Ugh. He preferred having her believe that it was one big coincidence, but he wasn’t about to lie to her anymore. He reached across the table and snagged one of her fries, because he knew she wouldn’t eat them all. “Well,” he said thoughtfully, “it’s sort of a long story.”
“I’m all ears,” she said, sitting back, focusing on him instead of her food.
“Okay . . . Cooper and Jack and I were in New York a few months ago, and while we were there, I happened to see a commercial.” He looked up at her. “A laxative commercial.”
“Oh,” she said, coloring slightly, and gave him a lopsided smile. “We do what we have to do.”
He smiled thinly. “I saw the commercial, and it was the first time I’d seen you in almost five years. So I guess I sort of reacted, and Jack took notice. He asked me what the deal was, and I said I used to know you. So when they were doing the casting for War, Jack was sitting in for T.A. He saw your audition and remembered that night in New York, and added you to the list. He did it as a little joke on me, I guess—but he had no idea who you were or what you meant to me.”
“Wait a minute,” Leah said, suddenly sitting up, planting her elbows on the table, her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Are you saying I got this role as a joke?”
“No, no,” Michael said, instantly waving his hands and smiling reassuringly. “The casting was a decision by committee. T.A. had one vote out of five. It’s legit, Leah, I swear it.”
That seemed to appease her; she leaned back, folded her arms again, and said, “Go on.”
He laughed. “What else is there? You got the part, I came back from Costa Rica, and there you were.”
“How many times have you been in New York since then?” she asked.
“Since . . . a few months ago?”
“No, since five years ago—since March 18 five years ago, to be exact.”
With a mental groan, Michael picked up another fry. “I didn’t go back until two years ago.”
“Did you look for me?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.
Being totally and completely honest was shaping up to be a real bitch. “No,” he said quietly. “I didn’t think there was a point. I thought if you were still there, you wouldn’t see me. And I thought you were probably with someone else, probably even married. Either way, I didn’t want to know.”
She frowned. “So what made this different? Why is L.A. the place you’ve decided to unearth it all again?”
“Because I saw you,” he said instantly. “From the moment I saw you on TV, I didn’t care who you were with, I wanted to talk to you. And when I saw you lying there on the gym floor—”
“Okay, okay,” she said, motioning with her hand for him to speed past that part.
“When I saw you, I couldn’t help myself or the rush of all those feelings I still had for you.”
She looked skeptical. Michael pushed the baskets away and extended his hand, palm up, silently asking for hers. She didn’t take it at first, just stared at his hand until he said please, and then she very reluctantly put hers in his, and he folded his fingers over hers, holding her tightly.
“I made a mistake, Leah. I don’t know how to impress on you how sorry I am for it. I would bring down the stars one at a time and hand them to you on a silver platter, and it still wouldn’t be enough. I’ve known for years that it was a mistake, almost from the moment I left, even when I was working to convince myself it was the right thing to do. Unfortunately, as time went on, the more I realized how bad the mistake was. I loved you, and I made a huge fucking mistake and I didn’t know how to make it right. But then I saw you—”
He paused, looked heavenward for a moment, trying to put a word to all the emotions he’d felt that morning when he saw her. Hope. Dread. Love. More hope, and a strange twisting in his heart, like the thing was cranking up after five years.
He lowered his gaze to her crystalline blue eyes and said softly, “It’s just that . . . I never lost your taste in my mouth. I never lost your scent. I never lost the feel of your body on my hands,” he said, lifting his palm up to her. “And when I saw you that morning, more beautiful than I remembered, your smile more golden than it had ever been, I knew I had to try. I had to do it for me, because I knew—know—I won’t ever feel this way for another woman again in my life. And even though the odds are stacked against me, I have to try, because I still love you. I always have.”
She didn’t say anything for a long moment, just held his gaze, her eyes full of myriad emotions and tears. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“I never had the guts to say it before,” he confessed.
“It’s hard to know what to say,” she admitted. “What happened that night was the worst thing that has ever happened to me in my life. I wanted to die. I felt like I’d lost a physical part of me. I felt like a fool, like I’d been used, like I didn’t matter.”