CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Because it revealed everything, that was why. Because it showed all his cards. It told her his full and true heart, as pathetic as it was.

Slumping against the door, he dragged a hand through his hair.

And stopped.

Stopped keeping it all inside.

Stopped biting his tongue.

“Why didn’t I tell you I learned French for you?” He tossed out the question like an attorney cross-examining. “Why didn’t I admit I spent six years studying a language because I was in love with you?”

He’d wanted to hide it, to keep it from her. It wasn’t hard to pretend you didn’t understand. But those words, those things she said…he was only human. How could he hide his reaction?

She pressed her hand to her chest. “You learned French for me? Even though I know English?”

“You make it sound foolish.”

She shook her head. “No. I’m just processing. It’s big. That’s a big thing. How did you do it?”

“I started freshman year of college. It was my father’s idea. He even wrote me a note about it,” he said, softly, so his voice wouldn’t break. “He knew me better than anyone. He knew you were all I wanted. He wanted me to be with you. I still have the note,” he said, reaching into his back pocket, opening his wallet and taking out the worn, threadbare sheet of lined paper with the last words.

Annalise covered her mouth. Her bright eyes glistened with the threat of tears. “Your father wanted you to learn a language?”

He nodded and swallowed thickly. “He was practical, and he was romantic. He knew I wanted to be with you. He wanted me to have the means to, including the ability to speak the language and get a job. So I could live and work and be in France with you.” He rubbed his hand across the back of his neck. “I took classes in college. I used to think I was doing it for him. And maybe in some ways, that was how it started. A way to feel connected to the man who was gone. But I didn’t let myself believe that for too long.”

“It wasn’t for him?” she asked softly.

He shook his head. “No. His note might have been the reason I started, but you were the reason I never stopped. I wanted to be with you.”

“I wanted it just as much. You have to know that,” she said, her bright green eyes wide open and honest, not shying away.

He glanced at his watch, trying to avoid this deeper dive. “Your car is here in five minutes.”

“I know, but this is important.”

“So is not missing your flight.” He grabbed her suitcase, let the door fall closed behind them, and headed with her to the elevator banks. He pushed the button and then met her curious gaze. God, this was hard. Putting himself out there. He waited for her to go next.

“I knew you were taking classes, but I had no idea you’d become fluent. After we lost touch, why did you keep learning?” she asked as they stepped inside the car.

Ah hell. What did he stand to lose now? She was getting on a plane, leaving again. She might as well know. The elevator doors slid closed, and he fixed her with a serious stare. “Because I never got over you. I never stopped loving you. Even when we fell apart, I wanted to find my way back to you.”

There it was.

His heart. Served up. Given to her once again.

Her lips parted. She stepped closer. “I wanted that, too,” she said, placing a hand on his chest as the car chugged downward. “Don’t you know that?”

But that was the thing. He didn’t know. “No. How would I have known? We didn’t talk.”

“I thought about you all the time. I saved up every cent I earned from my job at a café. My airfare money, I called it. I was setting it all aside to see you again. I had enough for a few trips.”

“You did that?” he asked, surprised.

She nodded. “Yes. The year we tried to stay together and then through the rest of university. I wanted the same thing, Michael. I wanted to find a way back to you.”

His heart beat faster. Knowing she’d wanted the same thing even then thrilled him. “What happened then?”

“We’d drifted apart, and my sister needed money for her bakery, and I gave it to her. To help her. We weren’t together then, and if I wasn’t going to use it to see you, I wanted it to go to something that mattered,” she said, then returned to her questions, tugging at his shirt collar. “But I want to know more about your secret language skills.”

The car cranked its way to the lobby. Closer to good-bye. He’d kept such a tight lid on his emotions since Marseilles, squeezing them in, stuffing them into an airtight box, denying he felt a thing for her. He was tired of it. He was in love with her. He wanted her to know the full scope of his love, how far and deep it went. How it consumed him. Drove him. Carried him through the days and nights. The last time he saw her, he lost her. He might not have had a chance with her then, but he had a chance with her now. He wanted her to know.

The doors opened, and he walked through the lobby and out to the crowded avenue, thick with morning traffic and the din of horns and screech of tires. He peered down the street. Her car wasn’t here yet. He turned to her. My God, she was beautiful, and she was here, and he wanted her to know who she was to him.

Everything.

“Please tell me,” she implored, her tone both gentle and full of need. It did him in. It unleashed his hidden truths.

“Annalise, I wanted to find my way back to you. I learned French so I could be with you. If I had to be with you in France, I needed to know the language. I wanted to be able to be with you wherever you were.”

She nodded, listening. Waiting for him to say more.

He gripped her shoulder. “I know how to say I love you and I’ve always loved you, and I want you, and you’re the only woman I’ve ever loved, and I don’t know how to stop loving you. I know how to say a million other things like”—he switched to French—“you came back into my life now, and it’s the same you, the same girl I fell in love with eighteen years ago, but better. You’re strong, and yet more fragile. You’re tough, but terribly vulnerable. And I want to take care of you and love you. Because,” he said, placing a hand on her cheek, with her red hair blowing in the breeze, framed by the concrete strip of Park Avenue and the morning traffic lurching and cruising behind them.

Her tongue darted out, and she licked her lips, anticipation evident in the set of her jaw, the look in her eyes.

He swallowed, saying the last of his piece. “Because I’ve been in love with you forever. I’ve been in love with you for eighteen years. And nearly half of those years, you were married to someone else.”

She pressed her teeth into her bottom lip, her shoulders rising and falling.

“And it’s driving me insane,” he said. “I hold the words inside. But every time I’m with you I want to mark you with the truth of how I feel for you. That I love you, I’m in love with you, and I’ve never ever stopped.”

His admission echoed down the avenue, ringing across the entire city. His confession. His whole entire heart.

Trying desperately to read her reaction, to find out if this was a one-way path again, he searched her face. In her worried eyes, he saw fear and uncertainty. He wanted to kick himself. Perhaps he should have waited. Held back until they were on solid ground, far enough along that he knew she loved him, too.

“Michael,” she whispered, and her voice sounded feathery, like it came from another part of her.

Her car pulled up. The driver cut the engine.

“You need to go,” he said, tipping his chin toward the black vehicle.

She wrapped a hand around his bicep. It felt too good. He couldn’t be tricked by the feel of her. “I want to reciprocate. I want to say the same things back to you. But I can’t say that yet. I can’t tell you I’ve been in love with you all through the years and ever since we were young. I can only tell you I feel so much for you now.”

His head understood. But his heart wanted all of her, all the time. Even though he knew that was hardly fair.

“Look, I didn’t say this for you to reciprocate. I said it to be honest. Because it was eating me up. And I want you to know—I love you, and that’s just a fact of my existence.” He waved at the car and shot her a rueful look. “And you need to go. And that’s a fact of yours.”

She placed her fingers on his cheeks and held his face in her hands and kissed him. “I will miss you so much.”

That was all for now, and it had to be enough.

Seconds later, he lifted her suitcase into the trunk and walked in the other direction, not looking back.