“Then Zali turned eighteen and I finally moved back to Melbourne and after a year, what are the chances? The stars align and I stumble across your picture on afucking escort site,” he continues, and now his anger is palpable, like something between us I could reach out and squeeze. It sends a shiver down my spine as I stand frozen, entranced by his tale. “I thought I could handle it,” he grits out, eyes darker than sin as they bore into mine. “It had been ten years, I thought I was over it. I just wanted to see you. I was prepared to pay fifty thousand dollars for the closure. Turns out, nothing could have prepared me for when you didn’t even recognise me.”
Dread settles like lead in my stomach the more Zayn talks. Our whole twisted history splayed out for me to witness from his point of view is almost unbearable. My fingers twist further into the couch cushions as he removes a hand from his pocket and runs a thumb across his jaw.
“I didn’t plan what happened that night. I let my emotions get the better of me, I admit,” he drawls. “You didn’t recognise me. I thought you let men touch what I had considered mine for the last ten years formoney.I wasn’t in a good headspace.” His tone suggests that’s a gross understatement. “I don’t regret what happened but I regret what I said afterwards. I didn’t want to hurt you. Icame out of the bathroom ready to apologise to discover you gone.”
He’s glowering at me now, and my pulse thuds through the thick vein in my neck. “You had slipped through my fingers yet again.”
I swallow around my dry throat because I know the next part of the story. I landed in his office and he discovered I was married to Daniel. I think back to that day and the unrestrained fury that was pouring off him in waves. I didn’t understand then. Now, it makes perfect sense.
Zayn clocks me taking a tentative step backwards and lifts an accusing brow. “Daniel, Gianna?”
I take another step, and Zayn slowly rounds the couch. “You were really trying to fucking punish me, weren’t you?” His voice is soft, and I note his indifferent mask has slipped perfectly back into place. How did he learn to control his emotions like that? I’m sure every single one of mine is displayed on my face for him to see.
I back up until my ass hits the small dining table behind me.
“I wasn’t,” I say weakly, remembering the seed of doubt he planted earlier. “Well, maybe I was, but I didn’t realise it at the time.”
“Really? Because it seems pretty obvious to me.” Zayn doesn’t stop his approach until he’s standing so close I have to sit on the table to put some distance between us. I lean back onto my palms and look up at him standing over me.
“He was different after you left,” I say, and even though my blood catches a light at Zayn’s proximity and the understanding between us now that Zayn never wanted to stay away from me, there’s a plead in my voice for him to understand why I did what I did without me having to say the words. I was broken, and Daniel had promised to put meback together. “He was there for me after you left. I thought you weren’t coming back,” I choke, and Zayn’s face warps through the tears welling up in my eyes. “I thought he’d changed. He convinced me that he had, and he was different at the start.”
Zayn’s jaw clenches as he lifts a hand and runs his knuckle softly down my cheek, then traces it along my jaw line. “At the start?” He reaches my ear then runs his fingers through my hair from root to ends, his gaze tracking the movement of his hand as if he was mesmerised.
I gasp at my slip up. Of course it didn’t go over Zayn’s head.
“You’re hiding something from me, Gianna. If I find out he hurt a single hair on your head-” there’s a cold promise in his words as his gaze slides back to mine, “I’ll fucking kill him.”
My skin is ablaze where his touch still lingers. The Zayn I knew before wasn’t violent. Apart from that one time he returned blows to his mum’s psychotic boyfriend, he always kept his stormy temper in check. But the Zayn who stands before me is different. On the outside, he looks so deathly calm and collected, completely unfazed. But behind his depthless eyes, behind his cold words, I can tell the threat of violence is one hundred percent real.
“Ask me why I came back, Gianna.”
A shiver cascades down my spine. This is the crowning moment, the moment we’ve been building up to since he revealed who he is.
As he stares down at me with his dark, penetrating gaze, all of a sudden it’s too much. His return. The truth about his sister and why he stayed away. Himbeinghere after all these years of me thinking he had moved on. It’s too much to process, and I know in this moment I can’t have his truth.I’m not ready for it. My thoughts must be written plain as day on my face, as there’s the subtlest shift of disappointment across his as he reads them.
“No,” is all I manage to get out. I place my hands on his chest and gently push him away.
And after everything we’ve been through, he lets me.
17
“So it’s been two weeks and still no word from Zayn?” Anna asks through the phone I’m balancing between my cheek and shoulder. I hop over a pond-sized puddle that separates the paved sidewalk on my way to Hope House.
“Yep. I told him I needed space, though. So he’s just respecting my wishes.”
I didn’t realise he’d give meso muchspace if I’m being honest. And in the spirit of being honest, I’d rather he didn’t have quite so much respect for my wishes. His revelation was a shock, sure, and I’ve been working through a lot in my mind for the last two weeks. I’ve had to process the fact that everything I had convinced myself of since Zayn left is wrong. Instead of closure, I’m left feeling more confused.
He wanted to come back to me.
Simultaneously, I’ve had to confront the fact that I went on to marry the one person Zayn hated more than anyone else in the world. And what does that make me?
That’s hard to think about.
Do I still love Zayn?The question that’s been like aplague worse than influenza through my thoughts. How can I? I can’t possibly know him after all this time. Too much has happened since we’ve been apart.
I don’t even know how I’m supposed to feel about Zayn being back. He told me he returned to Melbourne a year ago. Did he still think he was coming home to me? What did he hope to find when he returned? Does he still love me?
Do I still love Zayn?
