Page 97 of The Perfect Deception

He looked at his fa­ther and for the first time saw ad­mi­ra­tion—for him.

“My fa­ther’s big­gest re­gret might be not be­liev­ing in me, but mine is not be­liev­ing in Dina. You all gave me a stand­ing ova­tion wel­com­ing me back. My wish for my time here is not only do I con­tinue to re­main wor­thy of your wel­come, but I con­tinue to learn from you all—to be­lieve in peo­ple and to give them sec­ond chances. Thank you.”

En mass, peo­ple crowded around him, shak­ing his hand and con­grat­u­lat­ing him. Ev­ery­one said he had guts to make that speech. Most said they’d al­ways be­lieved in him, even though he knew they lied. A few apol­o­gized and those were the peo­ple he val­ued in the of­fice. But the one per­son he wished more than any­thing could have heard him wasn’t here.

And she was the only one who mat­tered.

Dina sat in the wait­ing room of her doc­tor’s of­fice, pass­ing the time on her phone while wait­ing for her phys­i­cal. She scrolled through so­cial me­dia, up­dated Goodreads and moved on to In­sta­gram. With the wait­ing room packed, the doc­tor was al­ready be­hind, and Dina moved on to Red­dit.

And stopped.

One of the high­lighted videos caught her eye. It was Adam, speak­ing to a crowd. She stared at it. His fa­ther was next to him. The video had been liked sev­eral hun­dred times.

She should ig­nore it. Who cared what it was about?

She did.

She pressed play, low­ered the vol­ume and held her phone to her ear.

Tears streamed down her face.

This man who was so con­cerned about his im­age was con­fess­ing to ev­ery­one he worked with what a hor­ri­ble per­son he’d been to her. She wasn’t there, he wasn’t do­ing it for ef­fect. He was sim­ply own­ing up to his mis­take pub­licly.

And there was noth­ing sim­ple about it.

She re­played it two more times, try­ing to find some­thing to dis­like about it. But there was noth­ing. Of all his ges­tures—the texts, the phone calls and the ridicu­lous num­ber of flow­ers and herbs—this was the one that got her.

And she could no longer ig­nore him.

Chap­ter Twenty-Seven

Adam sank onto the sofa af­ter work and turned on the base­ball game. Out­side, noise from the street be­low was muted, but he could hear the low bass of pass­ing cars and the higher tones of the com­muter train as it slowed on its way from Man­hat­tan. It was the train line he would have taken if he were work­ing for a big Man­hat­tan firm, but he wasn’t. He was work­ing for his fa­ther again, and this time, he was happy about it.

Open­ing a diet soda with a pop and a fizz, he gulped the car­bon­ated liq­uid and leaned his head back on the leather cush­ion. He’d put in a twelve-hour day at the of­fice, work­ing through lunch and not leav­ing be­fore seven. Af­ter the warm wel­come he’d re­ceived the other day in the con­fer­ence room, his friends at work had ac­cepted him once again. In fact, ev­ery­one had, even the par­ale­gals. Sure, there were still some peo­ple who kept their dis­tance, in­clud­ing James, but they were in the mi­nor­ity now. And pro­fes­sion­ally, he was sat­is­fied.

As the game went to com­mer­cial, an ad for a Man­hat­tan law firm ap­peared, and he thought about where he might have ended up if things had been dif­fer­ent. And for once, he didn’t have some deep de­sire to be in the city. Now, look­ing at the com­mer­cial, the law firm seemed cold and im­per­sonal, whereas it used to seem to be the em­bod­i­ment of his pro­fes­sional dreams. But that all changed once his fa­ther backed him up.

Had he re­ally been so des­per­ate for his fa­ther’s ap­proval? He shook his head. They still had a lot to work out, but know­ing his fa­ther sup­ported him meant a lot. Now if only he could fix the hole in his heart.

He looked to the side. If he had his way, that part of the couch would not be empty. Dina would be sit­ting there. Of course, if she were, they prob­a­bly wouldn’t be watch­ing base­ball…or maybe they would? She’d never been self­ish enough to pre­vent him from do­ing what he liked, and she’d al­ways tried to join in. He re­mem­bered the books she’d given him on su­per­heroes and how he’d ini­tially re­acted to them. He’d been so con­sumed with what oth­ers thought, he hadn’t rec­og­nized the ges­ture for what it was—some­one who was think­ing only of oth­ers.

God, he missed her. He’d spent weeks try­ing to get her back, to show her he was sorry, to demon­strate how much he cared. And she’d re­fused all of his over­tures. His hands chilled and sweat beaded his brow. How was he go­ing to get her back? If he thought he’d been afraid of her leav­ing him, it was noth­ing to know­ing she wasn’t com­ing back.

His ef­forts hadn’t been good enough. He’d lost her.

He took deep breaths, try­ing to con­trol his heart­beat. He would be okay.

The knock at the door star­tled him and he splashed soda out of the can as he rose. He took a peek through the peep­hole, blinked and looked again.

He opened the door.

“Dina.” There were so many things he wanted to say, but the sight of her, here, on his doorstep, left him speech­less. Her beau­ti­ful frizzy hair was pulled back into a low pony­tail. A pink scarf gave her cheeks a rosy glow. And the scent of co­conuts filled the air, mak­ing him want to fold her into his arms and in­hale her.

“Adam. I hope you don’t mind my just show­ing up—”

“Not at all. I’m glad you’re here.” Her ex­pres­sion was wary. He’d never seen that ex­pres­sion in them when she looked at him and his chest ached. Af­ter ev­ery­thing he’d done to show her how much she meant to him, she still had doubts? If only she’d been in his fa­ther’s of­fice to hear his speech.

He stepped out of the door­way and mo­tioned her in­side. She fol­lowed, not touch­ing him and leav­ing a mar­gin of space around her, like a per­sonal “Do Not Touch” zone. The Dina he re­mem­bered had never done that be­fore.