“It’s beautiful,” I answered honestly. “Do you have more?”
He nodded. “Got my first tattoo a few months after … well, after I left. It’s a take on the Adair coat of arms.”
“Loyal Au Mort,” I said, remembering their clan motto meant Faithful unto Death. The thought made me snort. “Guess some things are hard to live up to.”
His expression clouded as he crossed his arms over his chest, defensively. “Is that a dig?”
Pretending to be unaffected by his indignation, I shook my head, glancing casually around his personality-less apartment. “Merely the truth.”
“You wouldn’t know what the truth was if it bit you on the arse, Callie Ironside.”
“Rewriting history, Lewis?” I kept my tone casual as I wandered around the small space, my heels clicking on his hardwood floor. My calm indifference seemed to bother him, and I could admit I took a sadistic pleasure in pissing him off.
In the early days of our friendship, we’d actually fought a lot. We were super competitive with each other. However, I always thought that was because we instinctually trusted we could be that way with each other and not have it break us. I never thoughtanythingcould break us. That was our problem in the end. I’d thought that, while Lewis had known better.
I’d loved him more than he’d ever loved me, and I hadn’t wanted to stand in his way of making the life he wanted for himself.
“Nope.” He watched me as I trailed my hands over a sideboard where he kept a record player—the only thing in the room so far that really spoke to this being Lewis’s home. He’d been a huge music lover and had introduced me to so many artists from all eras. “I remember exactly how we ended.”
“Is that why you brought me here? So we could rehash what doesn’t need to be rehashed?”
“If it didn’t, you wouldn’t have fled the club, fled me.”
I stopped to face him. “I didn’t flee you. I’m not a clubber. You know that.” Give me a quiet pub and a live band over a nightclub any day of the week.
“Was he?”
I scowled. “Who?”
“The French bloke you left back in Paris.”
Discomfort shifted through me. “You don’t really want to talk about our exes, do you?”
“Did you love him?” Lewis asked hoarsely.
The vulnerability in his question gave me pause. I stared at him, trying desperately to understand why his expression was so tight, so pained. “Why would you care if I did or didn’t?”
Lewis huffed, turning away from me in frustration. “I’m not the one rewriting history, apparently.”
“Can we not do this?”
He whirled around, his blue eyes flashing. “I thought you went to Paris and weren’t coming back. After everything … I thought you’d left Ardnoch after all. Forhim.”
Oh.
He thought after our breakup, I’d become a hypocrite. That I’d done something for someone else that I couldn’t do for him.
In a way, I had. “I left Ardnoch for me. But it was never permanent. I didn’t lie when I said it would always be my home, where I wanted to live my life. But I’m glad I spent those years in Paris and traveled a bit. I neverdidn’twant to travel, Lewis. I just didn’t want to leave everything behind that meant something to me. You can’t say the same.”
Lewis stepped toward me. “That’s not what I did.”
“Really.” I shrugged. “Because it sure felt like it at the time.”
Eight
CALLIE
SEVEN YEARS AGO
