Page 34 of The Valentine Agenda

"No."

His throat worked. "I know I don't deserve—"

"You're right. You don't." She moved to step around him, but he shifted slightly, not quite blocking her path but making it impossible to leave without acknowledging him.

"I'm trying to apologize properly," he said. "Not with money, but with honesty. I'd like to take you to dinner. A real dinner. Where I actually stay the entire time."

The attempt at self-deprecating humor fell flat. Hannah felt something crack in her carefully maintained composure.

"That's funny to you?" Her voice was quiet but sharp.

He flinched. "I didn't mean—"

"Do you know what the worst part was?" The words spilled out before she could stop them. Her sudden anger surprising even herself. "Not the bill. Not even the humiliation. It was that I actually believed you might come back. I sat there making excuses for you. Because I'd convinced myself I knew the real you."

"Hannah—"

She couldn’t stop. "But that was the real you, wasn't it? The man who could use someone's feelings as a prop in his revenge plot? Who could take photos for Instagram while planning to abandon them?"

He looked embarrassed. "I was wrong. I was cruel and thoughtless and—"

"And now what?” Her voice was growing louder. “You've done your community service, learned the error of your ways,and I'm supposed to give you another chance to prove you've changed?" She laughed, but it wasn't a happy sound. "I'm not interested in making you feel rehabilitated, Mr. Park."

"This isn't about that." His hand raked through his already disheveled hair. His tie was loose, his shirt untucked on one side. "This is about me finally seeing you."

"You saw me just fine at Nero's." She was shouting now.

"No," he said loudly. "I didn't see you at all. That's the point."

She felt her anger deflate, leaving in its wake the familiar ache of heartbreak.

"I'm not interested in dinner, or apologies, or whatever this is supposed to be," she said firmly. "Now if you'll excuse me."

She moved past him, careful to step around, to not let their arms brush. But his voice followed her to the door.

"I understand," he said softly. "I ruined it."

Hannah's step faltered, but she didn't turn around.

Each step took her further from him, from the dangerous possibility of forgiveness, from the even more dangerous way her heart had jumped when he'd said he could finally see her.

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"So you just said no?" Sophie handed Hannah a mug of tea, settling beside her on the couch.

"Of course I said no." Hannah wrapped her hands around the warm ceramic, staring into its depths. "What else could I say?"

"You could have said yes."

Hannah's head snapped up. "Sophie!"

"What? I'm just saying—he seems different lately. Even Mrs. Chen mentioned—"

"Don't." Hannah set her mug down too hard, tea sloshing over the rim. "He seemed different before too, remember? When he asked me to Nero's?"

Sophie was quiet for a moment, watching Hannah clean up the spilled tea with sharp, agitated movements. "This isn't like that."

"No?" Hannah's laugh was bitter. "Because from where I'm standing, it's exactly like that. James Park deciding he wants something, putting on whatever performance he thinks will get it."

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