Page 56 of My One Week Husband
“College in the US with Cole,” I say, prompting him.
“Yes, then I lived in New York. And I’ve lived in Los Angeles. I’ve spent time in Las Vegas. I have a home in London, but I also like to be in Paris. I suppose I feel like I’m everywhere,” he says, a note of mourning in his voice. “And perhaps nowhere all at once.”
My heart squeezes at that wistful note from him. I brush my hand along his back. “Do you like that though? That nomadic life?”
He heaves a sigh, then shrugs. “Maybe it suits me.” He’s quiet again.
Is he wandering back in time? Is he a nomad because of his family? I’m torn between patience and pushing. He seems to like both. He seems to like when I take my time, but also when I ask him things too. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. “Do you say it suits you because your family is gone?”
His eyes squeeze shut. When he opens them, they’re dark again, those blue irises like hard gems. “Nothing will ever feel like home again,” he says, his tone icy but at the same time full of self-loathing. The sound chills me and worries me. “You’re close with your parents, aren’t you?” He shifts the conversation with a question.
I go with the changeup. “My dad sent me a text this morning. It was a picture of his dinner the night before.”
Daniel’s grin is electric, buoyant, and wonderful. Like that’s the best thing I could have ever received. “What did he have?” He sounds deliriously giddy.
“He had a saag paneer. He loves Indian food,” I say.
“I want to see it,” Daniel says, and there’s that desperate tone again.
I take out my phone, click on the screen, then find my messages. I show him the photo of my father’s dinner. “Here you go.”
Staring at the picture, he works his jaw over and over. “It’s so pedestrian. It’s so everyday,” he says, soft and full of wonder. “That’s what I love about it.”
My heart lurches toward him. In his words, I can hear all the unsaid things. All the wishes. He wishes he had a text from his parents about what they had for dinner.
He hands me my phone, and I put it away. I slide a palm along his arm, rubbing it up and down. “You still miss them.”
It’s not a question. It’s a statement of this immutable fact of his existence.
He draws a deep breath, then expels it like he’s letting it go across the river, like maybe the river is inhaling his breath.
“I miss them every day.” He turns to me, looks me square in the eye, and drops a bomb. “When I was seventeen, they were murdered.”
25
Daniel
I haven’t said those words out loud in more than a decade. The last person I said them to was Cole when we were in university in the United States. When I was young, when I was still emotional, when I was still a wreck from everything that had happened.
My role in it, my complicity.
Cole listened, understood, and knew who I was. Who I still am. But no one else has ever needed to know. No one else gets to see me.
But Scarlett.
This is the effect she has on me. She’s weaved her way into my heart, under my skin, loosening all the iron walls I’ve built, all the bricks I’ve stacked sky-high, all the steel barriers that have kept my emotions locked up.
Because locked up is safer. Locked up is always safer.
When truths come out, when people are known, when love is revealed, that’s when it can be stolen, bludgeoned, and destroyed.
But Scarlett is my river. She makes me want to tell her things. She makes me want to share parts of myself that I don’t like sharing.
I want to tell her my truth, and I need to tell her. She deserves to know. But there’s more than that at play—I want her to know me. I want to tell her because I’m falling in love with her.
When you fall for someone, you don’t want iron walls and steel barriers. You want there to be bright windows and wide-open doors. For better or for worse, this is who I am. I can’t hide it any longer.
“Daniel, I’m so sorry to hear that,” she says, her voice full of emotion, her eyes full of sympathy.
But there’s no pity in them.
Good.
I don’t want pity. But is that what she’ll feel for me when she learns the rest of the story?
Time to find out.
I grip the railing, my knuckles going white as I curl my fingers around it. I will tell her the rest. I can say this. I stare out at the water, then rip off the Band-Aid of truth.
“They were murdered in our home,” I say, turning to her because I don’t want to say it to the river. I want to say it to the person I’m falling madly in love with.
