Chapter 16 #2
Charlotte set her cone down on the bench. She couldn't hold it.
"What did you say?"
"I said no."
She looked at him. His blue eyes were on hers, direct, unshielded. No glass between them. No distance. Just the truth, bare and unglamorous, offered the way her father offered her mother coffee every morning. Without being asked.
"When she was sitting in my office, all I could think about was you.
Your voice, your face, the way you say your students' names.
The way you kissed me in the conference room and then told me it didn't fix anything.
" He turned the cone in his hand, watching the chocolate melt.
"I told her the truth. That what I'd felt for her was a myth. "
Charlotte's throat ached from a tangle of feelings she couldn't sort. Grief, anger and relief. A tentative, terrifying hope all knotted together.
"How did she take it?"
"She was hurt. She understood, but she was hurt." He paused. "I told her that I’m in love with you," he said. "That I didn't know it when I had you. That I've known it every day since you left."
The words filled her like warm water, filling the spaces she'd hollowed out over months of composure, months of running, months of telling herself she was done.
She wasn't done.
"You told Jacqueline that you love me," she said. She needed to hear it again.
"I did."
"And you're telling me now. On a park bench. With ice cream on your thumb."
"I didn't plan the ice cream."
She laughed. It came out wet, halfway to a sob, and she pressed her hand over her mouth.
The ice cream truck jingle cycled through its melody again.
A dog walker passed on the sidewalk: four dogs, tangled leashes, a comedy of logistics.
Charlotte watched them and tried to find the wall she'd built.
The one that was supposed to protect her.
The one that had trembled in the conference room, swayed during the kiss, and was now — she could feel it — listing badly, like a structure that had taken too many hits and couldn't hold its own shape anymore.
"I'm terrified," she said finally.
He didn't fill the silence. He waited.
"I want to believe you so badly that it scares me more than anything I've ever felt. Because wanting you broke me once. And I don't know if I'm strong enough to go through anything like that again.”
He set his cone down beside hers. Two melting ice cream cones on a park bench.
He turned to face her, and she could see the effort in him — the effort of not reaching for her, not touching her face, not closing the gap between them.
He was holding himself back. Visibly, physically. His hands on his knees, pressing down.
"I'm not going to promise I won't hurt you," he said.
"Because that's a promise people make and break all the time, and you deserve more than words I can't guarantee.
What I can promise is this: I will never stop paying attention.
I will never check my phone while you're telling me something.
I will learn your students' names and your favorite foods and the things that scare you, and I will never, ever treat you like a line item again. "
"Dominic—"
"And if you let me, I'm going to earn this.
Not by showing up with checkbooks or fixing things or managing the situation.
By being here. In the yard, with the chalk, drawing terrible dragons.
By eating ice cream on a bench with you and telling you the truth even when it's ugly.
By being the man you glimpsed for just a moment at the altar — the one who cracked open when you read your vows.
He's here. He's been here. He was just too afraid to stay. "
She was crying. She hadn't wanted to cry.
Not here, not on a street corner in front of a school with an ice cream truck jingling ten feet away.
But the tears came anyway, hot and fast, spilling down her cheeks and off her jaw, and she let them because she was done pretending to be composed around him.
Composure was a cage she'd built to keep herself safe from him, and she didn't want to be safe anymore.
Safe was Eric Cho and pad see ew and a life that was fine.
Fine was a word for people who'd given up on extraordinary.
“This isn't me saying yes. This isn't me saying we're back together or fixed or any of that. This is me saying—" She searched for the words and found them. "If you want to ask me out, maybe I won’t say no.”
“Maybe, huh?” he asked.
“Maybe,” she returned.
She looked at him. Chalk on his jaw, chocolate on his thumb, his eyes so blue in the afternoon light that they hurt to look at directly.
And underneath all of it — underneath the guilt and the fear and the months of distance — she saw him.
The man who'd drawn a terrible dragon told her the truth because she deserved it.
He leaned forward. They were a breath away. He studied her, silently asking for permission. She gave it by kissing him.
His mouth opened under hers, warm and tasting like chocolate. His hand came up to cover hers where it rested on his cheek, his fingers wrapping around her fingers, holding her there.
When she pulled back, he was looking at her with that vulnerable expression: the one from the altar, the one she'd seen for a fraction of a second before he sealed it over. Raw. Unarmored. Present.
He didn't seal it this time.
"So," he said. His voice was rough, and he cleared his throat. "Can I take you out? A proper date. Not a meeting. Not a grant review. Just us."
"Nothing fancy," she said. "No rooftop bars. No restaurants without prices on the menu. No cars sent to pick me up."
“Whatever you want, sweetheart.”
She thought about it. What she wanted to do on a date with a man she was terrified to love again.
"Nick's," she said. "The diner. Friday. Seven o'clock. I'll meet you there."
His mouth pulled into that half-smile, the one she'd been cataloging, the one that appeared when he heard her name. Only now it was wider. Unguarded. A full smile, rare and startling on a face built for composure.
"Nick's," he said. "Friday. I'll be there.”