Chapter Three
“Hello Cillian.” My voice sounded calm despite the shock ricocheting around my chest like my insides had transformed into a pinball machine. Hopefully, my facial expression was equally bereft of my true feelings. Stay calm. Be civil. Get rid of him. Those three things became a mantra as I stared at Cillian. There didn’t need to be drama. Not after all this time. And I certainly didn’t intend to be the one to instigate it.
“You look good,” Cillian said.
Had he hoped I’d be a complete wreck without him? “Thank you.” So formal , my inner voice mocked.
A sound from behind had me turning as Laurent joined me at the door. Laurent! How funny that after approximately thirty seconds in Cillian’s company, I’d forgotten Laurent was even here. He leaned heavily against my shoulder, his body a heated brand against mine, as he surveyed Cillian with open curiosity. “This is Cillian,” I said, the words feeling like razor blades in my throat. “Cillian, this is Laurent. He’s—”
I never got to finish what I was saying as Laurent’s slightly chilled fingers fastened on my chin to turn my head his way and kiss me. This was nothing like the kiss on the night we’d both been drunk. Not just in intentions, but also in intensity, Laurent putting his all into it. I knew what he was doing, feelings of gratitude and annoyance warring within me. I was grateful because I knew he was sending a message to Cillian to leave, and annoyed because I hadn’t asked him to. Even though I let him kiss me without protest, I still wasn’t sure I wanted it.
After what seemed like an age, Laurent drew back with a languorous stare that was so over the top that it made me want to laugh. “We were supposed to be having a quiet night in together, chéri,” he said. “Just the two of us. Perhaps your friend could come back some other time when it’s more convenient.”
My ‘friend’ looked more rattled than I expected. A muscle ticked in his cheek and he looked about as uncomfortable as I’d ever seen him, guilt coalescing in my chest.
“I should go,” Cillian said, his gaze fixed on a space above my right shoulder. “It was a mistake to come here. I thought…” He didn’t finish his sentence, giving a small shake of his head instead. “Apologies for disturbing you.”
Whether it was the sincerity in his voice or the fact that he looked like a deer caught in the headlights, the ball of guilt became a landslide, threatening to swamp me if I let it. “Wait!” I called as he went to turn away. To Laurent, I said, “I appreciate what you’re doing. It’s sweet, and it’s protective, and I’d do the same for you, but it’s unnecessary.”
“No?” The question in his eyes begged me to reconsider. He’d provided me with an easy out, a way to drive Cillian from my door without the need to say more than two words to him. I was the one making things difficult.
“I’m sure,” I said with a nod. “I can handle this.”
“Fine.” He went to retrieve his jacket, the two men eyeballing each other as Laurent passed Cillian on his way out. It reminded me of two dogs pausing to take the measure of each other on the street.
And then Laurent was gone, and it was just me and the man I’d worked so hard to forget over the past couple of months. An excruciatingly awkward silence, as heavy as any blanket, settled over us while I looked everywhere but at him. There were questions I knew I should ask, like how the hell he’d gotten my address, why it had taken him so long if that had been his intention, and what the hell did he want? But it was hard to know where to start. So I didn’t. I just stood and waited without knowing what I was waiting for.
“You need protecting from me?”
I dragged my gaze to Cillian’s, found it too unsettling, and concentrated on the wall in the corridor where someone had scraped off a section of paint instead. Probably someone too enthusiastic when they’d moved in or out. I didn’t think it had been me, but it could have been. I certainly wouldn’t swear on anyone’s life that I’d played no part in it. “Of course not. It was just a turn of phrase. Laurent’s French. He’s dramatic.”
“Is he your…?” The long pause had me focusing back on Cillian. This time, I forced myself to keep looking while he chose his next word carefully. “…boyfriend?”
Cillian looked tired. Which was quite the revelation when I’d witnessed him work all the hours under the sun and show zero negative effects from it, like the adrenaline and stress of heading up a successful advertising agency did nothing but energize him. I mulled over the answer to his question. Yes, would be a copout and a lie, but would solve the problem. No, would be honest, but leave me vulnerable. It was quite the quandary. “No,” I finally said. “He’s just a friend.”
“Okay.” The word was careful and had me searching for the hidden meaning behind it. “Can I come in?”
That I didn’t need to think about, the “no” tumbling out instinctively. As did moving to block the gap in the door with my body in case Cillian took a step forward. There were a multitude of reasons I didn’t want Cillian in my flat, chief among them that my place in Paris held no memories of him, and I wanted to keep it that way. And yes, if pushed, I’d admit to a fear of being alone with him near a bed. History showed how poorly that usually ended.
“I want to talk to you.”
My fingernails dug into my palms while I considered the simple request. “And then will you go away?”
Cillian reared back like I’d struck him. It was clear he’d expected a warmer reception, which was crazy. “If that’s what you want.”
I gave a reluctant nod. “We can go out. There’s a brasserie at the end of the street that stays open late.” I held up a hand. “Wait here while I grab my jacket.” I closed the door as a precaution in case Cillian ignored my request not to enter, the automatic lock clicking into place. After shrugging into my jacket, I grabbed my wallet and keys and then stood for a moment in front of the closed door. What would Cillian do if I didn’t come back out? How long would he wait before giving up? Would he come back another night?
If the answer to that last question was yes, then I was better sucking it up and getting this over with. Taking a deep breath, I tugged the door open to find Cillian leaning against the wall next to the spot of peeled paint. At my reappearance, he straightened, his gaze searching as he waited for me to join him. I kept as much distance between us as I could without it being obvious as I led the way down the two flights of stairs that took us to the street, and then the fifty or so meters to the brasserie.
We remained silent until after the brasserie staff served us and we sat with steaming mugs of coffee.
“You speak French,” was Cillian’s opening gambit.
Despite the tension crackling between us, I laughed. “Barely. I’ve learned enough to get by, but it wouldn’t win me any awards.”
“Still…”
Cillian’s gaze was fixed on my face, and I regretted bringing him to a place that required us to be within a meter of each other, separated only by a table. It was too close. Too intimate. A walk would have been better. It would have provided distractions and enabled me to walk by his side rather than to have to look at him.
Here, there was no escape from the pleasing symmetry of his features. Or from the memories that seeing him again sparked in my gut.
My phone vibrated in my pocket and, glad of an excuse to look away, even if it was only for a few seconds, I pulled it out to check the screen. Laurent’s message was a simple one: Are you okay? I typed Ask me later and sent it before shoving my phone back in my pocket.
Lifting my head, I pasted a smile on my face. “So… I assume you have business in Paris. How long are you here for? Just tonight? Or for a couple of days?” I was proud of my breeziness. “You’re not opening another branch, are you?”
“Would that be so terrible?”
God, yes. There are one hundred and ninety-five recognized countries in the world and you pick this one. I shrugged. “It’s a free country. You can do whatever you want.”
Cillian propped his chin on his hand and stared at me, his brown eyes full of something I couldn’t interpret, and wasn’t sure I wanted to. “No, I’m not opening another branch. And I’m not here on business. I came for one reason and one reason only. To see you.”
I doubted a shotgun pellet in the chest could have had more impact. Despite it being far too late to drink coffee when caffeine always had a negative effect on me, I took a sip to hide my discomfort. I doubted I’d be sleeping much tonight, anyway. It was probably far more likely that I’d lie awake and replay this entire conversation, forensically examining every part to ascertain whether I’d said and done the right thing, and beating myself up for any moments where I could have handled things better. “How did you get my address?”
“Your old workplace.”
“They just gave it to you?”
“Not just … no. It took some work on my part. But, eventually. I tried your friends first, but none of them were forthcoming.”
Yet, nobody had bothered to pick up the phone and warn me about Cillian sniffing around. A heads up would have been nice before he turned up on my doorstep. I could have taken evasive action, like… I don’t know… faking my death or something.
Cillian turned his head toward the door, his coffee still untouched. I automatically followed his gaze, expecting to see someone arriving, but there was no one there. Just a door. He started talking with his head still turned that way, as if marshaling his thoughts was easier without the distraction of looking at me. “You came to my office. You had sex with me, and then you disappeared off the face of the earth, like you were nothing but a figment of my imagination.”
I winced. When he put it like that, it sounded awful. It was awful. On a deeper level, I’d always understood that, but my emotional state at the time had been such that I hadn’t seen any other option.
“I even thought about going to the police.”
“What?”
Cillian’s gaze swung back my way. “I was worried. I thought something might have happened to you. I couldn’t get through to you on the phone and all my messages went unanswered. When I went round to your flat, you weren’t there. Or at least, you weren’t answering the door.”
“When?” I asked.
Cillian frowned. “When what?”
Great! He was back to frowning. The anti-Botox fairy strikes again. Hopefully, he’d made the most of his months of line-free skin. “When did you call me?” I sat back in my chair, familiar emotions that had nothing to do with attraction, and everything to do with promises that were never kept and being made to feel like I was second best, bubbling to the surface. “Because… I waited that night for you to call me like you said you would, and you never did.”
The slight shake of Cillian’s head reeked of confusion. “I don’t remember. It was a friend who pointed out that the call always going to voicemail after a few rings meant you’d blocked me.” He gave a bitter laugh. “She thought we must have argued. She thought I was lying when I said we hadn’t.” He wrapped his hands around his coffee cup, but made no move to drink it. “So I guess you didn’t get any of my messages?”
“No.” Such a simple answer. Yet, it suddenly felt incredibly petty. Like something a child rather than an adult would do. I refused to give in to the feeling, wrapping myself securely in the irritation of our past relationship instead. “I’d had enough. I’d reached the end of my tether.”
“Had enough of what?”
It all came out in a rush—all the things I’d wanted to say, but hadn’t been able to. “Of playing second fiddle to your work. Of never being able to spend any uninterrupted time with you.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is true,” I argued. “Name one occasion when we went anywhere without you taking at least one phone call?” I left a deliberate pause, Cillian’s confusion growing. “See! You can’t. You can’t because it never happened. Hell, you even stepped outside on our first date to take a call. Remember that?” Cillian opened his mouth to defend himself, but I was on a roll. “So I guess the person I should really be angry at is myself, when I should have known from the start what I was getting.”
“What you were getting?”
I ignored the edge in Cillian’s voice. “Someone work-obsessed who only needed someone around when he had an itch to scratch. And I played that role for months without questioning it, because that’s apparently how much of an idiot I am.” I took a huge gulp of my coffee, the liquid burning my throat. “I would have been better off with a dildo. At least it wouldn’t have made promises it had no intention of keeping. I could count the times on one hand when you saying you’d call me, or we’d go for dinner, actually happened when it was supposed to. And I’d have plenty of fingers left over.”
A woman a few tables along raised her head, the brasserie quiet at this time in an evening. I offered her an apologetic smile, and she went back to reading her book. Either she didn’t understand English and had just reacted to the heat in my words, or she’d decided it was none of her business. Either way, it was a useful reminder that we were in a public place. “I wasn’t happy,” I said much more quietly. “I wanted a boyfriend who was present in the relationship.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
Cillian’s face showed his hurt, and though I hadn’t asked him to come, I hated being responsible for his pain. “I tried. A few times. That last day when I came to your office, I said I wanted to talk, right?” I waited for Cillian’s nod. “Well, there you go. That’s what I wanted to talk about. Except… we ended up in bed instead. And then, as usual, you took a phone call straight after. Two phone calls.”
“I was in my office.”
I gave a harsh laugh that lacked humor. “Of course you were. You’re there ninety-eight percent of the time. That’s why you have a bed there. I don’t know anyone else who has a bed in their office.”
“Jacob Mawlinson has one. Nathan Cartwright has too.”
“I don’t know who either of those people are, but I’ll assume they’re fellow ad execs. Or at the very least, CEOs of some ridiculously successful company.” Silence descended once more, and I heaved out a sigh. “I didn’t want to do this.”
“Do what?”
“Come across as bitter.”
“No? You thought it was better to block my number, find a job in another country, and leave without telling me instead? Did you think that would be kinder?”
I traced a pattern on the tabletop. “Not kinder, no.”
“Then why do it that way? And don’t give me that crap about not being able to have a conversation with me. You could have left a voice message. You could have sent me a text. You could have written a damn email.”
“Yeah, I could have done,” I admitted as I held Cillian’s gaze. How honest did I want to be? I supposed it didn’t really matter now. “I feared you’d flutter your ridiculously long eyelashes and get me to change my mind, that I’d end up stuck in a relationship that wouldn’t give me what I needed. It seemed like the only way of doing things, and yes, I recognize it made me a coward. I’ll hold my hands up to that.”
“I’ve never fluttered my eyelashes at anyone!”
I laughed at the horrified look on Cillian’s face. Who knew that would be the part he’d take the hardest? “It was a turn of phrase. I thought it sounded better than you’d have flashed your cock at me and my clothes would have fallen off.”
“You make it sound like there was nothing between us but sex.”
“I never said that. That was just the part we got right.”
Heat flared in Cillian’s eyes. “We did get it right. Frequently.”
“Yeah…” Refusing to let my mind wander in that direction, I sat up straighter. “I’m sorry things ended the way they did, and that I was too gutless to do things the way I should have done. It probably doesn’t help, but running away will never be one of my proudest moments.” Abandoning the rest of my coffee that I’d never wanted anyway, I stood to send a message we were done.
Cillian tipped his head back to keep me in his line of sight. “I might have messed things up and taken you for granted, but my feelings for you were never anything but real.”
My heart gave a little skip and I silently cursed it for being such a traitorous bastard, while I pondered how I was supposed to respond. Thanks, would be too cold. But any other response would plunge me into a conversation I wasn’t emotionally ready for. Hell, I wasn’t emotionally prepared for any of this. I’d never dreamed of Cillian turning up at my door one day. Maybe I’d thought our paths might cross in years to come. But in my head that had always taken place after I’d moved back to England. In it, one or both of us were married, and we’d laugh about our short-lived relationship.
Neither of us was laughing now, though. Cillian had a slightly pained expression on his face, and my chest felt like someone had wrapped a rubber band round it. A tight rubber band that constricted my breathing. “I have to go,” I said.
Cool, fresh air had never felt so good as I stepped back out onto the street, the wind whipping at my hair as I hastened back toward my flat. Relief at having survived the encounter came to a screeching halt as fingers fastened around my wrist and tugged me to a stop.