Sam spotted him the second she stepped off the small stage, award handed off to the charity’s director, applause continuing behind her. Gio stood near the back wall, out of the sightline of anyone with a camera, hands in his pockets, patience costing him more effort than he let show. She didn’t let her face do anything about it. Eight years of practice made that easier than it should have been.
She finished the rest of the obligation first. A photo with the director. A word with the woman from the foundation who’d flown in for the event. A reporter who wanted thirty seconds she gave twenty of, polished and complete, nothing left over for anyone to build a headline out of. Only then did she cross the room toward him, and only then did she let her expression tell him what she actually thought about him standing there.
"You’re not usually the one who shows up," she said, low enough that it stayed between them.
"I know."
"Follow me." She led him through a side door into a small anteroom the venue used for storing extra chairs, away from the noise, away from anyone’s line of sight. She shut the door behind them and turned to face him, arms crossed, waiting.
"Arianne told me what you said to her," Gio said. "That you’ve been thinking about walking away. Not the industry. Me."
Sam’s jaw tightened. "She wasn’t supposed to make that a briefing."
"She didn’t. She told me because she thought I should hear it from someone who wasn’t going to perform for me about it." Gio’s hands came out of his pockets, empty, nothing to hide behind. "Would it change anything? If I told you the real reason. Not the name. Not the industry excuse I gave you in that hotel room."
Sam’s arms stayed crossed, but something in her shoulders had already started to give. "Would it change anything for you, you mean?"
"For both of us. I need to know before I say it out loud."
"I don’t know," she said, and it came out rawer than she meant it to. "I don’t know if it changes anything anymore. I’ve spent eight years building a version of myself that doesn’t need an answer from you. I don’t know how to unbuild that just because you finally decided to show up at a charity gala where I was handing someone else an award."
"I told you it was your name. That was never true." Gio’s voice stayed level, but nothing else about him did. "I thought I wasn’t enough for you. Not smart enough, not steady enough, not anything enough, and it was easier to make it about Samantha Pemberton than to admit I thought that little of myself. I’ve spent every year since telling myself I moved past it. I never did. Every empty hour finds its way back to you whether I give it permission or not."
"That’s a lot to say in a storage room."
"I know. I don’t have a better room. I only have the truth, which is that I want Samantha Pemberton. All of her. The precise version, the unimpressed version, the one who calls something what it is before anyone else in the room has the nerve to. I spent eight years punishing you for being the only person who ever got past what I built to keep people out. That was never fair to you."
Sam’s eyes went bright, and she didn’t fight it this time, the first tear slipping free before she could decide whether to let it. "You don’t get to say all of that and expect me to just be fine."
"I’m not expecting anything."
"I’m not fine." Her voice cracked on it, the poised woman from the stage gone entirely now. "I’ve spent years being patient. Waiting for a version of you that could say any of this. I used up every bit of patience I had, Gio. There isn’t more of it sitting somewhere I can hand you just because you finally showed up with an apology."
"I know."
"I don’t know what to do with this. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do next, and I hate that I don’t know, because I used to always know exactly what came next with you. Walk away. Don’t call. Don’t let him see it land. I don’t have a next step for this version."
"You don’t need one tonight."
"That’s easy for you to say. You got to plan this. You got to pick the room and the words and the night. I didn’t get a script. I got ambushed in a storage closet in the middle of a gala I was working, and now I’m supposed to have an answer ready because you finally decided you were ready to ask the question."
"You’re right." Gio didn’t argue with any of it. "I planned this because planning is the only way I know how to be brave. You don’t owe me the same courtesy just because I found mine tonight."
"Don’t do that."
"Do what?"
"Be reasonable. It’s harder to be angry at you when you’re being reasonable." Sam pressed the heel of her hand briefly against one eye, stopping the next tear before it started. "I wanted to hate you for this. I had a whole speech ready in case you ever said any of it out loud. I can’t remember a word of it now."
"I’m not trying to take that away from you."
"I know. That’s almost worse." She let out something that wasn’t quite a laugh.
Gio didn’t reach for her, didn’t close the distance between them, kept his hands visible and unmoving at his sides. "I’m not asking you to decide anything right now. I needed you to hear it. What you do with it is yours."
"And if I decide it’s too late?"
"Then it’s too late, and I’ll live with having finally said it instead of carrying it another eight years." He said it without flinching, the first time in longer than he could remember that he’d handed someone the truth without a plan for managing what came back. "Whatever you choose, I’ll accept it. I won’t make you carry my timing on top of everything else."
Sam wiped at her face with the back of her hand, careful of her makeup out of an instinct she couldn’t turn off even now. "I need time."
"Take it."
"You say that like it’s simple."
"It’s the only part of tonight I’m sure of." Gio’s voice didn’t waver on it. "Everything else, I’m guessing at. That part, I know. However long you need, you get it. I’m not going to be the reason you rush a decision that took me eight years to earn the right to ask you to make."
"That’s an unfair amount of patience to offer someone who just told you she doesn’t have any left."
"I’ve got enough for both of us tonight. Borrow mine if yours ran out."
"I’m not saying no."
"I didn’t hear a no." Gio’s voice caught on that, closer to breaking than anything he’d let show all night. "I heard someone who’s tired. That’s not the same thing, and I know the difference."
She looked at him for a long moment, mascara smudged, breath not yet even, and said nothing else. Gio didn’t push for more. He opened the door for her instead, let her walk back out into the noise of the room first, and stood in the doorway watching her go without following, because for once in eight years, that was exactly what she needed from him.