ADRIANA

 

Adriana blushes prettily and shrugs to cover her embarrassment. “I think you know the effect you have on women.” She gestures towards the girls along the beach that make no effort to pretend that they’re not staring openly at Grayson as he walks with her. She wonders what they must think of her, probably that she’s nowhere near pretty or interesting enough to hold his attention. They’re not wrong and a surge of jealousy catches her off guard. She has no reason to feel jealous. She has no claim on Grayson; she never has.

 

“I’m not interested in the effect I have on other women. What effect do I have on you, Adriana?” He’s stopped walking and has stilled her with a hand on her arm. There he goes, saying her name like it was a song, and she feels the butterflies in her stomach flap their wings like crazy.

 

She doesn’t want to answer. She’s incapable of lying to him, and she doesn’t want to give him that power over her, not again, not when she’s worked so hard to put herself back together like a broken china doll. There’s something that she’s desperate to ask him, something that feels like it’s about to burst out of her at any second, something that she’s wondered for a decade. But now that he’s in front of her, it’s harder than she could imagine to ask it.

 

“Tell me.” His voice is tender, as he ducks his head, forcing her to meet his eyes.

 

That’s what undoes her; it’s the warmth in his gaze that gives her the confidence she needs to address the elephant in the room, the one that’s been in the corner of her eye since she’d seen him again. She takes a deep breath. Here goes nothing. “Why did you leave? You disappeared without a word, without telling me where you were going. I waited for you, believing that you would come back, that you wouldn’t have just left like that. But you never did.” She feels her voice breaking, as she remembers the hopelessness, the disappointment that had crushed her day after day until she realized that he wasn’t ever going to walk her home again.

 

Grayson rakes his fingers through his curly brown hair, looking like he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He’s agitated, pacing in front of her, turning away from her and then facing her again, like he can’t decide what to do. He looks like he’s fighting with himself, something that she recognizes from the rebellious kid that he’d been all those years ago.

 

Eventually, he seems to come to some kind of a decision, and he faces her, just far enough so that she’s out of reach. “I’ve thought about that last day, hundreds of times, thousands.” He takes a deep breath, preparing himself for what he’s going to say. “Trust me when I say that I had to leave. I knew that I didn’t have any kind of future, that I didn’t have anything to offer you.”

 

Adriana shakes her head, his explanation is nowhere near good enough. “That’s it? You had a crisis of self-confidence!” She barks a laugh, but there’s no humor in it, only bitterness. “I cried for months, Grayson, for months. I wondered what the hell I’d done wrong to make you leave.”

 

He takes hold of her arms, her skin singing at the contact. “You didn’t do anything. I didn’t leave because of you. It was because of me. I was a screw up, and there were things that I had to do, things that I needed to do, that I couldn’t involve you in.”

 

“That doesn’t make any sense.” Adriana sighs in frustration, wishing that having him so close didn’t make her brain turn into the same consistency as her hospital’s mashed potatoes. “Why didn’t you at least tell me that you didn’t want to see me again?”

 

“Because I was a coward.” Her head snaps up at his words, not expecting him to accept responsibility for what he had done. “And it wasn’t that I didn’t want to see you. I knew that if I did, then I wouldn’t have the strength to walk away from you again, and I couldn’t allow that.” His eyes are burning with intensity, and Adriana feels herself taking a step towards him, needing to be closer.

 

“And now? Do you want to walk away now?” She looks up at him with her heart in her eyes. She knows that she should be trying to protect herself, that this man has the ability to crush her in one fell swoop, but she’s spent so long trying to push her feelings back into their box that she’s so tired of it all.

 

Grayson lays his hand against her cheek, and she leans into his touch automatically. He doesn’t answer with his words, but with his body. He guides her closer to him, settling her head against his chest, as he encircles her in his arms. Adriana can’t help but let a little contented sigh escape her as she lets him hold her, and she snakes her arms around his muscular torso, pressing herself into his body. She doesn’t know how long they stay like that, but she does know that she doesn’t want to let him go, not ever.

 

They spend the rest of the day walking along the beach, talking about their lives. Grayson seems genuinely interested in her work at the hospital—and impressed. It’s nice for her to be able to talk so openly and freely about a job that she loves. She asks him about fighting, about why he enjoys it, but when she asks him how he got into it he clams up, diverting the conversation in another direction. There’s something that he’s hiding from her, but she can’t expect him to open up to her about everything instantly; it had been a long time.

 

“Walking me to my door, it’s a little like déjà vu.” Adriana smiles up at him, as they finally get back to her apartment. They’ve spent the entire afternoon together, and she doesn’t want it to end. “Do you want to come in?” She looks up at him shyly from under her lashes, holding her breath for his answer. “For coffee,” she qualifies hurriedly.