Page 30 of Huckleberry Hill
“Look, this is important. I need you to be a straight shooter right now.”
“Oh, goody, here we go?—”
“Reel in the snark, would ya?” He smiled, easing the tension.
I mimed a fishing rod and pretended to reel.
“You don’t seem too upset,” Dad said. “I mean, for a broken engagement, shouldn’t you be crying? Yelling? Something?”
“I went through that already.”
“You did?”
I nodded. “He ended it a week ago. I got all the tears out of me already.”
“He ended it,” Dad repeated.
“Yep.”
“And you cried.”
“I did.”
He peered at me. “Salem’s right. You’re a shit liar.”
“Dad.”
“Okay, I’ll back off. But when my daughter flies home in the middle of the night and then barely says a word about her broken engagement, it makes me . . . concerned.”
“Don’t be concerned,” I said.
“Just tell me why it ended.”
“We just weren’t . . . compatible. And we both knew it. And we were trying to make something work that was destined to fail.”
“Why was it destined to fail?”
“Because he’s a restauranteur with deep roots in the city and we’re not . . .”
“Compatible,” he repeated. “All right. I’ll accept that. For now.”
“Is the interrogation over?” My lips twitched. “Can I leave?”
“This wasn’t an interrogation,” he protested. “I just . . . oh, hell. Hadley, you don’t seem at all heartbroken. And that worries me more than anything.”
“I was heartbroken. But I’m on the mend.”
He peered at me, as if he could silently get me to admit the truth. But it wasn’t a truth I was ready to discuss. There was so much wrapped up in it.
My infertility.
The fact that Gianni didn’t want me because of it.
His love being conditional.
I’d been willing to make a life with him in New York even though I didn’t love it there. But I’d loved him enough to sacrifice what I wanted for his dreams and his happiness.
I’d loved him enough to forgo the life I envisioned for myself, willing to build a new one with him. He just hadn’t been willing to do the same for me.
