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He shakes his head. “Not yet.”
Infuriating.
“Well, since you brought it up, at least tell me why you didn’t land the jet that night, leaving me in New York. Or hand me off to someone else when we arrived. Instead, you put me up here at your house. Gave me a beautiful room. Imprisoned me, yes, but on what has basically been a vacation.” I take a sip of wine to soothe my dry mouth. “Why?”
He shakes his head. “I’d seen your photo.”
Ice creeps up the back of my neck. He saw my… photo? What is he talking about?
“What do you mean?” I finally ask.
“Months ago,” he says. “When my friend told me you were doing a profile on me.”
I think back to New Year’s when Mike announced the mission. To our flight over on the jet, when Damian asked me if I was a journalist. Did the security team tell him why he was chosen? I think of his mother, his father, him, and their sadness, and my stomach drops to the heels of my gold sandals.
“You’ve known? This whole time?” I ask.
“Of course I have.” He gives a shrug. “We’re Bachmans.”
The white-hot stomach-turning heat hits me—the one you feel when your world tips upside down, a truth is revealed to you, one you had no idea existed.
He knew. The whole time. Of course he did.
I’m a fool. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What does it matter?” he asks.
“I don’t know.” My hands are shaking. I slide the one under his out, slipping them both under the table, folding them in my lap. “It just does.”
“You feel like a fraud?” he asks.
“Yes.” I nod. “I mean, I am.”
He surprises me by looking down at the table, saying, “So am I.”
“How so?” I ask.
“I’ve been pretending I didn’t know who you were. That I didn’t already know everything about you.” He looks away. “Well, what can be put on paper, at least.” He shakes his head. “I didn’t know how you’d… be.”
“And how is that?” I ask. “Stupid? Pathetic? A total fool?”
He holds my gaze. “Strong. Smart. Funny. Caring.”
Why is he doing this? And why is he doing this tonight?
Tears burn at the corners of my eyes. I’m shocked. I feel silly, ashamed. And yet, why are his comments making me also feel all warm inside?
Even though he has no idea this is our last night together, it’s only fair to tell him the real reason I’m leaving before I disappear into the night. My words are a whisper. “I just don’t want to be made into something I’m not.”
He stares at me for such a long time, I have to be the first to look away. A fingertip slips beneath my chin, tilting my face back up. “I’d never,” he says, truth in his gaze, “want you to be anything other than you. You’re too perfect to be anything else.”
My breath, my response—if I had one—catches, holding, forming a warm, thrumming ball of love in my chest. I’ve never heard words so beautiful, much less had them said about… me.
I want to answer, to thank him for this last but most important gift he’s bestowed on me, but before I can speak, he moves in so close I can feel the heat from his skin. He lowers his voice to a rumble, the sweetness dropping from his tone. “Now tell me, what were you doing, swimming over by the docks?”
A hard ball of ice forms in the center of my belly, my muscles clenching around it. I didn’t even know he knew I went swimming today. I should have assumed his watchdog Caesar would fill him in.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
