Page 110 of Dirty Ink

I laughed. Really laughed. The kind of laugh that draws attention in a place where attention is not supposed to be drawn. I laughed loudly. Brazenly. Rudely. I smacked my hand over my mouth, going red in the cheeks. Tim smiled gently and reached across the table to tug my hand away. He squeezed my fingers before placing them tenderly on the tabletop.

“I might not have proposed marriage to this girl,” he said with a wry grin. “But I would have liked to have seen her. Would have liked to know that she existed in the world. Would have liked to know that when I let her go, she was truly and fully and wonderfully herself.”

I swallowed heavily.

My voice was earnest and I hoped that he heard it when I said, “I never meant to hurt you, Tim.”

“I know,” he said, smiling sadly.

“I was on my way back to tell you and—”

“Rachel.”

I was surprised by his interruption. By the tone of his voice: kind but strong. I stared at him in slight confusion.

“What?” I asked.

“Do you really think you would have?”

I sputtered out a shocked, “Of course.”

“Told me?”

“Yes!”

“And gone back to Mason?”

I couldn’t believe he was actually suggesting I wouldn’t have.

“Yes,” I told him, affronted as I leaned back defensively.

Tim followed up by saying, fingers bridged, elbows on the table, “Then you’re going to be with him?”

I stared in silence across the table at Tim. For the first time since he’d arrived, the sounds of the restaurant filtered in. Waiters passing. People paying bills. The door of the bathroom opening and closing. Life going on. Time moving. The real world come for me.

“You’re going to be with Mason,” Tim said, pressing me even as his eyes held me softly. “You’re going to fly back to Dublin. You’re going to make things right. You’re going to be with the one that you truly love, like you said you would.”

I remained silent as the waiter asked if we wanted another round. Tim said we were almost done. He asked for the check. I avoided his steady gaze as long as I could.

I said to my fingers in my lap, “Mason would never forgive me. I’m not even sure he forgave me for leaving the first time. And this? No, there’s no way. Mason doesn’t forgive. He never forgives.”

Tim sighed. “But neither do you.”

A flash of anger flared in my chest and I looked up at Tim. He seemed ready for me. Ready to take a punch, ready to absorb it.

“I forgave Mason. I did. I truly and honestly did. It broke my heart when I heard what happened with his grandmother and it’s the most understandable thing in the world, what happened. The moment he told me I forgave him. It was instantaneous. And complete. There is nothing but love in my heart for him. I forgave him. I’d forgive him over and over again. I don’t think there is anything in the world that I wouldn’t forgive him for.”

I was gasping when I finished. I took a trembling sip of the last of my wine and sank back against my chair, lightheaded.

“So there,” I said like a petulant child who’d just finished her tantrum.

Tim seemed content to wait me out. To let me have my say. To give me time to get it out of my system. But I think he knew exactly what he was going to say the moment I opened my mouth.

Calmly, he said, “I don’t mean him.”

My eyebrows flicked together. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair.

“What do you mean?”

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