Chapter 23
twenty-three
KIT
Never Let Me Go - Florence + The Machine
It started with a knock at the front door, late on a Friday evening. I hadn’t been expecting anyone, just a night alone in my Kensington home.
Maybe Scottie had lost her key?
Placing the wine bottle down mid-pour, I peered out of the kitchen and down the hall, trying to see if I could spot the interruption through the small window at the bottom.
Another knock pushed me out of my chair, and I smiled as I passed the photos I’d recently hung in the hallway: Scottie and me in Paris, Windermere, London.
Everywhere we’d visited over the last few months.
“I’m on my way,” I shouted, marching towards the door, the person’s impatience causing me to forget the safety checks. Ignoring the spy, I grabbed the key, twisting it in the lock.
The door opened a fraction, the safety chain pulling taut.
“Hello?” I peered out, trying to get a look at the tall figure, but their face was covered by the dim light.
“Hey, I’m sorry,” a man apologised. His voice sounded familiar, a memory scratching at my brain. “My name’s Jon. I’m looking for Scottie Rossi?”
“She’s not here.” I moved to close the door, assuming that I’d have met him before, perhaps screaming for attention in a paparazzi crowd. The press had been sniffing about for months, trying to get an exclusive on Scottie. They’d done just as much damage over the years as her father had.
“I’m not a journalist,” he insisted, his tone turning desperate. “I used to work with her.”
I paused, my blood turning cold. Had I known him? Was that why he was so familiar?
“With her father?” My eyes strained through the gap in the door, paying more attention to his face. I traced lines, crinkles at the ends of his eyes, soft laugh lines that highlighted a life well spent, a good tan from long days spent out in the sun.
A familiar chocolate-brown gaze that caused my heart to race.
It couldn’t be him? Right? With his American lilt, familiar build and height. It had been so many years…Thirteen?
“I didn’t know what he was doing,” he said, the words strangled. “I was her coach. I found out after. I’m here because I want to make it right.”
And when his head hung, catching on the light shining through the gap, my legs turned shaky under me. I swallowed, trying to speak, struggling through a dry throat, every ounce of my body in shock.
Finally, I managed to speak aloud the name I hadn’t let myself say in over a decade. Not even while alone, afraid of the memories I’d dig up again. Not since that cold winter, when I’d run away to Scotland and found more of myself than I ever thought possible.
“Jonah?”
On the other side of the door, a head snapped up to mine. That reaction was all it took for me to slide the security lock, the door creaking on its hinges as I opened it wide, my heart threatening to explode with anticipation.
The light from the hallway behind me shone brightly, revealing his shocked face clear as day.
It was him.
“Kit?” he gasped. The colour drained from his face, his jaw slackened. “I…I don’t know what to say.”
He was no longer a young man, but the years had been kind; his middle age still showed, still highlighting every feature that had made him attractive in his youth.
Age suited him like a well-tailored suit.
His dark hair was now salt and peppered with greys that gave him a grizzled edge, the lines in his face only refining it, distinguishing him.
He was the same Jonah. The same man I remembered from all those years ago. The only one that had ever made me feel like enough. Like I could fit with another.
“Neither do I,” I barely managed with a chuckle of laughter, trying to cut through the heaviness of the moment. The smallest smile crept onto his lips, his hand awkwardly rubbing at the back of his neck.
“I think maybe you should come in,” I added. “If you want, of course.”
Reality suddenly crashed into me, that January morning replaying itself.
I’d gotten up an hour early, my bags packed the night before, and crept out of his house without a trace.
I’d written a note, left it on the counter, and left, catching the earlier bus.
Maybe it had been cowardly to leave like that, but we’d both known what had to happen.
And I knew how much having to say goodbye, having him watch my bus pull out of town, would have stayed with me forever.
“Yeah,” he said, a bashful pink creeping across his cheeks. “I’d love to.”
Jonah crept past me, and I took a moment while closing the front door to breathe, to try and collect myself. So what if the man you haven’t seen in a lifetime has suddenly appeared at your front door? It’s no big deal. Another regular Friday.
I turned to find him fixated on the hallway, analysing every photo that hung on the walls, every painting, looking for clues of the years that had flown by.
I almost wanted to pull at my clothes – a light white t-shirt and a pair of blue jeans – feeling suddenly out of place in my own home, my own skin.
It was as though I’d been thrown back to that winter, suddenly missing all the turtlenecks and sweaters I’d worn that week, the very ones I’d kept locked away in my attic.
Unable to throw them away, only ever taking them out to see if they still held his smell.
Men had come and gone from my life. Some had offered engagement, some entire islands, and I’d always turned them down. None of them were him. None could live up to even the memory of him, and in the end, it was unfair on them.
It felt like only yesterday.
“Do you want a cuppa?” I offered, leading him to the large kitchen. He looked around for a moment, his attention floating across every expensive cabinet before returning. “Or a coffee? Maybe something harder to take the edge off.”
A relieved smile split his face. “Stronger is needed, definitely.”
Placing a new glass in front of him – my own I’d been mid-way through before he arrived – I offered him the rest of the bottle.
Jonah took a long sip, his eyes closing as he drank. “You always had excellent taste.”
I almost blushed under his intense gaze, memories rushing back to me. How he’d looked in that bar when I’d first arrived in town. Flashes of his pink cheeks and bobble hat. The way he’d gazed up at me from between my thighs.
“Thanks,” I said, pulling my bottom lip between my teeth, the moment teetering on awkwardness. “Do you still visit the village?”
Our village. Ciallach.
He shook his head. “No, not for a long time. I think about going back all the time. Seeing if the bar still only accepts Scottish notes.”
I laughed lowly. “They do. All the tourists hate it.”
His jaw slackened, shock rippling across his face. “You still visit?”
I nodded, taking another sip for courage.
Every time I was up north, I made sure to drive through.
To visit our lodge and imagine the insane amount of Christmas lights on his balcony.
I visited the hall and remembered us dancing in the snow.
The village shop and the lake. The pub where I’d met him first.
I couldn’t forget a single second.
“I inherited Gran’s house. My dad died a few years back, and Mum never had any interest, so it fell to me.”
“You got it?” he said, a genuine smile growing on his lips. “Did you do it up? Like you wanted to?”
It surprised me that he remembered it. To this day, I don’t know why I took him there, showed him that part of me. I’d never taken anyone close to me there before him – or after.
“Yeah, I did,” I said. “And it’s true what they say, contractors are a real bitch to deal with. Most of it needed to be rebuilt because of the damage, and there’s still some work to be done on it.”
It was years in the making, working with architects and builders to bring the old house back to its former glory. There’d been a million setbacks, but finally, it was looking how I remembered. How Gran had kept it.
His hand stretched across the island, catching mine in its grasp. “That’s amazing, Kit,” he said, a faint smile across his lips. “I know how much that meant to you.”
I didn’t pull back, didn’t move. Instead, his hand on mine was the sole focus of my attention, and suddenly I was thrown back. The same calloused hands, the ones that had caused me to unravel on the kitchen counter. And the sofa. And the bed.
“What about you?” I asked, intentionally changing the subject. “Did you finish the book?”
“I did,” he confirmed, a burning pink extending to his ears. “It didn’t make a huge splash, but it was enough for the publisher to get off my back. And it was a good way to get into one-on-one coaching, made me look like I knew what I was talking about.”
I smiled, my eyes flickering around to his left hand. No ring. He could’ve left it at home, taken it off for the shower, forgotten to put it back on. There was no tan line either, almost certain in his profession. “And how is the family?”
“They’re great. My nephews are in college. One is even playing tennis. An excellent backhand. He can read a court better than I ever could.”
He looked so proud that it hurt my heart to ask my next question. “And any kids of your own?” I knew he wanted them, could see he’d suit that father figure better than most.
He shook his head. “It never happened for me. The travel, and my job. I never had time. Never met somebody else I could see myself with.”
And just like that, the moment ended. The time where we could act like two long-separated friends exchanging all the good news we had to offer. As if this could ever be that and we didn’t need to get into anything deeper.
We’d never been surface level. Those eleven days had changed me, had altered the course of my life. What I learned about myself and who I could be. What I deserved from relationships, even if it was temporary.
And that brought me to my second difficult question.