The Opportunist (Love Me with Lies, #1)(73)

When I feel ready, I head back towards the De La Ville where Caleb and Leah are staying.

The quietness of the streets speak of the lateness of the hour. I stand looking at his window once again but this time my mind is made up. I am saying goodbye. I think about Caleb as a father and I smile to myself. He would be great at it, like he was at everything else, and then I think of Jessica Alexander. He would have been a dad already, if it wasn’t for me. I suck my lungs full of the sweet Italian air.

“In a sense I’m so far gone, I don‘t know what to say,” I begin. “I love you so much, and there are so many things that I didn’t get to tell you. I was so scared of the way that you loved me, Caleb.” I swipe at a tear that is leaking from my eye and continue. “You changed everything. I was so frightened of losing you that I did everything in my power to drive you away. I thought that if I didn’t, eventually you would see that you were wasting your time with me and leave anyway. I miss you. No, not just miss you, my heart aches every day because you’re not there. I am so sorry for what I did. All of it. Please, please don’t forget me, because the possibility of that hurts more than anything else.”

“I never forgot you.”

I get chills. It takes a minute for the impossibility of the situation to sink in.

“Caleb,” I sigh his name as I turn around to face him. I do not feel terribly surprised at irony’s latest joke. There is something about my life that is scripted with his. We keep crossing—no, crashing together. Caleb is standing a few feet away from me with a plastic shopping bag in his hand. I can see a bottle of wine poking out over the top.

“What are you doing here?” he asks shaking his head in amazement.



“I came to find you,” I say honestly. “To tell you that—” I glance up at his window to indicate the point of my speech.



“You weren’t going to say it to my face?”



“No.”



“It’s a very far way to travel to say something that important to my hotel window.”



“I had no right to come,” I admit, shrugging. “I’m sorry. I broke into your house and found out you were here.”



He squeezes his eyes shut and it looks like he wants to laugh.



“Cammie help you?”



I nod.



“I’m glad you came,” he says softly, “I was just thinking about you.”



I jerk in shock. “You were?” He smiles at the look on my face.



“Sure. I think about you all the time.”



I bite hard on my bottom lip to keep from crying. I am so confused I don’t know what to say.



“Let’s walk,” he says, and I fall into step beside him. “I never forgot you,” he says again.



“Well, you did for a while,” I say, studying the ground.



“No, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I never had amnesia. I faked it.”



I stop walking.



“You did what?”



“Olivia,” he stops and looks me in the eyes. “I faked my amnesia.”



I feel like the world is falling out from beneath my feet. Caleb and I are in Rome. I am in Rome. He never had amnesia. He thinks about me all the time. He never had amnesia.



“Why…what…why?” I want to grab him by the shirt collar and shake the answer out of him. Instead, I stand with my hands clenched at my sides.



“After everything happened with you and me, I tried to heal. I knew that I needed to forget you and move on. I hurt so much; everyday felt like a death sentence. I mourned you like you were dead and then, I met Leah. We were set up on a blind date and I remember feeling hope that day. It was the first day in a year that I felt hope. We took our time getting to know each other, I bought her a ring.” He shot me a look to see if I remembered the iceberg.

“And then, all of a sudden I missed you again. I mean, I never stopped missing you, but this time it hit me hard. I couldn’t go to sleep for a single night without seeing you in my dreams. I compared everything Leah did to everything I remembered about you. It was like the old wound opened itself up again and I was bleeding out my feelings for you.”

I close my eyes at his words. Words that I want to hear badly but that are making my heart ache so terribly I can barely breathe.

“I went on that business trip to Scranton and I was glad to get away from her for a few days. I needed to think and sort things out before I gave her that ring. Then the accident happened. I woke up in that car with the person next to me dead and I didn’t know who I was. My amnesia was induced by massive stress and the concussion to my head. By the time I reached the emergency room, I remembered everything. I lay on that bed in the hospital and I kept thinking, if only Olivia were here.

I would be happy if Olivia were here.

And then the doctor asked me if I knew who I was and I said no. I just said no. I made that decision in a split second because I didn’t know who I was without you and I knew that I had to try to find you. I lied to Leah, my family, and none of it mattered to me because my amnesia bought me time and an excuse. I went everywhere I knew you would go. The day you saw me in the music store, I knew you would be there; I had this feeling. I was still shocked, not because you showed up, but because you came right over and pretended that you hadn’t seen me standing there before you came in.”