She had no idea. No idea what it had been like the last time he’d been home. Spotting her out with someone new, singing, drinking, and dancing, after doing all those same things a few weeks earlier with him.
No—aftersayingall those…thingsto him.
It’s always been you.
Clearly everything she’d said to Theo had meant nothing.
She sure had a lot of audacity acting like he letherdown. She wouldn’t have even known he’d stopped by one last time had he not left that book. Forgive him for treating it like some sort of parting gift to mark the end of their nonexistent relationship.
After all those years, all that time waiting for the “right” moment, none of it made a lick of difference. Because when it came to him and Dani, there was no right moment.
It was easy to blame things on timing. Or on being in other relationships. Or his parents’ insistence that he find a Good Greek Girl. Or even that absolutelyridiculousjuvenile pact. All those things were easier than admitting that maybe he and Dani simply weren’t meant to be.
Instead of accepting that, however, he’d run. Taken the first opportunity that came to him and gotten the hell out of Dodge. That was it. No more torturing himself with fantasies of what would never be. So he dropped the book off at her apartment—the last, he vowed, he’d ever give her—and he boarded a plane back to Greece, hoping a couple of months of digging in the dirt would finally get her out of his system.
“I didn’t think you’d miss me,” he said.
“What’s that supposed to mean? OfcourseI missed you.”
She did?He looked her straight in the eyes, and she quickly added, “We all did.”
Of course. She missed him like any other of his friends and family missed him.
“I know you were there, Theo. I found the book.”
He hadn’t exactly tried hiding the fact that he’d stopped by. Leaving the book in the garage was a dead giveaway. An unspoken love note. And that time, not any book. Her favorite book. A reminder that there was no place like home.
Home meant they were together. Even when everything else in his life piled on him—the weight of the pressure to succeed at the museum, the anxiety of hiding his true passions from his family, the strain on his relationships when he could never give other women his full heart no matter how hard he tried, the burden to fulfill his parents’ American dream—Dani never let him down. Being with her eased his mind. They could hike and kayak like carefree kids again. Sit quietly beside each other reading, Dani always tucking her perpetually cold feet under his thigh. Take a drive to nowhere. Laugh together over a basket of fries and micheladas, though for the life of him he didn’t know how she could drink the ones with Clamato.
He liked to joke that she’d be pretty cool if not for her love of clam water, which always earned him a playful ribbing. Or as he saw it, a jolt of electricity from her touch.
It was time to let those things go, though. Childish things, as his parents frequently told him.
It was time to lethergo.
“Dani, we don’t have time for this,” he started to explain, but she wasn’t having it.
“No, you can’t say shit like that, act like it was okay for you to disappear for a year and not give a shit that we were worried sick about you, and then brush it off like it’s nothing. Or like it’s not important enough to spend, oh, I don’t know, more than two minutes telling me what the fuck is going on? After everything you’ve put me through, after I cried over yourgrave, you owe me more than that,” she said, pushing him back on the bench.
She might as well have thrown a brick at his chest. Yes, he knew everyone had probably been worried about him. Scared, even. But this? This wasn’t sadness or fear.
This was anger.
She was right. He owed her more than that.
“I’ve been kidnapped,” he said. Hearing those words aloud for the first time from his mouth made his skin crawl. He was a thirty-seven-year-old man, for fuck’s sake. How does an adult man evengetkidnapped and manage to stay held captive for an entire goddamn year?
Cowardice, that’s how.
Dani blinked back her confusion. “Kidnapped?” She scrunched her face and looked around, obviously perplexed by the illusion of his freedom.
“Kidnapped, captured, held hostage, take your pick.”
“Theo, what on earth are you talking about? You’re standing right in front of me now, alone.”
“I know it sounds absurd.”
“Wow.” Dani laughed, incredulously. “I can’t believe you. You know, if you’re in trouble or if you’re running from something, maybe you could spare me the bullshit and come clean. Because this?” she said, twirling her hands in a circle in front of his face, “This is insulting.”
