Page 38 of Tender Offer
I can’t look at him or take what he says seriously. Between the candlelight shining on every line of his beautiful face and the woodsy musk permeating from the clothes in his closet, my kitty is purring.
“Is there anything stronger than water?” I tug at the collar of my sleeveless turtleneck. The server’s eyes slide to Preston for the okay, and the man leaves at his nod.
Alcohol is nonnegotiable. I’ll show my ass and every hole tonight if Preston runs his fingers through those dark curls again. He knows he’s fine and isn’t playing fair.
The closet is a gorgeous display of carpentry. Strips of lights travel across the top of walnut cabinets that showcase suit jackets, dress shirts, and pants perfectly organized by season and color.
“I remembered,” Preston says, pulling me in with the gentleness in his voice, “how you’d organize our wardrobe at the start of each month.”
A lump forms in my throat. The organizing trick is a simple tool to rotate clothes and maximize your closet. I’ve given the recommendation to clients countless times, and it never once made the butterflies in my stomach take flight. This gesture is more than an efficient way to hang fabrics. It’s a declaration, standing proudly while daring me not to overlook its significance. He kept a piece of us after all these years. A reminder of a time when his custom suits and my Wet Seal outfits blended so effortlessly.
Preston is at least a foot away on the other side of the table on this non-date, but it feels like he’s deep in the recesses of my thoughts, soothing questions I spent years agonizing over.
Did our memory live on through the hurt and anger?
Do I still cross his mind during the songs we slow danced to in his living room?
I clear my throat and fight through the sting of tears. “It’s a good system to maintain,” I declare, sawing into my steak, which melts like butter. “Makes things easier to find.” I nod at the juiciness of the sirloin and force down images of Preston chasing me around our bedroom after he caught me moving his suits.
The server returns with two glasses of red wine. I gulp half of mine, unable to wash down the years of repressed emotions firing through my rib cage. Everything tastes bitter now. The rich Bordeaux we stocked in Paris, conveniently here on the table. This beautiful dinner.
It’s fitting, because that’s what I’ve become. Bitter.
I hate myself for wanting to be loved even a fraction of what Dominique and Justice enjoy. Worst of all, I hate myself for still holding pieces of Preston, turning them over in my hand and sniffing the memories when I need the high.
It’s pitiful to hold on, especially with how things ended.
How could I ever love a woman like you?
The sting from the words he tossed out before turning to walk out of my life emerges from the ashes. I planned to tell him everything that night. My real name. Why I pretended to be someone else. How desperately I wanted to make what we had work.
“There’s no going back.” My voice carries over the table in a troubled whisper.
Preston watches me with a tenderness that’s anchored in remorse. “I would apologize every day for the rest of my life if it were enough.” He sighs and bows his head. “I lost everything good when I let you go.”
“But you did let me go. How could you love a woman like me?” I parrot back to him with a newfound strength. This conversation is fifteen years too late. “You tossed me away without a second glance. What did you think would happen now? We’d fall back into old habits with your nostalgic wine and wardrobe confessions? I made mistakes, but I didn’t deserve how you treated me. Not after what we shared. You hurt me.”
A dam bursts in an explosion of flash powder and lighter fluid. I want a fight with the man who was so cruel to me that night. I couldn’t save myself then, but I can now before I’m in too deep.
“I can’t erase the past, but I take responsibility for what I said. I regret that day, and each one after.” The sheen of Preston’s tears catches in the candlelight. “I am sorry.”
“Don’t.” My voice cracks, along with another piece of my armor. I wanted a battle, but I’m caught off guard by his surrender.
He’s bracing for my fury. His attentiveness and lack of will to strike back are disarming. It lifts a weight still shackled to my past from the center of my chest.
I’m sorry.
I’ve wanted those words—yearned for them—to know I was enough. I always was, but hearing him say it is a balm for the pain I’ve carried for too long.
“You deserved to know who I was, not who I pretended to be,” I say in a shaky confession. “I should’ve told you sooner, but I never expected for us…”To fall in love the way we did.
A summer fling was the ceiling we set. Life had other plans. It rerouted our initial attraction into a friendship that became the foundation for a love that burned bright until it exploded. I’m not sure we’ll ever heal, but I’ll own up to the part I played in our demise.
“That never should’ve mattered, Puff,” he says, reaching into my heart and soothing it with my nickname. “I allowed my emotions and external influences to cloud my judgment. It’s no excuse, but I own it.”
I never met anyone as repulsed by my presence as his father was. He sold his son a lie, that the woman he fell in love with was an opportunist who was lying to get his money. The sting didn’t come from the assumption. It came because Preston believed the lie so easily.
The darkness in his eyes that night matched his father’s glare. I’ve never been so humiliated in my life—and in public, no less. Enough time has passed for us to forgive each other, but where do we go from here?
