“‘Dingane’ makes my heart ache to hear it.”
I sat up a bit at that. “Why let them call you that then?”
“It means something to me every time they say it. It reminds me of who I am and who I never want to become again.”
o;You’re leaving.” I nodded in acknowledgement. “In a few short months, you’ll be gone, back to your life in America. I didn’t want to be your friend.”
I sighed loudly. “So that whole bit about knowing who I was, what kind of person I was. Was that bull?”
His eyes cast down. “No, I, uh, it wasn’t.” His eyes met mine again. “I’m just-I was quick to judge. I was wrong when I thought you couldn’t change. So few can do it.”
I brought my hands down and wedged them between my crossed legs.
“You think I’ve changed?”
“Sophie,” he offered as if in explanation, his brows pulled tightly across his forehead.
Tears sprang silently and cascaded down my face.
“Soph,” he said quietly, reaching for me, but I refused to budge. “You’ve been transformed for a while.”
I choked back a sob. It meant so much to me to hear those words.
“Then why?”
“I told you. You’re leaving. I feel like an idiot admitting to this but I confess, I don’t do well when people leave. I promise myself I won’t get attached. It’s a defense mechanism in my line of work,” he admitted with a slight smile.
“And now?”
“I-I would be honored to call you friend,” he said succinctly, with an odd finality, as if he meant this as more a fact than an opinion.
I hadn’t realized how much I’d wanted to be his friend. I’d never been respected by a man before, not truly.
Click.
And this was my new epiphany. Men wanted me. They all did, however briefly, but none of them wanted to keep me. That’s what I needed. I needed to be owned, loved. But not by a man. I knew then that I never needed to be kept by a man. What I needed was to love myself, to want to keep myself around. And in that revelation, I knew that if I wanted to keep myself, that a man wanting to keep me would just be a by-product. Who wouldn’t want to keep someone who respected himself or herself?
“And I would be honored for you to call me friend,” I finally told him once I’d collected myself.
His expression softened and he grinned at me.
“Your heart is startlingly beautiful, Sophie,” he stated after a brief moment of fixed gazes.
My breath sucked into my chest at an alarming rate. There was no mention of my face, my legs, my ass, my breasts, my hair, my clothing, the way I carried myself, what I wore or how I wore it. There was no mention of me other than the part no one could even see. I’d been called beautiful so many times. It gratified me, validated me, but it was all empty, a facade. This was the first time someone had called me beautiful and it actually meant something to me. The praise slammed into my skin and permeated my body, leaving me flushed and overwhelmed.
My hands clenched on the table. I wanted so badly to rush him in that moment, to run my hands through his straight, silky, black hair and memorize his mouth with mine but something stopped me. I ignored the instinct, told myself that Ian was different. I decided I’d let him take the reins because I had never let anyone do that before. I was going to let him set the pace, let him discover me on his own. Giving him control gave me more power than I imagined I could own. Letting him worry about the next move was incredibly liberating and I knew with absolute certainty that the ride was going to be the best of my entire life.
Sophie Price had just learned self-control.
“Thank you,” I told him softly, “very much. That has to be the best compliment I’ve ever gotten.”
“Surely not,” he said, puzzling over my quietude.
“It is.”
“Curious,” he said simply.
He leaned forward and rested his forearms farther up on the table, closer to my hands, gripping the edge. I removed one hand and picked up my cup, taking a small sip. The tea was surprisingly good. “Tell me what your life back home is like,” he asked.