Page 204 of Legacy
She’s really here.
I watch her like she might disappear if I blink.
Drinking her in.
That beauty mark.
The one just to the side of her lip, small you’d miss it unless you were this close. Unless you spent years remembering where your lips used to rest.
The kind of detail that’s easy to overlook… unless you’ve memorized it.
I’m a fucking idiot.
Five years of pretending to move on.
Five years of sending people to do what I should’ve done myself.
Five years of haunting the edges of her life, too much of a coward to step back into it.
I sit next to her.
“Would you have answered,” I ask, voice quieter now, “if I had called?”
Her hand stills.
The bagel pauses midway to her mouth.
She sets it down slowly on her plate, then lifts her eyes to mine.
Her gaze is steady, but the corners of her mouth twitch like it physically hurts to say it.
“I want to say no,” she whispers. “That I was strong. That I moved on. That I hated you.”
A beat.
Her voice drops.
“But yes, Angelo. I would’ve answered.”
Her words settle between us, soft and shattering.
“I would’ve beenangry,” she adds. “But I would’ve picked up.”
I nod once, the ache rising thick in my chest.
“If I would’ve asked you to come back then,” I ask, “would you have?”
She draws in a breath, eyes flickering with hesitation.
“My father—”
“I could’ve handled your father,” I cut in, my voice firm, unflinching. “I’m asking you. Would you have said yes to me?”
She hesitates.
Then shakes her head, small, uncertain.
“I don’t know.”
