CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Zoe
Tears fall down my face uncontrollably, but they are the least of my worries right now.
“I swear I didn’t figure it out until that seventh day,” I say to David, praying he’ll believe me.
“Then why didn’t you tell me?” he bites back.
“What was I supposed to say?You just made me look like a complete fool in front of our client and boss, but that’s okay because I’m totally in love with you and, oh yeah, by the way, I’m the one who was texting you on this blind-dating app?” My voice cracks.
We have quite the audience now, but I guess this is where we’re doing this, so I have no choice but to give it my all.
“What about on the trip?” He doesn’t move an inch.
“I didn’t know how to tell you.”
I place my hand back on his chest. He doesn’t push it away but turns his head in a kind of disgusted gesture that breaks me in two.
“Do you know how confusing it is, going from despising someone to completely falling for them in two days? I didn’t know what to do.” I’m falling apart, standing here in the middle of a bar, but I don’t care. He needs to know exactly how I feel.
“So, you just lied? Acted like we hadn’t been texting each other for the past week? I thought I was ghosted by someone I was really into! How do you think that made me feel?” His voice rises in anger, making me feel even smaller than I already do.
I drop my head to my chest. “I didn’t know what you would do if you found out it was me.”
He leans down to get in my eyesight, but doesn’t touch me. “How about your name, huh? You lied about that too?”
This I can totally stand up for, and I plan on doing just that. “I only did that because I didn’t want some creep figuring out who I was and stalking me. I had no clue I would be matched with someone I actually knew.” All the emotions I’ve been holding in the past few days come boiling over. “I did that to protect myself, so don’t you dare throw that in my face.”
Thankfully, he backs off on that, but doesn’t forgive the rest. “I spilled my heart out to you about my ex and how she’d lied to me for years.” He pauses, then lets out a hard laugh. “Ha! I told you that story twice, and you never thought to come clean?”
“Why do you think I’ve been sitting here, bawling my eyes out before you got here? I was trying to figure out how to tell you!”
“It’s easy. You just say,Oh yeah, by the way, I’m the girl from the app.”
The way he’s motioning his hands and tilting his head back and forth makes me want to smack the smirk off his face.
If only it were that easy!
“And what would you have done if you’d figured it out first? Would you have told me?”
“Yes!” he states so definitively that it makes me step back. “I promise you, I would have.”
“But you hated me, and Lord knows how much I absolutely despised you. How could I go from feeling that way about you to falling for you as hard as I did? It was all too much!”
He drops his head back and lets out a breath. When he stares at me, his heart looks like it’s breaking in a totally different way. He shakes his head, heartbreak covering every inch of his face. “I never hated you, but sure am glad to hear how strongly you felt about me.”
“How can you say that? You and I fought all the time!”
“Did you push my buttons? Yeah, sometimes. But did you hear my sister talk about you the other day? She was right. You were the only person I spoke about to her. I fought with you because that’s how you treated me. If I hated you, I would have avoided you altogether. I didn’t realize how much those words had meant to me until you stopped fighting back on our trip …” He pauses and takes a deep breath, pushing his lips out in thought and staring right at me. “And now I see why you stopped fighting. Because you knew it was me.”
I close my eyes and nod slowly.
He puts his arms up in surrender. “I just can’t.”
He turns to walk away, and my world shatters around me.
“You can’t just leave,” I cry out.
