“No, sorry Emma, this is Zayn,” I say, practically spitting out his name. “An old friend of mine.”
“Ten times hotter than Charlie Hunnam,” she murmurs under her breath with a giggle, and I swear Zayn heard her by the smug grin that stretches across his gorgeous face. His dimples, the ones I loved more than I loved my own annoying brother, trigger a violent reaction in me.
“Also ten times more likely to break your heart then show up like it never happened.”
The grin slips off his face. “I told Sam I’m taking you home, Gianna. Let’s go.”
I don’t bother fightinghim, and we don’t speak to word to each other for the entire drive, the weighted silence stretching and pulling between us like an elastic band on the verge of snapping. He doesn’t drive me home. It becomes obvious where he’s taking me after just a few turns. When we pull up in the deserted carpark of our old high school, I don’t wait for him as I jump out of the car, slam the door behind me and follow the hidden dirt track down the bank I know leads to our gazebo. The fact that I’m still calling itourgazebostokes the fire in my chest, and not in a good way, especially because he seemed to have let go of the idea of anything beingourslong before I did when he broke his promises and fucking deserted me.
Grey storm clouds hover over the sky like a foreboding warning. It’s freeze-your-tits-off cold, the chilling windwhipping so fiercely I may as well be wearing tissue paper instead of my black puffer jacket and tights.
When I reach the cover of the familiar gazebo, I turn to find Zayn right on my heels. I step back to put distance between us, ignoring the longing and nostalgia this place stirs up within me. With a heavy chest, words start pouring from my mouth without warning.
“What do you want from me, Zayn? Why are you here?”
“You called me and asked me to come,” he says, always the fucking epitome of cool, calm collectedness, while I feel like my head could blow off any second with the storm of emotions raging inside of me. I managed to stuff all these feelings down in the last few days, locked them away the same way I’ve been doing since the day he left. But being this close to Zayn, and him acting so fucking obtuse, there’s no possible way to avoid them now.
“Don’t fuck with me Zayn. I’m not in the mood.”
A whisper of a smile, so wildly opposing to my heated words, tickles his lips. It’s as if he’s remembering something amusing, and that just makes me angrier. He doesn’t get to stand here and bask in fond memories while I’m a raging pool of fire.
“I told you I would come back,” he says quietly. He places his hands inside his pockets and watches me intently.
“Yes,” I say sarcastically, putting my finger to my chin and nodding in mock agreement. “Thesecondyou turn eighteen, if I recall correctly. Which I do. That was exactly,” I pretend to count off my fingers, “ten fucking years ago that you were due back. You’re a bit late, don’t you think?”
Thunder booms overhead, echoing inside the pillars of the gazebo. It must be mid-year school holidays because there isn’t a soul around. I wonder if Zayn knew that when he brought me here.
“I came as soon as I could,” Zayn says softly, and there’s an edge to his voice I can’t quite place. My heart jackhammers and my palms start to sweat even though the air feels below zero degrees. After all this time of wanting answers, it turns out that now the moment has arrived, I can’t bring myself to hear them. There can’t be a valid excuse for Zayn not returning. There just can’t be, because that would mean everything I’ve done since he left has been in vain. I had convinced myself long ago that Zayn stopped caring. That he never even loved me to being with. To hear any other version of events would shatter me all over again, and I’m barely holding it together as it is.
Useless. Dumb. Nothing.
“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 theday.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 leavingruinedme, 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 thatZayn 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 tome.
“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 meso well.”
