“Didn’t mean anything by it,” he said, toying with the cherry in his drink. “My apologies.”
My eyes remained glued to him, waiting for his next move. Looking up from his drink, a brilliant smile crossed his face. “My name’s Tyler,” he said, scooting down several seats and holding his hand out to me.
I surveyed it skeptically, a nervous tingling spreading through me. I didn’t know if I was supposed to shake it or not.
“It’s just a hand. See, what happens is–”
“Serafina,” I interrupted, allowing him to take my hand in his. “My name is Serafina.” My chin began to quiver as the name left my lips. It wasn’t until this moment that I realized not only did Tyler cover up his true identity from me, but I did, as well. He wanted me to fall in love with the real Tyler. I wanted him to fall in love with Serafina, even if I wasn’t sure who that was anymore. Still, I wanted to find out, and maybe Tyler would help me discover exactly who that was.
“Serafina,” he crooned, his voice barely audible. Closing his eyes, his fingers lingered over my hand and traced a delicate pattern on my skin. “That’s a beautiful name.”
“Thank you,” I murmured, lost in the moment. All too soon, he withdrew his hand from mine, leaving me with an empty feeling.
“So…,” he began, nervously playing with the ice in his drink. “What do you do?”
“Ummm…,” I started, feeling my face flush red with nerves. For some reason, regardless that Tyler already knew all my secrets, I wanted to make a good “first impression”. Something about being there with him, getting to know him all over again, made it feel like the first time. “I own a restaurant.”
His eyes widened. “Really? You look too young.”
I shrugged. “I guess you can say I’m your classic overachiever. When I put my mind to something, nothing will get in my way. So when I said I wanted to open my dream restaurant before I turned thirty, it would have taken a disaster for it not to happen.”
He nodded, remaining silent. I took a sip of my sparkling water, my eyes never straying from his for too long. “So what about you?” I finally asked. “What do you do?”
“Oh, a little bit of this, a little bit of that.”
I frowned playfully.
He smirked. “Actually, I own a multi-billion dollar private security firm.”
“Are you, like, a spy?” I joked.
“No. My brother’s the spy.”
“Your brother?”
“Yeah,” he said. “He runs the company. Up until a few years ago, I was just an owner on paper, then I thought I could help make a difference.”
“And did you?”
He tore his gaze from mine, an unsettled expression on his face. “The opposite, actually. I realized that no matter if it’s for what you’re led to believe is a noble cause or not, there are always some casualties. Not everyone gets out unscathed.” He was silent for a moment as I tried to adjust to his sudden change in demeanor. He was troubled, a tortured soul.
“You see, I hurt someone during the last job I was on, and I’ll never forgive myself for what I did.” He raised his eyes and I saw the torment he had been living with since the day he began the mission. I had seen that look on his face during our time together, and I knew he was struggling early on with his assignment. I had seen it on that first night at this precise restaurant. That knowledge made me relinquish yet another piece of my heart to Tyler.
“I’m sure you didn’t mean to,” I offered, my voice soft.
“No. I knew all along that I was going to use her, yet I still did it.”
“Yes, but once you got to know her, it must have been eating you up inside, knowing the role you had to play.” Part of me couldn’t believe I was sitting here, rationalizing what Tyler had done to me, but I couldn’t help it. I finally understood. I felt his pain, his reluctance, his heartache for the role he played.
“Yet I still continued on in my course of deceit. I made her fall in love with me. I pretended to be someone I’m not.” He returned his gaze to his tumbler, toying with the liquid. “I guess part of me doesn’t really know who that is anymore…”
“I know who you are,” I whispered.
His head shot up and he stared at me. “How could you? We just met.”
I turned in my barstool to face him. He mirrored my movements.
“You like to give off the impression you have everything under control, that nothing really affects you. You’ve loved and lost before, and you remember how broken you felt afterwards. You vowed to do everything to never feel like that again.”
I reached for his hands and it was as if the world disappeared. We weren’t sitting at the bar of a bustling restaurant, plates and glasses clinking all around us. We were in our own world, our own universe. A universe that circled around him.
“You love your family and would do anything for them. That’s why you took that assignment. You had wandered listlessly through life, unable to figure out what your passion truly was. You tried a little bit of everything, even joined the navy to forget the past. When this assignment was brought to you, you thought it was your chance. You wanted to prove to your brother that you were capable of doing something right. You wanted to make him proud of you, but you never expected to be faced with having to decide between your family and a woman you had just met. Maybe if you had talked to her about it, had been open and honest with her, she would have understood.”
“I doubt that,” he said, pulling his hands from mine and avoiding my gaze. “Anyway, if I told her, it would have blown my cover.” He returned his attention to the drink in front of him, playing with the cherry once more.
“But didn’t your cover get blown anyway?” I pushed.
“Yes, but–”
“So you had nothing to lose.” Placing my hand on his leg, I tried to comfort him. “If you had been honest with her, if you helped her see everything from where you were standing, she would have said those words you’re so desperate to hear right now.” A lone tear fell down my cheek, the connection between us more intense than any other interaction we’d had since we met.
“And what’s that?”
“That I understand and I forgive you.” Raising my hand to his face, I cupped his cheek, reveling in the feeling of his stubble on my hand. I studied the anguish he tried to mask with his forceful demeanor and hesitated. No matter how much I didn’t think I could ever forgive him for how he had deceived me, I was wrong. His mother’s wise words rang true. We didn’t forgive people because they deserved it. We forgave because they needed it, and if anyone was in need of forgiveness so they could move on, the suffering man sitting next to me was. “Tyler…” I took a deep breath. “I understand and forgive you.”
“You do?” he asked. I could hear the surprise in his voice. “You don’t have to say that for my benefit. I know we have a lot to work through–”
“Yes, we do, but I finally see everything from where you stood, Tyler. For the longest time, I refused to do that, despite everyone telling me I needed to. I was so angry with you and wanted to hate you, as difficult as it was. But listening to your side, finally listening, it made me put myself in your shoes. I know this assignment got out of hand for you. You weren’t expecting to fall for me.”
“No,” he agreed. “I certainly wasn’t. I hated myself for what I had to do to you, especially once I met you. That first night, when I finally felt you, I couldn’t sleep. All I saw whenever I closed my eyes was your face, the tears I would cause when you found out I used you. Then something entirely unexpected happened.”
“What was that?”
“I stopped being the Tyler persona I developed to make you fall for me and started to show you the real me.”
“I know,” I admitted. “I finally realized that last night when I was reading your journal.”
He nodded. “I don’t know why. I didn’t want you to just know the deceptive me. I wanted you to know the real me.”