“Have you been playing me for a fool this entire time?” she whispered.
It crushed me to see tears glossing her eyes, knowing she thought I’d deceived her in some way. I lifted my finger to her lips to silence her, determined to get everything I was thinking and feeling out in the open.
“You’re not a fool. In fact, you have one of the brightest minds I know. I knew it from the minute we first met. I never stopped thinking about that day… about you. To me, you were the one who got away. I’d thought of so many questions to ask if I ever saw you again. When I finally had my opportunity in the hallway right outside here,” I said, raising a hand to point toward her front door. “I thought this is it, here’s my chance, but my mind came up blank. Just seeing your face again was like being struck by lightning. All that energy was back in a flash, and I could barely breathe. Over the past few months, that energy grew and grew. And now… now I can only focus on one thing—the very thing I’ve been holding back from telling you because I’ve been too afraid you’d bolt.”
“What are you afraid to tell me?” she breathed in a hushed voice, so quiet, I barely heard her. Her eyes were wide as if she was terrified of my response. I didn’t care. I could no longer suppress my feelings because of what her reaction might be. She had to know how deep my emotions ran.
“I’m falling in love with you.”
32
Gianna
Feeling disconcerted, I waited for my breath to even out and my heart to slow. I still couldn’t make head or tail out of what had happened in the bedroom with Derek just minutes earlier. Now here he sat on my sofa with an earring that brought back a flood of memories. I needed the rush of blood in my ears to quiet. I felt sick, my body wanting nothing more than to purge the bile brought on by recollections of the past.
Then there were Derek’s words.
“I’m falling in love with you.”
I tried to think beyond those words and what they could mean. What had begun on uneven ground was shaping up to be something so much more. I felt like I was being pushed, lost in a colossal storm of emotions, I wasn’t ready to feel. I knew it was time to take a giant step back. If I didn’t, I sensed it wouldn’t be long before I slipped and fell from the ledge. I needed to focus on the present before looking toward the future. I had no idea how we accelerated so quickly to this point, although I had no doubt his words were genuine.
Without saying a word, I left him sitting on the sofa and went back to the bedroom to throw on yoga pants and an oversized sweater. Derek and I barely had a chance to be together, and we were already arguing. Whether it was his fault or mine, I didn’t really know. I only knew I didn’t want this. The path I was on was all too familiar. I’d already been down it. One fight would turn into another, then…
Not wanting to go there—not wanting to believe for one second Derek was anything like Ethan—I stalked from the bedroom and began to pace the living room. My emotions were going haywire, and I needed to calm down. I wasn’t sure if I was sad, confused, or angry, perhaps a little of all three.
Derek sat in complete silence, almost as if he knew I was trying to sort out everything in my head before speaking. He had placed the earring on the coffee table, the reflective glimmer taunting me with repressed memories.
Derek had seen me arguing with Ethan.
I remembered that moment as clear as if it had happened yesterday. Instinctively, I began to rub the arm Ethan had grabbed, unable to take my eyes off the earring. The sight of it was mindboggling, bringing back the inappropriate emotions I’d felt about Derek, another man, on what should have been the happiest day of my life. I was conflicted about why he had kept the earring all this time. It was a possessive thing to do and something I ought to run from. Alarm bells should have been sounding… yet they weren’t for some reason. Instead of worrying about it, I focused on getting answers to the bigger question.
“Okay, so that’s my earring. That doesn’t explain how you knew my real name.”
“There was a sign just outside the door to the banquet hall with your name, as well as your husband’s, written on it,” he explained. “I didn’t know your last name was Valentini, but I did know your real first name.”
I thought back to my former life and recalled the black A-frame sign with gold, swirling writing.
“Walker is technically my last name. Valentini is my maiden name.” My words sounded robotic, almost foreign to my own ears as I tried to process what he was saying. “Why did you lie and not let me know you knew my real name this whole time?”
“I prefer to think I omitted, not lied. Lying is what you did,” he countered.
“That isn’t fair.”
“Isn’t it? I’ve been patient for months, waiting for you to tell me your truth. I may have known one little detail, but you have to fill in the blanks—and I have a feeling there are a lot of them.”
I stopped pacing, took in his earnest expression, and returned to my seat beside him on the couch. There was no malice in the way his eyes pleaded with me to open up—just patient understanding. Our time together thus far may have been short, but it felt as if we’d known each other for decades. He wasn’t really the stranger I thought he was but familiar to me in ways that were unexplainable.
“I made up the name because I’m hiding from my abusive husband. I’m not divorced, and still very much legally married.” He nodded his acceptance, almost as if he knew that all along. “Did you already know that, too?”
“That you’re married still? No, but I suspected abuse. When I saw you the first time after you moved here, you introduced yourself as Val. Of course, I knew that wasn’t your name and I almost called you out.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Something in your eyes stopped me. You looked genuinely afraid—terrified, actually. I’d seen that look all too many times from the women taking my self-defense classes. Combine that with your shorter and darker hairstyle, I figured there was a reason for hiding your true identity. So, I let you keep your lie and told myself your story was none of my business. But then we got to know each other and…” He ran a hand through his sandy waves, trying to find the right words. “I wanted to say something so many times. At first, I kept quiet because I thought I’d spook you. I didn’t want you to run. I started to call you Sparky for the spark and energy you threw into your defense classes but also because I didn’t want to get used to calling you by the wrong name. I don’t know if you noticed, but I rarely called you Val. Eventually, I came to realize it was about trust. You didn’t trust me with your truth. I had to earn it. When we went on our first official date, I knew I had to say something, but how could I at that point?”
“What do you mean? That seems like as good of a time as any.”
“How could I say I knew the truth because of an earring I failed to return, then kept for years. That sounds crazy—like a stalker cherishing a memento,” he said with a light laugh. “That wasn’t the case, but I knew how it would look. So, I decided to wait for you to tell me. But then tonight…”