Finding Cinderella (Hopeless #2.5)(34)
“Daniel,” I hear her say through her muffled tears. She lifts her head and looks up at me. “Daniel, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” Her tears become sobs and her sobs become too much. It’s too f**king much.
I pull her to my chest. “Shh,” I say into her hair. “Don’t. Don’t apologize.”
Her body becomes limp against mine and everyone in the cafeteria is beginning to stare at us. I want to hold her and tell her how sorry I am for allowing her to walk away last night, but she needs privacy. I wrap my arm tighter around her, then scoop her legs up into my other arm. I pull her against me, then stand up and carry her out into the hallway. I keep walking until I round the corner and find our room. She’s still crying against my chest, wrapped tightly around me. I open the door to the maintenance closet, then I close it behind us. I back up to the door and slide down until I meet the floor, still holding her in my arms.
“Six,” I say, lowering my mouth to her ear. “I want you to try to stop crying, because I have so much I want to say to you.”
I feel her nod against my chest and I remain quiet, waiting on her to calm down. Several minutes pass before she’s finally quiet enough for me to continue.
“First of all, I am so sorry for letting you walk away last night but I don’t want you to think for one second it was because I was judging your choices. Okay? I’m not about to put myself in your shoes and tell you that you made a bad choice, because I wasn’t there and I have no clue how hard that must have been for you.”
I adjust her and straighten out my legs so she’s forced to sit up and look at me. I pull one of her legs to the other side of me until she’s facing me. “I’m just sad, okay? That’s all this is. I’m allowed to be sad about this and I need you to let me be sad because this is a whole hell of a lot to process in a day.”
She pulls her lips into a thin line and she nods while I wipe away her tears with both my thumbs. “I have so many questions, Six. And I know you’ll answer them when you’re ready, but I can wait. If you need me to give you time I can.”
She shakes her head. “Daniel. He’s your son. I’ll answer any question you ask me. I just don’t know if you want to hear the answers because . . .” She squeezes her eyes shut to hold back more tears. “Because I think I made the wrong choice and it’s too late. It’s too late to go back now.”
She’s crying hard again, so I wrap my arms around her and hug her.
“If I knew he was yours or that I would eventually find you I would have never done it, Daniel. I would have never given him up but I did and now you’re here and it’s too late because I don’t know where he is and I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry.”
I shake my head, wishing she would stop. It’s hurting me more to see her upset with herself than anything else about this whole situation.
“Listen to me, Six.” I pull back and look her in the eyes, holding her face firmly between my hands. “You made a choice for him. Not for yourself. Not for me. You did what was best for him and I will never be able to thank you enough for that. And please don’t think this changes how I feel about you. If anything, it just lets me know that I’m not crazy. For the past month I’ve been thinking my feelings for you couldn’t be real because there are so many of them and they’re so much. Too much sometimes. I constantly have to bite my tongue when I’m around you because all I’ve been wanting to do lately is tell you how much I love you. But it’s only been a month since we met and the only other time I’ve said those words out loud to a girl was over a year ago. Right here on this floor. And you wouldn’t believe how real I wanted that moment to be for us, Six. I know I didn’t know you but my God, I wished I did. And now that I do know you . . . really know you . . . I know it’s real. I love you. And knowing what we shared last year and now knowing what you had to go through and how it’s made you exactly who you are right now . . . it just blows my mind. It blows my mind that I get to love you.”
I feel her hands wiping tears from my cheeks when I lean in to kiss her. I pull her against me and she pulls me against her and I have no plans to ever let her go. I kiss her until her hands move up to my face and she pulls her lips from mine. Our foreheads meet and she’s still crying, but her tears are different now. I feel like they’re tears of relief rather than tears of worry.
“I’m so happy it’s you,” she says, keeping her hands locked on my face. “I’m so happy it was you.”
I pull her against me and hold her. I hold her for so long that the bell rings and the hallway fills and empties and another bell rings and we’re still sitting here together, holding on to each other when the silence in the hallway returns. I’m periodically pressing kisses into her hair, stroking her back, kissing her forehead.
“He looked like you,” she says quietly. Her hand is lightly trailing up and down my arm and her cheek is pressed against my chest. “He had your brown eyes and he was kind of bald, but I could tell he was going to have brown hair. And he had your mouth. You have a great mouth.”
I rub my hand up her back and kiss the top of her head. “He’s got it made,” I say. “Looks just like his daddy, hopefully acts like his mommy, and he’ll have a nice Italian accent. Kid won’t have any problems in life.”