“Great. Thank you.”
“For your wife, yes?” the waiter asked.
Ronan looked up from his menu and grinned at Giada sitting across from him, looking up at the waiter with a surprised expression.
“Yes. For my wife. And I’ll have the T-bone, with the roasted and smashed fingerling potatoes with some of y’all’s grilled onions on top.”
“And how would you like your steaks cooked?”
“Medium for me,” Giada said.
“Same,” Ronan added.
“Excellent. I’ll bring your appetizers as soon as they’re ready and put in your order for your entrees.”
“Thank you,” Ronan and Giada both said.
Ronan kept his eyes on the waiter as he left the dining room, then he quickly scanned the dining room before returning his attention back to Giada. He smiled at her.
“So, you’re not sure of what I want?” she asked, taking them back to their previous conversation.
“It would be foolish of me to assume I know what you want.”
“And yet you’re here with me, taking a chance anyway,” she said.
“The one thing I do know is that I’ll never get what I want if I don’t try. I can want and rage and beg and plead and demand all I want, but if I make no steps to work for what I want, the only guaranteed outcome is that I won’t receive what I want.”
Giada sipped her iced tea as she watched him waiting for her reply. “And you want me.”
“Not like you’re inferring. You’re not a prize to be won. You’re a female with a strong heart and an equally as strong backbone. You know your worth, and you know what matters to you, and you are careful about who you let into the periphery of your life. You keep your boys close and everything else on the outside. What I want is to be a part of that piece of you that you protect. I want you to choose me, as I’ve chosen you. I don’t want to posses you. I want to love you. I want to build a life with you. I want you to want to build a life with me, too. I want us both to wake up every day knowing that we don’t ever have to do anything alone again, and that we’re safe and loved and valued at the very core of who we are. And I want your boys to see that and know that they too are loved and valued the same way. That is what I mean when I say I want you. I don’t want to posses you, that’s not love. That’s possession and it has nothing to do with love and respect.”
Giada sat in her chair, her eyes pinned on Ronan, completely taken off guard by his very honest, very heartfelt words.
“And here are your appetizers! Enjoy!” their waiter said as he placed both their stuffed artichoke and their marinated crab claws between them, and small plates in front of each of them.
“Thank you,” Ronan said, without looking up.
“Thank you,” Giada whispered.
The waiter hesitated as he looked at both Ronan and Giada and realized there was an intense conversation taking place.He quickly excused himself and hurried away giving them the privacy that they obviously needed.
Ronan didn’t reach for the food. Instead, he just sat calmly and waited for Giada to react.
After a few minutes of staring at the table, she finally lifted her gaze to his. “If I were a different person, in a different place, with a different past, I’d jump at the chance to have your attentions focused on me. But because of my own situation, I can’t let you into our lives on a permanent basis.”
“Can’t or won’t?” he asked.
She thought about it for a second. “Can’t. And because I care about you — won’t.”
“Tell me what it is you’re afraid of.”
She thought about it, then closed her eyes when she began to tear up. “It’s so much. So very much. I just can’t expose anybody else to the danger I hide from every single day.”
“Tell me what you hide from.”
She didn’t respond, choosing to sit quietly instead.
“Okay, let me tell you what I think you’re hiding from. You are running from an abusive man, probably a husband. A husband that made you so afraid that you even send yourself into a meltdown at the thought of the kids spilling something. And from the way you’ve insisted you don’t have copies of your legal identification, even a birth certificate or social security card, and you’ve kept the kids at your side and refused to enroll them in school, you’ve got to be pretty sure he’s searching for you.
