Rachel hugged her quickly, balancing a stack of plates on her other arm. “I’m so excited for you. It’s great to see somebody get out of here.”
Sabela nodded with a smile, but the joy didn’t make it to her eyes. Sometimes, she felt like she was just going through the motions.
Moving on was taking its toll on her, no matter how much she wanted to say it wasn’t.
Still, she refused to live her life with regrets. If anything, it was the lesson she took away from her time with Colin. Even lessons learned the hard way were valuable in retrospect.
She continued on through her shift, mind on how wonderful a bath would be instead of on what she was doing.
Unfortunately, her body remembered what it was like to bathe with a certain someone else.
Sabela’s mind drifted off into those warm thoughts, remembering how magical it had felt being with Colin. Her body hummed with want when she thought about their time together in his bed.
He had made everything in her world vibrant. Now he was gone, and she was washed out, gray.
She shook her head. Those types of thoughts weren’t helping her move on. If anything, they brought her more pain.
She needed to forget about Colin Morgan, and Switzerland, and everything she’d done there.
She didn’t regret it, but it did her no good to live in the past. The past was what had destroyed Colin and turned him into a beast that Sabela couldn’t save.
There were just a few minutes left on the clock when Rachel came up to her.
“There’s a guy in my section who wanted to sit in yours but saw the sign that it was closed. He’s refusing to order unless you wait on him.”
Sabela sighed. Was it Mike, Lloyd, or Buttons? All three of them were crotchety old men who refused to be served unless she waited on them.
Right now, Sabela wasn’t sure she could tolerate the lecherous flirtation. “I’m getting ready to go home, Rachel. Can’t you sweet talk him into letting you help him?”
“He gave me twenty bucks to leave him alone and get you. Can’t you take one more order, please?”
Sabela just wanted to go home, but she understood the value of twenty bucks. Rachel needed the money badly, and Sabela didn’t want to keep her from a tip like that.
“You owe me,” she whispered under her breath as Rachel beamed at her.
If it was Buttons sitting there, Sabela was going to give him a piece of her mind. She still remembered the crude drawing he’d left for her last time, and while she knew he was a prankster, there was no excuse for being plain rude.
But it wasn’t Buttons in Rachel’s section, nor was it Mike or Lloyd.
Colin sat there, staring at her.
Sabela stopped in her tracks. Her heart leaped up into her throat.
He stood up and straightened his suit jacket. Dressed as sharp as he was, he looked completely out of place in the diner, but in a good way. A very good, very hot way.
He looked so handsome it hurt her heart.
“Join me,” he said, gesturing to the booth.
Sabela didn’t know what to do.
Chapter Forty-Eight
EVEN THOUGH HE HAD GOTTEN TO the diner as quickly as he could, Colin had made time to dress the part. This would be the most important conversation of his life, so he wore a fine suit, and he had stopped and picked up flowers on the way. They were lilies, which he knew were Sabela’s favorite.
The bouquet waited for her on the table.
While in the car, he called ahead to the diner to make sure that he knew when Sabela was working. He realized that he was going to arrive right around the time her shift ended.
He hadn’t seen her when he entered, but that didn’t deter him. A generous tip could fix just about any problem, and it proved to be true on this day.
When he saw Sabela round the corner, his mouth went dry and he nearly forgot to speak. It wasn’t until she stood at the end of the booth that he found his tongue.
Marie was right — he was crazy about Sabela.
It was something that felt a lot like love, and a lot more real than anything he’d experienced with Blanca. He’d loved Blanca like a boy loves a girl. His feelings for Sabela were those of a man for a woman.
When she saw him, for a moment he thought that she was going to turn around and leave. Colin rose and invited her over, but the look in her eyes was uncertain, and he feared she might back away.
To his relief, she didn’t.
She slid onto the bench without a word and looked across at him with wounded eyes. The expression on her face told him that she was worried about why he was there.
He thought she dreaded he’d come to do something to her, something cruel again. It made him ill that his actions had led her to think about him in a suspicious way.
He wanted to ease all of that fear away. There were things he needed to say that she needed to hear, and he didn’t want her running before he had a chance to say them.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. Her gaze flickered toward the flowers on the table.
“I needed to see you,” he said.
“You didn’t have to come here. You could have just called.”
“Talking over the phone isn’t the same as talking face to face. And calling wouldn’t make anything right. I’m here because I need to tell you how sorry I am. Nothing I could say to you over the phone would do justice to proving it to you in person.”
Her lips formed into a tight, straight line. “Could’ve fooled me. Oh, wait. That’s a dumb thing to say. You always fool me.”
He reached for her and touched her forearm, and she trembled. He longed to sweep her into his arms, but he knew that was impossible.
“I was angry and hurt when I found out what your brother had done,” he said. “But since you left, I realized that it doesn’t matter what actually happened. Blanca is gone, and I’ve been obsessed with a ghost.”
Colin paused to take a deep breath. There was no reason for Sabela to believe him, apart from the fact that he was here to fight for her.
“She’s in the past, and she’s staying in the past. You are the one that I want in my future, Sabela.”
She drew her lower lip into her mouth as she considered his words. “But you said that your revenge plot never changed. That you were using me all along.”
It was true. Colin dropped his gaze and slumped his shoulders. “I did say that, but it was spoken in anger. I never really meant it, and it wasn’t true. I was so beside myself that I wasn’t thinking straight; all I wanted to do was hurt Trevor, and I did that in any way I could. It was wrong of me to do it. You didn’t deserve the way I treated you. You were and are blameless in everything, past and present.”
When she didn’t speak, he lifted his gaze and looked into her eyes. It was difficult to gauge her emotions, but he hoped she knew th
at what he said was sincere.
“I want you to be with me,” he said. “I want you to cook that duck recipe for me, and I want to take you around the world and experience everything with you. I don’t want to be apart anymore. Life is empty without you.”
He continued. “Most of all, I want to be honest with you, to be the man you saw in me before I blew it out of anger and old pain. What I’m saying is, I hope you’ll give me a second chance to show you that I mean it this time. I want to prove myself to you. I have to.”
There was a long silence between them.
“Well, I guess it’s a third chance, now. I really have screwed this up royally, haven’t I?” he asked.
Sabela stared at the table, hiding her expression from him. Colin’s heart pounded like he’d run a marathon, and he longed to know what was going on in her head.
“I’m pretty sure you’re the king of the screw-ups,” she said at last. “And probably the heir apparent, as well. And the secret bastard son no one talks about.”
The laugh burst from his lips before he could stop it, and Colin slapped a hand over his mouth. Sabela looked up, eyes glistening with tears, and she laughed, too.
He couldn’t believe it, but it was possible everything was going to be okay.
Colin didn’t know what he’d done to deserve luck like this, but he was thankful nonetheless. With only minutes spent in Sabela’s company, he already felt alive again.
His laugh was genuine, and his entire person warmed. She had already started to heal his aching soul.
Wanting to be close, he switched benches so that they sat side by side, then he gathered her up into his arms. They embraced, and he laid his chin on the top of her head.
Other diners watched them, but Colin didn’t care. He wanted everyone to know what he felt for the beautiful woman in his arms.
“You, Sabela Vaughn, are my future, and I couldn’t be happier.”
She looked up at him then, the tears in her eyes brighter than ever.
“And to prove it, I will move wherever you want to go to school,” he said. “We’ll live in New York together, and while you’re pursuing all of your dreams, I’ll be there to offer you my full support.”