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We ate late. Tim walked me home, and we said goodbye downstairs, neither of us quite wanting to.
I opened the door—and found Dante on the couch in my living room. My parents were sitting next to him, faces unreadable.
Apparently, my parents had never really known why Dante and I had broken up two years ago. I'd only ever told them I was going back into research.
For two years, Dante had been lingering around their neighborhood. In the last six months especially, he'd driven past their house every other day. Never knocked. Never interrupted. Just quietly waited.
They'd tried, at first, to make him move on. But the sheer stubbornness of him wore them down. Part of them felt guilty.
So when he showed up tonight, they figured it was time for all of us to lay it out.
Dante stood the moment I walked in. "Nina."
My head was already starting to hurt. "What are you doing here?"
His lips moved. Nothing came out. He sat back down.
I sat across from him. My face was blank.
"Whatever you want to say, say it now. All of it."
Hurt flashed across his face. "Do we really have to be like this?"
Before I could answer, his composure broke.
"I can explain. I thought Isobel was the one who saved me back then. There has never been anything between us. Never."
His throat caught. His eyes filled.
"After you left—after you left, I finally looked into it. I found out it was you. That night seven years ago, it was you. Nina. I had the wrong person. All of it—the wrong person."
His face was full of raw regret and something like prayer. He thought if he said it, I'd forgive him.
He was wrong.
That night, I'd been the one to pull him out. The one who sutured his gunshot wound in an OR, stopping the bleeding under sterile lights. I'd never once brought it up. It was the thing we'd both chosen to leave alone.
He'd put the wrong name on it. Once. For life.
"The baby—Isobel didn't have it. I know the truth now, Nina. Can we go back to the way we were?"
I shook my head. I didn't hesitate.
"No."
His face went white. He had waited two years for the answer he'd been bracing himself against.
"Why?" he whispered. Voice shaking. "I love you."
I looked at him, and my voice dropped to something glacial.
"Are you sure that was love?"
"If you loved me, why, in five years, did you never give me one gift?"
"If you loved me, why, every single time I asked to travel with you, did you refuse?"
"If you loved me, why, while we were shooting our engagement photos, was another woman carrying your child?"
I walked toward him, step by step, and watched the color drain from his face.
"My heart isn't a stone. It's made of flesh. It bleeds."
"If that was your love—no thanks. I don't want it."