel it? I think it’s been clear from the get go that you’re going to break my heart.”
His hand found my chin, tilting it back toward him. Those brown-sugared eyes flashed.
Grief.
Greed.
Fear.
“Wasn’t apologizing to you, Mia.”
Confusion knitted my brow, and the only thing it took was the stake of agony that burned up his expression to start a brawl in the middle of my chest.
I searched him, my tongue sweeping across my trembling bottom lip. “Then who were you apologizing to?”
God, did I even dare ask the question?
Sheer anguish dented every line on his gorgeous face, this man hemorrhaging from someplace I couldn’t see, but it was anger that purged from his tongue. “It doesn’t matter.”
Disbelief left me on a haggard, brutalized laugh, and my hands moved to my chest like it might keep my heart from spilling out. “It doesn’t matter? How can you even begin to say that, Leif? You push me away and then you refuse to let me go. I think I deserve to know why, don’t you?”
“Mia . . . I . . . I can’t.”
“Leif . . . just . . . talk to me. Please. You can trust me. You’ve been holding me up. Let me hold you up, too.”
“Mia.”
It was refusal.
An appeal.
As if again he didn’t know if he should hold me close or push me away.
“Leif, I’m standing right here, begging you to believe in me.”
His head shook, and he took a step back.
A barrier built.
Disappointment hit me. Full force. My smile was forged, as fake as my surrender. “Okay. Fine. I get it.”
Before I let myself get beat up anymore, I found the strength to turn and walk away.
If he wanted me, he was going to have to prove it.
I was halfway back to the door when he called my name.
A moan of affliction.
I stilled, unsure, but I turned when he muttered, “You want my honest?”
“I do.”
It was an oath.
A promise that I would hold whatever he offered.
He was in front of me in a second, a thunderbolt of grief, his hands squeezing my face in desperation when he released the confession, “I was apologizing to my wife, Mia. My dead wife. That’s who I was apologizing to.”
The words were jagged.
Sharp edges and crushed vestiges.
Nothing left to be repaired.
My eyes rounded with his revelation, mind rushing to process through his anguish.
Through what he had lost.
He started to step away. As if he couldn’t stand in the declaration.
I let my phone slip free so I could grab him by the wrists. Slayed by the realization of where his desperation had come from last night. The ghosts that I had felt wailing in his spirit.
“God . . . Leif. I’m . . . I’m so sorry. So sorry.” I blinked a million times, as if it might erase some of his pain. Like it could soothe mine as I struggled to fumble through the idea that she had been there with us.
Between us. On his mind and on his tongue.
That he’d felt dishonor in touching me. In being with me.
“You want more of my honest, Mia?” he almost spat, his face so close to mine, his torment frenetic in the blank space that separated us. A barrier that our souls tried to breach.
I wasn’t sure that I could handle any more.
Tears flooded when he set those massive hands back on my cheeks, mine still manacles around his wrists.
“We move on from here? Then I need you to listen and listen good.”
I barely managed a nod.