Ryan exhaled slowly. “I want to believe you, but I can’t.”
“Why not?” Frustration spilled out of me. I might have been to blame for that night, but Ryan was also accountable. For this part, at least. “How could you just believe Max over me? I told you I loved you. Ishowedyou, but you still believed him. How?”
My voice had risen to a shout by the end, ringing out over the empty car park.
Ryan’s gaze turned weary. Bleak. He dropped his cigarette and extinguished it with the toe of his shoe. “Because I could never understand how or why you loved me. What Max said gave me an explanation. It made it all make sense.”
“Shadow,” I murmured, cupping his face. “I wish you could see yourself how I do. Then you’d understand that you’re worth everything. That I’ll move heaven and earth to make you happy.”
He laughed bitterly.“If that was true then you wouldn’t have left.”
“I had no choice. I had to leave or I would’ve died in that house.” A sheen covered my eyes but I didn’t try to blink it away. “It was fucking selfish of me, I know, but I had to get out of there.”
Mine weren’t the only glassy eyes. “I can understand that, but leaving me behind? That, I can’t wrap my head around.”
“You asked me to,” I reminded him. “Demanded it, even. What was I meant to do, Shadow? Stay and fight when you’d explicitly asked me not to?”
“You left early,” he said, his voice cracking. “I thought we had two more weeks, and you took that from me too.”
A yawning pit opened in my stomach. “I thought…I thought that was best. What good would those two weeks have done? It was better that I just left. A clean break. That was what you wanted, right?”
Ryan pulled out of my hold and shook his head. “Doesn’t matter now, does it? You left. I’m getting married. That’s the end of it.”
His gaze turned cool. Polite. “Thank you. I’m glad we did this.”
“Glad we did this?” I repeated hollowly.
“Yes.” He nodded. “You were right. We needed to have this conversation. Thank you.”
I jerked my chin. “Don’t fucking thank me, Shadow. Not as you’re about to walk away.”
“There’s nothing to walk away from,”Ryan said flatly. “We’ve finally cleared the air. I’ve moved on, and now you should too.”
I raised a brow. “That’s what you want? To see me move on?”
“Yes.” Pain flickered through his eyes, so quick I could’ve blinked and missed it. “Move on, Dom. I mean it.”
Fucking bet.I gave him a saccharine smile. “If you say so.”
Stepping to the side, I opened his car door for him. He eyed me suspiciously as he slid inside. “Why do I feel like you’re plotting?”
“I’m just planning to do what you want me to do,” I said airily, leaning on his car door and grinning at him. “You want to see me move on? You fucking got it.”
Ryan’s nostrils flared, but he didn’t take the bait. Just slammed his car door shut and took off out of the car park like it was on fire.
I chuckled as I walked back into the restaurant.
Suddenly I was ravenous.
A familiar figuredropped into the seat opposite me. “When I got your message, I figured I’d find you half-cut and crying.”
I grunted at Max. “I won’t lie, it was fucking close. I thought I’d lost him, but there’s a chance. I know there is.”
Max signalled the waiter for a beer. “Given he abandoned you in a restaurant miles from both your work and home, I’m going to say you might be wrong there.”
“That’s because you don’t know what happened.” I pointed my spoon at him. In the time it had taken Max toget his arse here, I’d had a full three courses. I was currently smashing through a creme brûlée. God, this was so much better than the MREs I was used to surviving on. “Yes, he was pissed off, but that’s okay.”
Max cocked a brow. “Remind me again, how is you pissing Ryan off a good thing?”