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I ate my omelet without a word, not looking at him. I had been collecting my thoughts for a while now, and I had too many questions.
I didn't even know where to start. And I was hesitant to. If he started lying or evading, or so help me God, manipulating me again, this thing would be dead in the water.
He finished his meal before I did, rising to take his plate to the sink then came back to sit across from me.
I felt him staring at me while I ate, but I didn't look up.
I finished about half of my omelet before I pushed my plate toward him. I'd prepared us both the same portion size, just kind of assuming he'd finish what I didn't.
Because he had a thousand times before. Jesus, even eating together was like walking through a field of landmines.
Put us together to do anything, and there was a memory behind it. A dozen. A hundred.
We had words with whole lives attached to them.
That was the burden of falling in love so young. Of letting yourself go so deep into another person. You owned too much of each other to ever really walk away.
And we had proven as much. Time and again.
I waited until he finished the second plate and rose to take it to the sink.
I got up and followed him. "Your mother's been blackmailing you." It wasn't a question.
I watched his back as I said the words, witnessed how he braced himself and shuddered like his whole world was crashing down around him.
Because it was.
He turned to look at me, and I read too much in the agony of his eyes. Knew too much from what they held. So many of my questions were answered from just that look, if I was honest with myself.
But denial is a powerful thing, and I wouldn't have minded clinging to it for just a little bit longer.
"Yes. Yes." He said it with a sort of reverent lightness, as though some great weight had been lifted from him.
Because years of burdensome secrets had just been taken off his shoulders.
Jesus, I was a fool.
"Of course she has," he continued succinctly. "Of course she has."
CHAPTER TWENTY
"I know of only one duty, and that is to love."
~Albert Camus
PRESENT
DANTE
I was shocked at myself, at my reaction to her words.
I'd been avoiding this for so long, had gone through so much pain, suffered so much just to keep this from happening.
I'd never imagined in my wildest dreams that my knee-jerk reaction to having it all come crashing down on me would be a torrential downpour of relief. I was weak with it.
But also, of course, it was my worst nightmare. The very thing I had always dreaded.
Because what she would do now that she knew terrified me.
