Chapter 12 #4
“Really? Because I find that a little hard to believe,” I retort, completely losing control of my emotions.
“You definitely had the means to return to Melbourne.” My gaze pointedly drops to his suit, which would cost more than some people’s annual wage.
“So I guess it was just me you didn’t care to return to. ”
He opens his mouth to speak, then slams it shut again, his jaw ticking away furiously.
It’s the first time I’ve seen a true slip of his seemingly impenetrable armour.
Satisfaction floods my veins before settling in my gut.
The Zayn I knew wasn’t nearly as schooled in his emotions as this man standing in front of me, and it feels like I just got a glimpse of the boy I knew.
“And what if I did come back ten years ago? Or eight? Or five?” He says, and the coldness in his voice sends a chill down my spine that has nothing to do with the wind.
“What would I have come back to?” His velvet voice nestles between us as he takes slow, predatory steps towards me.
His eyes flash with a fury that rivals my own.
“I would have come back to you- a married fucking woman.”
Satisfaction turns to dread in my gut, heavy and uncomfortable. I knew this was coming.
“That’s not fair.” I try to muster my anger from a moment ago, but the heat has left my words. “I waited for you.”
“Not as long as I thought you would have, baby,” he emphasises his old pet name for me and it’s like a fatal stab to the chest. “How long did you wait, exactly? See, I’ve done a little digging since I’ve returned.
Looked up an old friend of mine.” He stalks closer, only stopping once he’s within arm’s reach.
He cocks his head to the side, reading my face with his expert precision.
“He told me it was six months to the day. You gave me six months past my eighteenth birthday before you moved on. To Daniel fucking Sanders, no less.” The rage is palpable between us.
It feels electrifying as it dances along my skin, zapping me with its current.
I bite back my retort. I won’t explain to Zayn how Daniel caught me at my lowest point and pushed, and prodded and encased himself under my skin until I could see no other path forward than with him.
No, I won’t be explaining how Daniel started off by love-bombing me, then once he had me, he started breaking me in his own twisted way.
That would mean confessing that him leaving ruined me, shattered my heart into a million tiny pieces that left me feeling like a hollow version of myself.
I thought Daniel was the safe option. I had tried the all-consuming love, and true to its word, it nearly consumed me whole.
Daniel made me feel secure. At the start, anyway.
What a joke that was. The only silver lining to Daniel’s slow betrayal was that it didn’t hurt even nearly as much as Zayn’s.
My heart was already broken beyond repair by the time Daniel took his stab at it.
“Yes,” I say slowly, inhaling a huge gulp of cold air in an attempt to cool the burning flames within me. “I moved on with Daniel.”
I say it simply, like it’s no big deal. Zayn’s jaw ticks so hard I’m concerned it will snap, and his eyes narrow with indignation.
“But it doesn’t even matter now, huh?” I finish, shrugging my shoulders with a nonchalance I don’t feel in the slightest as I remind myself that Zayn didn’t come back. Did he think I would still be waiting ten years later? And it’s not as though he even came back to me.
“It matters, Gianna,” he says coolly.
“No, it doesn’t,” I shrug again. “Not anymore.” I won’t be the pitiful ex-girlfriend still pining over someone who moved on the minute I was out of sight.
“I’m soon to be divorced and not looking to involve myself with anyone else.
And you hire prostitutes so you don’t have to deal with attachments.
We couldn’t have moved on more if we tried.
” I sniff and look out towards the cloud-soaked grounds.
“Right,” he says. The vehemence in that one word forces my gaze back to his. “We haven’t seen each other in over a decade, but you seem to know me so well.”
My cheeks flame with anger. “Am I wrong? How else would you have found my advertisement if you weren’t looking for an escort?
” I snap, tucking my frozen fingers into my jacket as my ponytail whips around my face, sending tendrils free in all directions.
“And tell me, Zayn, what would you have done if I did recognise you that night?”
This time I step forward until the toes of my white sneakers touch his and my neck is craning to look up into his narrowed eyes.
The heavens choose that moment to open, and rain pounds the roof, concrete and grass setting off a cacophony of loud noises around us.
“I wanted you to recognise me,” he grits out between clenched teeth. “I found your advertisement by accident, Gianna. A colleague planning a bachelor party sent it to me, that’s how I found you. I’ve never paid for sex in my life, and have no fucking intention of starting now.”
Jealously roars through my veins at even the suggestion of him having sex with other women, even though I know he obviously has been. It throws me, and for a moment I can’t think straight as I blink through the green haze that’s swept over me and left a bitter taste in my mouth.
“And then what? What was the plan once I realised it was you? A slumber party to catch up?” I scream over the noise, balling my hands into fists inside my jacket. “How could you let it go that far knowing I didn’t recognise you?”
He runs a hand through his black strands. Another chink in that armour.
“I was fucking angry, Gianna!” He seethes, stuffing his hands back into his pockets. “You didn’t even recognise me, when your face is the only fucking face I’ve seen for the last ten years.”
He turns his head away from me to look through the sheets of rain falling over the green field.
I ignore the way his words work their way under my chest bone and sink into my heart. He left and didn’t come back. His words mean nothing to me.
“Then you fucking snuck out of the hotel room before I could to explain,” he continues slowly, his shoulders tense as he runs his tongue over his teeth.
“The woman wouldn’t give me your number, no matter how much money I offered her, and I knew I couldn’t find you anywhere else online because I’ve been trying for ten fucking years. ”
He slides his dark gaze back toward me, and there’s so much heat behind his eyes it makes me flinch away.
He tried to find me? Then and now? I look to the ground, to the dark blue ink stain that still hasn’t lifted since the day we accidentally created it, but a memory of us making out under this very gazebo is the last one I want to be conjuring up in this moment.
“Then let me guess. I happened to walk into your law firm. Your colleague is called David, the one who burst into your office that day, and he was supposed to be my lawyer until you realised and intercepted my case.” I had put that little piece of information together myself over the last few days.
Something about the phone call the secretary received while I was waiting in the reception of Zayn’s law firm.
I may have also googled David O’Leary and recognised the LinkedIn photo.
It also explains why Zayn was so adamant about taking on my case. He hates Daniel, and I’m sure this is a nice little way to serve some revenge for the way Daniel treated him in high school.
“I was planning on telling you. I was just waiting for the right time.”
“Sure,” I say, glad for the first time my voice has some semblance of control.
Sometimes in my darkest moments I would let the box that contained my memories of Zayn open a fraction, and I would ponder what he had been doing since he left.
What kind of life he lived, if things got better for him.
And on the blackest of days, I’d wonder if he had moved on with someone else.
I’m not naive, I knew he wouldn’t have been celibate since he left, but knowing he was touching another woman the way he used to touch me would cause such a visceral pain in my chest that I didn’t let my mind wander down that path often.
Now, envisioning Zayn, more beautiful than I could have ever imagined, touching other women is the only thing that helps me cling on to my control.
It helps me to separate my Zayn from the Zayn standing before me.
I don’t know what Zayn reads on my face, but his anger recedes slightly as his jaw works back and forth.
“Gianna, let me expla-”
I cut him off.
“I don’t need the excuses Zayn. It’s been ten years and we’ve both moved on.”
My voice cracks, but I push through. “Please don’t reopen old wounds when it changes nothing of the past.” It might shape the future, and I won’t survive you twice, I want to say, but I can’t.
The rain chooses that moment to ease into a drizzle, and I take the opportunity to move past Zayn towards the path I’d walked a thousand times as a kid.
As I hurry back up the dirt track and then onto familiar streets, I can’t help feel like I’m leaving Zayn in my past once again.
At least this time it’s on my terms.