Page 41 of Everything We Give

I absently touched the wave on the side of my head. “Do you really want to do this? Small talk?”

He shook his head once. “No.”

“Why did you ask me here?”

“This isn’t easy for me to say.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose, then let his arm fall back on the table. “I want to apologize for the way I acted that last year after ... after ...”

“After Phil assaulted me?” I supplied in an even tone.

“Yes. That.”

I swallowed the knot that formed in my throat and momentarily looked out the window. We were in a crowded shopping mall across the road from the Stanford campus. The high school next door had just let out. A line at the order counter was steadily growing as we talked.

Phil had attacked me moments after James proposed. His way of getting back at James for the Donato family’s ousting of Phil from the family business. Stunned, scared, and demoralized, I’d agreed with James’s plea not to speak a word of what happened with Phil. According to James, something big was going down at Donato Enterprises that involved Phil and, as I later learned, the DEA.

I thought of last June. “You’ve apologized, and I’ve forgiven you.”

“I want to explain why I did what I did.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Please. Let me say this,” he said, his voice a dry husk.

I didn’t owe him anything, but if he wanted closure, the least I could do was give him that.

I nodded slowly.

James cleared his throat behind his fist and steeled himself. “Phil had been using Donato Enterprises as a cover for trade laundering. I didn’t know Thomas was working with the DEA, or that the feds were going after Phil’s broker, not just Phil. I hadn’t been privy to that information,” he added, derisively. “I believed if you had filed charges against Phil, he would have run. And if the feds couldn’t have Phil, they would have gone after Donato Enterprises. The company would have had to forfeit its assets and most likely fold.

“Had that happened, I wouldn’t have the funds to open my gallery, or to help you launch Aimee’s Café, which I really wanted to do. I wouldn’t have had any money left to provide you the life I wanted to give you. I thought I would have lost everything. I thought I would have lost you.”

“James.” My heart ached for him and everything he had lost. For in the end, his mistake had cost him everything. He’d lost the life he had. He’d lost me.

James leaned back in his chair and his hands fell into his lap. “I sometimes think you should file charges against me.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because I insisted you pretend it never happened.”

I had pretended, for more than two years, until I found James as Carlos and I acknowledged how much I’d been hurt. We’d both been hurt. And James had suffered enough.

“James, no. I won’t do that to you. We need to move on. And your sons need you.”

I caught the glimmer of moisture in the corners of his eyes. “Yes, they do. Thank you for understanding.”

I rested my hand over his and took on a serious expression so that he understood I meant every word. “I’m not going to press charges. I forgive you. Now, forgive yourself. It’s OK to go forward.”

“I’m trying. But Aimee, about Phil.”

My blood ran cold. “I don’t want to talk about him.”

“Neither do I. But if you want to press charges, I’ll help you. Use me as a witness.”

I shook my head hard. “I’m not filing charges. I don’t want to invite your family back into my life. I don’t want anything to do with them.”

“Including me.”

“James ...”

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