Page 32 of Love Around the Corner

After a long, intolerable silence broken only by the sound of Alfie’s own ragged breathing, Leo said, “I always intended to tell you. Dee kept pushing me to—”

“Dee?” Alfie swung back around. “Dee knows?” A new wave of humiliation washed over him. “Christ, who else?”

“No one.”

Alfie wasn’t sure he believed him, he wasn’t sure he believed a word Leo said. “So you and Dee were, what? Conspiring? Deciding when to spring the fucking surprise?”

“It wasn’t like that,” Leo said faintly. “Don’t blame her. Dee said all along that I should tell you. I’m the one who…who fucked up.”

“Yeah,” Alfie growled. “Yeah, you did.”

Leo flinched but Alfie ignored it, told himself didn’t care about liars. Leo Novak could go to hell and take LLB with him.

“At first I was…upset,” Leo said in a shaky voice. “You weren’t who I was expecting. And then, later, I didn’t know how to tell you. I was afraid you’d…” His eyes were impossibly wide behind his glasses, the sea-glass green washed out by the cold morning light. “I was afraid you’d hate me.”

“Yeah, well.” Alfie’s chest squeezed around his leaden heart. “You got that right.”

Leo’s gaze dropped to the floor. He said nothing.

“You lied to me. You let me sit in that fucking bar thinking someone I— Fuck, someone I thought Iloveddidn’t want me. You…you pretended to be him—“

“I wasn’t pretending.”

“Evenyesterday, Leo. Even fucking yesterday. I can’t—” He was walking then, desperate to get away. “I can’t process this. I can’t imagine how fucking stupid you think I am, how little fucking respect you have for me, that you’d do this to—”

“Alfie, wait.” Leo grabbed his arm, trying to keep him from reaching the door.

But Alfie shook him off, voice cracking. “Don’t you dare touch me.”

Hands raised in surrender, Leo said, “What wouldyouhave done? If I’d been the one to get there first that night, what would you have done? Don’t pretend you’d have been happy.”

“I don’t know!” Alfie snapped. He didn’t want to think about that, angry at the needling spike of doubt it introduced. “I don’t know what I’d have done, but I sure as hell wouldn’t have lied. And I wouldn’t have treated you like a dumb fucking idiot, either.”

“I’m sorry,” Leo said, arms dropping to his side. “I’m sorry I screwed up, but I don’t think you’re an idiot. Alfie, I… I love you.”

“Bullshit.” But Leo’s confession agonized him, pierced him with its broken promise. “This isn’t how you treat people you love.”

“Let me explain why—”

“No.” Alfie shoved his feet into his boots, grabbed his coat. “I don’t care. I don’t care why you did it. I don’t even know who youare.”

With that he slammed out of his own house and stalked away into the frosty morning, leaving his heart in pieces in the snow.

Chapter Ten

Leo sat zombie-like at Dee’s counter with the world in ruins around him.

He’d lost everything. And it was all his own damned fault. If he’d gotten to know Alfie better last Christmas, or if he’d had the guts to walk into the Whiskey Jack and confront the truth, or even if he’d told Alfie last night…

At any one of those moments, he could have diverted disaster. But he hadn’t. He’d been a pompous prick, a snob of the worst order. And a coward. While Alfie might be wrong about how Leo saw him now, he wasn’t wrong about how Leo had seen him in the past. And maybe, if he hadn’t been so blinded by his prejudice, he might have done Alfie the courtesy of telling him the goddamn truth when it would have made a difference.

His vision blurred and he blinked, realizing something had dripped onto his glasses. Water. His own stupid tears. Fuck, he was crying in a coffee shop like a loser. And he couldn’t stop.

“Come on.” A hand squeezed his arm and he startled. But it was only Dee, leading him to a quiet table in the corner. Not that the place was busy two days before Christmas. Most people had places to be, people to be with.

He sat, as directed, and Dee put some kind of drink in front of him. He didn’t care what; his mouth was ashes, his stomach a knot of grief. Last night—Christ, this morning—he’d thought he had everything. And now it was all gone, blown away by his cowardice, snobbery, and stupidity.

“That bad, huh?” Dee said, sliding into the seat opposite him. For once, she’d made herself a coffee and sat there sipping it as she watched him over the frames of her glasses.

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