Atasha's POV
The air between us was warmer now, less stormy, but still heavy with questions I hadn't dared ask—until now. My hand was still in his, but I gently pulled it away, just enough to build the space I needed to breathe. He looked at me, not alarmed but patient, as if he knew something more was coming.
"If everything you just said is true," I whispered, eyes fixed on the tabletop, "then what about her? The girl you called your ex. The one you chose over me."
Antonio didn't flinch. Instead, he let out a quiet breath, like he'd been expecting this moment all along.
"I didn't choose her," he said firmly. "I chose confusion. I chose comfort. She came back at a time when everything in my life was falling apart—my sisters' fight, moving cities again, not knowing who I was anymore. She was familiar, predictable. You weren't."
I looked up at him then. His eyes—usually unreadable—were filled with something raw.
"You were unpredictable, Atasha. You challenged me. You made me feel something new, something terrifying… and honest. I didn't know how to handle that. So I ran toward what I knew. And I've regretted it every single day since."
I swallowed hard. His words cut, but they also stitched something back together. Not perfectly, not completely—but enough.
"I needed to hear that," I admitted softly. "Because I hated myself for believing you could ever love someone like me. I thought I was just... a moment to you."
He shook his head, reaching across again, but not touching me this time—just resting his hand near mine.
"You were never just a moment, Atasha. You were the moment that changed everything."
Antonio's POV
Watching her sit across from me, lips parted slightly as she tried to process everything, I felt more naked than ever. Vulnerable—not because I was ashamed of my past, but because this moment meant everything. Her silence was louder than any scream, and I sat in it, letting it wash over me, hoping it would cleanse what I had broken between us.
Atasha had always looked at me like I was someone special—someone safe. And the day I saw that gaze disappear, replaced by guarded silence, I realized what I had lost. It had haunted me every day since she left.
I hadn't told her everything yet. About how I'd dialed her number even when I knew it had changed. About how I'd walked through her favorite streets in the hope that the wind might carry her scent again. About how I kept every sketch she posted online and knew they were hers, even if she signed them under a different name.
"She deserved to know," I told myself that night after she left the café. "Not just about my ex, but everything."
And now, as her eyes blinked slowly—processing, healing, perhaps still doubting—I wanted nothing more than to go back in time. To the moment I saw her standing under that streetlamp with scraped knees and furious pride. If I could do it all over again, I would choose her. Every time.