Her confession gutted me. Didn’t she know she had been it for me at one time? The thought deflated my anger. So I met her truth with my own. “I would have dated you then, Lilah. I tried.”
“No, I’m not …” She blushed and shook her head, like she didn’t need my validation, but it still raised an emotion in her.
That I got any reaction almost had me smiling despite our arguing. This wasn’t supposed to be what I was doing. I shouldn’t have wanted to make her remember that we could have worked, but I had to know that she felt the same. If I had to remember her screaming my name and the taste of her pussy, she needed to remember too.
“I don’t need you to say that, Dante. I don’t want you to feel bad for me, okay? I hate that you do. I’m fully capable of handling myself.” She shook her head fast, and her soft waves fanned out around her as she rubbed her eyes. Then she chuckled. “Why are we making this so complicated? I’m here to uncomplicate all my little complexes, to not worry about this anymore. I mean, do you know I screwed a guy from our hometown in college because he wanted to pretend I was Izzy? He basically did it as a favor to me—”
My eyes bulged at her confession, and she snapped her mouth shut like she hadn’t realized what she was even saying. What type of men was she hanging out with? “What the fuck is his name?” I grabbed my phone out of my pocket to figure out his address as soon as she gave it to me. “I want his name right now.”
She snapped her fingers in my face. “Dante! You’re not focusing. I made that choice. I wanted to screw around. I wanted to be free to be a mess. I was so sick of being this perfect, innocent little bird to everyone.”
“Innocent?” I spat. “I seem to recall us—”
She cut me off as her face heated. “Okay! That was one time. Please do not bring it up. Let’s continue to successfully avoid it like we have for all these years.”
“More than once, Lilah,” I corrected. “And do you mean how you’ve ‘successfully avoided’ me in general? Because I never avoided you,” I threw back. If we were going there, I was going all the way there.
“That’s neither here nor there. We don’t have to talk about any of this ever again.”
“Okay.” I dragged out the word. We needed to table things. We needed to reset and recenter. The more pressing issue I had was that she’d never told me or reached out about any of this. “Still, why didn’t you tell me you felt this way?”
“Seriously?” A laugh bubbled up from her like she was confused. Then she was doubling over and laughing like it was a big joke. “Dante, we weren’t talking.”
“You’d emailed me for years, Lilah, before …” I stopped because I didn’t know how to describe what we’d had. “I would have been there for you.”
“I didn’t want you there for me like that. I didn’t know where I wanted you. I just knew we weren’t friends.”
I stumbled back like she’d physically hit me. “Of course we were.” I’d tried to be everything to her back then. I might not have been close to her, but I thought I was her rock like she was my last glimpse of light. “I drove you to school. I brought you gifts from overseas. I went searching for hours for little shit you’d like. You think I just stumbled across a damn lamb carving? I hung out with you that night because I wanted to. Not because you were the last resort without Izzy and your brothers not being home. I definitely didn’t—”
“Don’t, Dante.” She pursed her lips. I was pretty sure she was trying not to smile about the fact that I had been about to bring up fucking her again.
“Fine.” I held up my hands. “But I wanted to be there for you. I thought I was. The guys that followed you around, I made sure you weren’t subjected to their bullshit.”
She shook her head and let out a little huff that could have been a chuckle. “I’d have loved to be subjected to someone’s bullshit, but honestly, I’m happy I subjected you to mine first.”
“Lilah, what we had wasn’t bullshit.”
“Oh, God. Do you listen? Look, we’re both better for it, okay?” Her lip trembled like she was holding in the world.
“Did I hurt you as much as you hurt me?” I had to know because the pain that overtook her eyes made me want to pull the information out of her any way I could.
She shook her head and closed her eyes so tight, I wanted to grab my question back. “I went through a lot. And I know that I probably owe you an explanation as to why there was so much avoidance after I went off to school, but I can’t visit that now. I need to be here and be happy and be away from my life back home.”