“Come on.” The words were gritted out as he turned his hand down in an offer to help me up. I ignored it since I was perfectly capable of standing on my own two feet, but I did allow him to escort me away from the table. He walked slightly behind me with his hand on my lower back, and when I moved to head toward the door we had come in, he reached further around my body and wrapped his fingers around my waist, where he tugged gently to pull me in a different direction. “The car is waiting in the back,” he whispered close to my ear.

“I am terribly sorry that this has been an issue in the past, sir,” a man was saying when we neared the door. “We will check into what we can do about the gross invasion of privacy, as you know that is not what we’re about here.” It must have been weird, having people bend to placate to a person’s every whim. I had never known a single moment of that in my life. Normally, I was relatively invisible to others at best and a target at worst.

Tucker didn’t respond, only offered a slight nod of his head before he pulled me through a door, down a corridor that ran alongside the bustling kitchen, and out the back door of the restaurant where the car was indeed waiting for us and already running. Tucker opened my door for me, waited until I was adjusted comfortably in the seat before closing it, then he walked around to the driver’s side. Once he got in, and we were both buckled up, he put the car in drive and left the restaurant behind. Nothing was said. He just drove as I stared out the window and watched as the city passed us by and gave way to more of a sprawl as we headed in the direction of home.

What a disaster of a night. When he picked me up, I had been so hopeful, the flowers he had brought seemed so thoughtful, and the energy between us was peaceful and real. If only I could go back in time and tell myself that hope was a disappointing bitch. When we neared the exit to go back to my apartment, Tucker didn’t take it. Instead, we continued driving.

“You missed the exit,” I informed him.

“Oh, no I didn’t. I decided back there that I was just going to keep driving until you decided to finally speak to me again.”

“What if I had fallen asleep?”

“Then I guess we would have had a long drive until I ran out of gas.” I didn’t know what to say to that. “I’m sorry. I can’t erase my past any more than you can your own, no matter how much either of us might wish it was so. In all honesty, I never knew all those pictures existed.”

“You had to know you’d taken that many dates to that specific restaurant. So many, in fact, that the staff saw you as a regular and knew which wine to bring out.”