Before You Say I Do

Chapter 14 Spark

Ari was here, but it was all wrong.

Tom took a deep, gasping breath, rubbing at his forehead anxiously. His mother pressed a glass of whisky into his hand, and he looked down at it dumbly, the scent of peat and malt suddenly strong in the air. Tom winced, for the smell of whisky was as familiar to him as the smell of roses, freshly cut grass, and — once upon a time — Ari’s skin. This was his father’s whisky. He took a sip, only to immediately begin coughing on the hard, smoky burn in his mouth and throat.

Doug always made drinking this whisky look easy. He made everything look easy.

His father, dead these seven years, but living on in his son, in the memories brought forth by an amber liquid in a crystal tumbler, and now also in the small girl being put to bed by her mother upstairs.

Doug’s granddaughter, Tom realised. My daughter, his mind then added.

Abruptly, Tom’s hand began to shake, the whisky sloshing precariously within his glass. Within a second, it was plucked from his hand, and Sebastian was staring at him hard.

“So,” Sebastian began lightly, sipping Doug’s whisky slowly, and for a moment Tom wondered at the sheer audacity of this man to drink his father’s whisky with such ease. “You’re Tom Miller.”

“No—” Tom began to argue, before his shoulders slumped. “Yeah.”

“Tom Miller is fiction,” Marnie protested, pouring a large measure of whisky out for herself. “Just a character invented by a confused twenty-five-year-old. He wasn’t real.”

At that Sebastian shook his head. “He was real to Ari.”

Tom felt a dart of pain. “I know. I never meant to hurt her,” he offered weakly, “I loved her.”

“Truth be told, I don’t know if I believe that,” Sebastian replied, sinking into a nearby armchair. He stared at Tom again, his eyes drifting over his face, shoulders and body, and Tom shifted nervously.

“What?”

Sebastian shrugged. “I’m just looking. Trying to find her in you.”

“Reine,” Marnie said, and Tom noted how his mother sounded a little breathless when she spoke the girl’s name. “She’s beautiful.”

“Yes,” Sebastian’s voice was warm, “yes, she is.” He stared at Tom again, his eyes searching over him, and he emitted a bitter kind of huff that sat sourly in the air. “She has your eyes.”

There was disappointment in his voice that made Tom shift again, and he looked over to his mother desperately. Marnie however sat bone-still, staring back at him.

She wasn’t going to help him out of this. She was going to make him clean up his own mess.

“What did you think of her?” Sebastian pressed him, and Tom closed his eyes.

“Ari’s as beautiful as she ever was,” he answered honestly, and once again, that dart of pain ran through him.

“I didn’t mean Ari,” Sebastian spat. “I meant Reine. What did you think of her? Of your daughter ?”

But at that, Tom’s mind went blank.

“What did you think of her?” Sebastian asked again, his voice darkening. For a man who spent most of his day talking in a light, flippant and merry tone, Sebastian had quite the threatening timbre, Tom thought. He shifted again.

“She... she’s just a kid,” he replied honestly. “What am I supposed to think of her?”

It was clearly the wrong thing to say. “Well, fuck you, Tom Somerset,” Sebastian said tightly. “And fuck you too, Tom Miller.”

In a flash, Tom was on his feet.

“ What exactly do you want me to say here?” he exploded, frustration running through him. “That I saw her and immediately thought, ‘yes, that’s my child’? That I saw her and loved her? That I saw her and wanted to be a father to her?”

“Yes, that was the general idea,” Sebastian snapped back.

“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you,” Tom replied, running a hand through his hair. “The truth is that I looked at her and saw a kid. A kid. That’s all. I didn’t look at her and feel an instant swelling of love. I didn’t look at her and feel a paternal pride. I hardly looked at her at all, in fact, because she’s just a kid and a kid I don’t know and at that point I only wanted to look at her mother.”

“A kid you don’t know?” Sebastian downed the whisky in one go, before slamming the tumbler onto a nearby table. “A kid you don’t know? You helped make her.”

“A fact I’ve only just learned in the last twenty-four hours.”

“And a fact that means nothing to you, clearly.”

“I didn’t say that,” Tom snapped. “Don’t put words in my mouth. I didn’t say that Reine being my daughter means nothing to me.”

“You’re acting like it doesn’t,” Sebastian returned. Tom watched as he turned to Marnie, who was sipping at her own drink, her fingers clutched tight around the glass.

“What do you think of all this?” Sebastian asked her, an accusing note to his voice. “You obviously know everything.”

Marnie gave a shrug. “Not everything. I still have questions.”

“But you know a lot,” Sebastian replied, and Tom watched as his mother shrugged again.

“I started putting it together when Ari talked about Tom Miller. I’d known Tom had gone by that name for a few years... and the dates all made sense. But I don’t know everything.”

Sebastian gave Marnie a look. “That was at lunch yesterday. You’ve known for over twenty-four hours, have spoken to Ari in that time, and never said a word.”

Marnie sighed. “I couldn’t say anything to her. I didn’t have the full story.”

Sebastian crossed his arms over his chest like a petulant child. “None of us have the full story.”

“Exactly,” Marnie said softly. She glanced over at Tom, resting her eyes upon him sternly. “The only people who have the full story are Tom and Ari. And so we’re going to let them tell it.”

“Ari might be ages putting Reine to bed yet and Luis—”

“Oh no,” Marnie interjected quickly, her eyes never leaving Tom’s. “We aren’t going to make them tell the story to us. They’re going to talk to each other.”

“Mom,” Tom said, his voice hoarse, “I don’t know that I can. I don’t know if I can.”

Marnie stood, coming across the room to stand next to Tom. She laid a hand on his shoulder comfortingly. “You owe that girl the truth, Tom. You owe her that, at the very least. You need to talk with her.”

“She’ll hate me,” Tom whispered brokenly.

“She probably already does,” Marnie answered honestly, “And she has good reason to. At this point, you’ve got nothing to lose.”

Sebastian, on the other side of the room, threw up his hands. “What? We’re just supposed to... let them talk? While we, what? Have dinner and make small talk with Sasha ?”

“No,” Marnie said firmly. “Sasha is Tom’s fiancée, and he owes her the truth too. He also promised her the pleasure of his company at dinner. He’s going to show her the respect she’s due. I may not like that woman, but I won’t have her treated with callousness. There’s been enough of that in this family already.”

Tom winced. Callous. He’d treated Ari callously. Once again, he ran a hand over his face, hearing the truth and sense in his mother’s words, even while he shuddered at the thought of them.

“Sasha will want to talk about the wedding,” Tom muttered, “she’ll want to talk about the wedding over the dinner table with...” he swallowed hard “. . . with Ari right there.”

“Yes,” Marnie agreed, “most likely. And you’re going to listen and nod and smile and then, afterwards, put it right with both of the women in your life. Your fiancée... and the mother of your child.”

“Your child,” Sebastian repeated loudly. “Your child . The fruit of your loins. Of your cheating, lying, no-good loins.”

“Stop saying loins,” Tom snapped. “I get it. I know I need to think about... about her as well—”

“Not her,” Sebastian snapped back. “ Reine. She has a name, and Luis and I worked damn hard to give it to her, so can you use it please?”

“Wait a minute... you named Reine?” Marnie cut in. “I thought it was Ari.”

At that, Sebastian rolled his eyes. “No woman full of hormones and heartbreak should be entrusted with naming a child. Ever. I kid you not, Ari wanted to name Reine ‘Millie’ when she was born. Millie. Like Vanilli,” his eyes narrowed, “or like her absent, cheating, lying and no-good father’s fake surname. Well, thank God, we got her to dodge that bullet. We had to sit her down and explain that if her mysterious Tom ever did return for her — and make no mistake, Tom, she truly believed you would — her baby would end up with the name Millie Miller. Millie Miller.” Sebastian shuddered. “Reine was the much better choice.”

“Reine is a beautiful name,” Marnie nodded approvingly. “A beautiful name for a beautiful girl.”

“Damn right, and it’s time your son started using it.” He gave Tom a long, piercing stare. “If in my presence I hear you refer to Reine as her or she or, heaven help you, it , I will personally have you taken out by the nearest available assassin.”

“Are assassins easy to come by in your world?” Marnie asked wryly, and Sebastian turned to her.

“My dear, I work the wedding circuit ,” he replied easily. “After hair and make-up, they’re next on my contact list.”

“I would never call her...” Tom paused “. . . I would never call Reine it . Never. Fuck, do you think if I’d known about her I would have stayed away? Do you think if that day when I saw her as a baby I’d thought she was mine, I wouldn’t have done anything to be in her life? Of course I would, of course I would have done everything in my power—”

“Hold the phone, Somerset, there’s a good chap,” Sebastian interrupted, holding out his empty tumbler to Marnie, who diligently poured another measure into it. “What did you mean just then, when you said ‘ that day when I saw her as a baby ’?”

Tom paused. There was a loaded silence in the room, and Tom had to take a deep breath before speaking.

“I saw her... I mean, Reine. I saw her. As a baby,” he confessed, “but I... I didn’t think she... I didn’t believe Reine could be mine.”

“When did you see Reine? Where?” Sebastian asked icily, and Tom shifted in his seat. He was reminded suddenly of the time he’d cheated on an assignment at elementary school and been dragged before the irate assistant principal to explain himself. He’d wondered at the time where the actual principal was, before deciding that the level of fraud committed on the grade five Westward Expansion topic was so great the principal no longer bothered with reprimanding the many youngsters who did it. Still, even as the assistant principal railed at him, the threat of being taken to stern Miss Abbott — with her lined face, thin lips and wire-framed glasses — was enough to make him sweat the entire time.

It was the same feeling today. Sebastian was going to rail at him about Reine, Tom knew. But he also knew he had to face Ari too. And that was the meeting he was really worried about.

“At Ari’s apartment,” Tom said, clearing his throat. “I came to see her.”

Sebastian inhaled sharply. “You went to her flat? When?”

“A little over two years after I’d left her in Germany.”

For a moment, Sebastian stared at him. Tom stared back, waiting for Sebastian’s inevitable anger, waiting for the rage to start so he could snap back. Talking about Ari and that hideous day when he’d gone to her door — expecting to find the love of his life and instead coming face to face with what he’d assumed were her husband and baby — always put him in a bad mood. If this man wanted a fight, Tom was ready to give it to him.

But Sebastian surprised him.

Tom watched as the blond-haired man nodded slowly, taking a deep drink of Doug’s whisky.

“So,” he said lightly, “you actually went back for her.”

“Yeah, I did,” Tom replied tightly, trying to keep the bitter tone from his voice. “Of course I did. I loved her. I still—” He stopped, biting on his lip hard. He saw Sebastian’s eyes flash, and abruptly shook his head, standing up. “I loved her, I promised I would go back for her, promised I would find her, and I did. I did. ”

Sebastian nodded slowly again, before holding a finger up to him. “Hold that thought, Somerset.”

Tom watched as Sebastian turned to Marnie, pointing to his glass of whisky. “I say, Marnie, this stuff is fucking fabulous. Like liquid cigarettes. I love it.”

“It was my husband’s favourite,” Marnie admitted, “I can’t stand it myself, but he loved it and, for whatever reason, I can’t stop buying it.”

“Bless you, that’s hard,” Sebastian said, and the tone of his voice made Tom wonder if this man ever missed the parents who’d thrown him out. Maybe that was why he’d taken so well to the little family he’d created with Luis, Ari and Reine. Maybe there was comfort to be found in the parenting of a small child.

Tom swallowed heavily again. Parenting. He would never know now, would he?

“Losing Doug was one of the hardest things I’ve ever been through,” Marnie replied softly.

“When did he pass?”

“Eight years ago, nearly. Just after Tom came back from Europe.”

At that, Sebastian turned back to Tom. “So, that was true? You really did abandon Ari in Germany because your father was sick?”

“Not sick,” Tom corrected him, “dying.”

“And then you went back for her? Two years later? That’s quite a gap, Somerset.”

Tom sighed. “I needed time after my father died. I can’t explain it... I needed time to grieve and to think and to be ready—”

“Ready?” Sebastian cut in, and the snap was back in his voice. “Ari was in London, pregnant and then raising your baby all alone, while you waited to be ready ? Ready for what, may I ask? A written fucking invitation from the King?”

“Ready to face the truth,” Tom at once snapped back. “Ready to face the truth of who I was, what I’d done and to beg Ari’s forgiveness. I don’t expect you to understand. I don’t even care if you do, to be honest. All I care about is her. All I’ve ever cared about in my life has been her. And I’ve lost her. I’ve lost her. The one bright light in my small, pitiful existence has been lost to me, and I’ll have to live with it for the rest of my small, pitiful existence.” Tom ran a hand over his face. “If you want to hate me, then fine, hate me. It doesn’t matter. No one will ever hate me more than I hate myself.”

Tom heard his mother give a sad sigh, but Sebastian only rolled his eyes.

“You know, normally the brides are the dramatic ones,” he reflected, throwing back the rest of Doug’s whisky, “and Marnie, you really must write down the name of this stuff for me, by the way. It’s Scottish, yes?”

“Actually, no,” Marnie told him. “Japanese.”

“Japanese?” Sebastian raised an eyebrow. “Impressive. You know, when Luis and I take Reine to Tokyo for the next BarbieCon, I might take a day to myself and visit the distillery. Get away from all the pink and plastic, as well as the slightly creepy doll collectors — and I do include my husband in that — fighting over a mint in the box 1983 Fabulous Fur Barbie. I could pick up a barrel or five of this marvellous stuff.”

“You have to be a special client of the distillery owner to buy barrels,” Marnie replied.

“And I’m going to guess by your tone that you are one of those special clients?”

At that, Marnie smiled. “No. Actually, I’m the owner. I had the Somerset estate buy up the place after Doug passed.”

“Excellent. Maybe you can give me a special rate then.”

“Even with a special rate, it’s still very expensive.”

Sebastian shrugged. “Well, luckily for me I just got paid an extraordinary sum of money from a client to plan her son’s wedding.”

Marnie grimaced. “Well, that client sounds like a damn fool.”

“She’s not. The son, on the other hand...”

“All right, all right, quit it,” Tom finally snapped. “I get it, I’m a fool. I shouldn’t have lied, shouldn’t have abandoned Ari in Germany and shouldn’t have assumed Reine wasn’t mine when I saw her.”

“Ah yes, that .” Sebastian turned back to Tom casually. “You came to Ari’s flat in London, saw Reine, and didn’t immediately put two and two together?”

“He did, but made five instead of four,” Marnie chimed in. “He thought Reine was your husband’s child.”

“ Luis ,” Sebastian spluttered. “You thought Reine was Luis’s? Jesus, Somerset, did you even look at Reine? Any fool can see that she’s yours.”

“I just . . . she was so little and Ari and I . . . the timings . . .”

“The timings? You had unprotected sex with her and then the next time you pop by her London flat there’s a new small girl about the place and you didn’t stop to think about it? What, did you suddenly start believing Ari was some kind of... I don’t know, self-fertilising starfish?”

Tom shook his head in exasperation. “I know Ari isn’t a fucking starfish!”

“Besides, starfish aren’t self-fertilising,” Marnie put forward. “They’re broadcast spawners.”

Tom’s mouth dropped open as he turned to his mother. “How do you even know that?”

“I told you, didn’t I?” Marnie replied blithely. “I read the internet. There was this blog by this man who was an assistant to a marine biologist out in... oh, somewhere in the Pacific. It was very entertaining. I was quite addicted at the time.”

“Oh, I should read that,” Sebastian’s interest was piqued. “Do send me the link. As for you,” he turned back to Tom, “you’re not just a fool, you’re a fucking idiot. If you’d stayed for thirty seconds and spoken to Luis, you’d have realised in an instant he wasn’t Reine’s father.”

Tom dropped back into his chair, his shoulders slumping in defeat. “He just... he was so handsome... so easy-going with Reine... and she had this stuffed rabbit. This pink stuffed rabbit.” Tom closed his eyes as a painful memory struck him. “Every time it wobbled in her little hands, your husband just... fixed it for her. Without even watching what she was doing. It was like he just knew. That’s why I walked away. Because of a fucking pink rabbit.”

Behind him, Tom heard Sebastian give a sigh. “The pink rabbit? Luis gave it to her when she was born. Honestly, Somerset, if you’d just spoken to him... I love him, but he has no boundaries, my Luis. I’d call him an open book but that would be wrong, because in his world there is no book. Instead, there’s just pages and pages of text, which he’ll tell you about without being asked or invited. If you’d just said to him, ‘cute kid’ he’d have straightaway replied with something like ‘oh thanks, she is cute, she’s my sister’s and hey what a great accent you have, why, you must be an American. Speaking of Americans, do you know a guy named Tom Miller by the way because we’re searching for him?’ and then you’d have known.”

Tom felt something constrict tightly inside his chest. There was a sheen of sweat developing on his skin, and he felt sick, nausea building within him. All of a sudden, the world felt like too much. The room felt like too much and the two people beside him — his mother and this man to whom he was now forever linked because of a small girl — felt like too much. Tom stood, running his hand through his hair.

“I have to get out of here,” he muttered, lurching towards the door.

“No Tom,” his mother snapped, “you promised Sasha you’d be there for dinner!”

“You also promised Ari you’d be there for life!” Sebastian called after him.

But Tom didn’t care. He fled through the open doors, tearing away from the house, tears stinging his eyes.

He needed to get away. From them all.

* * *

There’s no reproach from Doug when Tom walks through the door and back into his life. Doug simply seems glad to see him, reaching for Tom’s hand over the cotton blankets and squeezing it once.

“Hey,” Tom says, and it strikes him painfully that it’s such a simple word to use in the circumstances. Just three letters long and spoken in one short exhalation of breath. He’s been gone for years, absent and silent and angry and lost, and now he’s back with just one word to offer in greeting. It doesn’t feel like enough.

But Doug gives him that same lopsided smile as always.

“Hey, Tom,” he mutters, his voice raspier than Tom last remembers it. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.”

Guilt builds in Tom’s stomach. “I know I’ve been gone a while,” he says softly.

Doug shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. You’re here now. That’s what counts. And you’re a good kid.”

Tom winces. “I don’t know about that.” He can’t help it. He thinks of Ari, and of the look on her face when he said goodbye to her.

“You are a good kid,” Doug persists, before giving him a grin. “So good that I know you’ll go and get my whisky from the cabinet downstairs and bring it up to me.”

“Mom won’t?” Tom asks wryly, sinking into the chair next to his father’s sick bed.

“Nah,” Doug scowls briefly. “She’s got me on this bullshit organic, gluten-free diet. She reads too much online. Thinks she’s gonna cure my cancer by cutting out free radicals and carbohydrates. The damage is done though.”

“You could have asked Corentin,” Tom suggests, but Doug shrugs. Now that he’s sitting, Tom can see the effort each movement is taking his father. He can clearly see the small flickers of pain that cross his face, the slight shake to his hand and the paper-thin quality of his skin. He sounds like his father, but he looks like a broken, dying man. Tom feels a deep stab of pain, which he does his best to keep hidden.

“I could,” Doug replies, “but we all know how that would have gone. Always in cahoots with your mom, that kid.”

“I’ll get your whisky,” Tom promises. “Might even have a glass myself.”

“You don’t drink whisky. Especially not my whisky.”

“I don’t know. It feels like a good time to start,” Tom replies, trying to keep his voice light, but his father peers at him, looking concerned.

“What’s going on, kid?”

“Nothing,” Tom lies. “There’s nothing going on.”

“Yeah, right,” Doug says bluntly, “you’re just back from your mysterious years-long European vacation, you’re sitting by the side of a dying old man, and you’ve got heartbreak written all over your face.”

“Heartbreak? Of course my heart is broken. My father is the dying old man in your story,” Tom reminds him, but Doug sees through his words almost at once.

“Who was she?”

Tom’s stomach drops. “I don’t know what you—”

“Cut the crap, kid. Of course you do. Corentin said you’d been travelling with a woman in Europe.”

Tom presses his lips together. He’d only made it through his transatlantic flight, and then his journey home, by blocking Ari from his mind. It hurt deep inside him whenever he thought about her. He’d heard people talk about aching for someone, and always scoffed at the idea. How could you ache for someone? How could your body physically respond to an emotional event? How was that possible?

He’d learned quickly just how possible it was. From the moment he’d turned his back on Ari, from the moment he’d given her that final kiss, his body had begun to ache. It was worse than the most awful stomach ache and worse than the most awful headache. He couldn’t eat and couldn’t sleep. He was functioning on auto-pilot, hardly aware of his course or surroundings. He was a shell of a man. He ached everywhere, and every pain was for Ari.

“There was a woman,” Tom replies softly. “There is a woman,” he corrects himself. “I love her.”

“Ah.” Doug nods, and Tom sees recognition in his eyes. His father was young once, Tom reminds himself. “What about that girlfriend of yours... What was her name? The one from school?”

“Sasha,” Tom says, but the name feels wrong on his lips. “She’s not my girlfriend. Not anymore. I ended it with her before I left for Europe.”

Doug sighs. “Sasha. That’s it. Pretty thing. But she’s not the woman you’re in love with, right? There’s someone else?”

“Yeah. There’s someone else.”

“Good,” Doug replies, and the grin is back. “Sasha’s pretty, but she’s missing a spark. You need the spark, Tom. Always go for the girl with the spark. I’ve been in love twice in my whole damn life, and both times, the girls had spark.”

“Two times?” Tom asks, raising an eyebrow. “Does Mom know?”

Doug grins again. “Yeah. She knows everything about everyone, especially me.”

“Who was the first girl?”

Tom watches as his father shifts his head on his pillow. He looks almost wistful as he relives his youth. “Girl named Yvonne. Childhood sweetheart of mine... a bit like you and that Sasha girl. But she had a bit of spark. She had a bit of fire. She had a zest for life and living and we had a hell of a time together.”

Surprisingly, Tom feels a dart of betrayal for his mother.

“Why didn’t you end up with this Yvonne then?” he asks, his voice a little sharp, and he hears his father give a laugh.

“Because I met your mom. Just one look at her and I knew she was the right woman for me. You know your mom and I have had our problems, but she’s always the one. Always has been, always will be.”

Something inside of Tom softens, and he squeezes his father’s hand once more.

“Tell me about this woman of yours. The one in Europe,” his father asks, and Tom gives a bitter smile.

“You’d like her,” he says, and it’s the truth, he realises. His father wouldn’t just like Ari. No, he would love her.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. She’s quick and curious and sharp as a tack. She eats anything and everything and finds adventure where you wouldn’t even think adventure could be found,” Tom says, and he warms at the thought of her. “She paints. Paints the most beautiful things you’ve ever seen. I have a pile of her paintings in storage in the city. Every time she painted something she didn’t think was good enough to keep, I took it and shipped it home. There’s this one painting, the one she did in Norway and—” Tom stops, colour flooding his cheeks. “I’m talking too much.”

Doug, to Tom’s surprise, has that wistful look on his face again. “You need to go back and get this woman and bring her here, Tom.”

Tom slumps. “I can’t do that. Not yet.”

“Why the hell not?”

“I need time.”

“Time to do what?”

Tom licks his lips. “Time to work out how I’m going to explain.”

Doug looks at him warily. “Explain what?”

“About why I lied to her. About why I deceived her.”

“Why would you do that?”

Tom shrugs. “I didn’t mean for it to happen. I really didn’t. I just...” he pauses, clenching his fists. The physical exertion distracts from his mental anguish, and it feels good when he releases and flexes his hand. “I was in an airport, and I saw this... this woman. She was striking. She was beautiful. I could tell she had...” he gives his father a small smile, “. . . spark. I didn’t mean to talk to her. I really didn’t. But we kept exchanging glances and then I... I couldn’t help myself. I had to talk to her. It snowballed from there. I lied to her, again and again, because I kept meaning to walk away. I told myself it was just one conversation. And then it was just one kiss. And then just one night. And then, before I knew it, it had been just six months. By the time I realised I wanted it to be forever, it was too late. The damage was done.” Tom sits back in his chair, looking up to meet his father’s gaze. Doug’s eyes are soft, regarding him with compassion.

“You’re an idiot, Tom, you know that? You love this woman. Love her. That’s not a small thing. You have to go back for her. Explain everything, just as you did to me. She’ll either forgive you or—”

“Exactly,” Tom cuts in, almost angry. He’s not angry at Doug though. He’s angry at himself. “Or. It’s the or that frightens me. I love her, and I had it good with her, and the stupid, hurtful lies I told might cost me that. I want to be with her... but once she knows the truth, how will she ever want to be with me?”

“I don’t know the answer to that question,” Doug replies. “I don’t. But you have to go back and try. You’ll never forgive yourself if you don’t.”

“I know. I really love her. I want to be with her. But what happens if she turns me down? What if she moves on? I don’t know how I could handle that. I don’t know how I can live life without her now.”

Doug suddenly looks weary, and Tom realises that this conversation is costing his father energy he doesn’t have to give.

“Tom,” Doug says softly, “if that happens, you’ll move on. Take it from an old man who knows. I had Yvonne, and then I met your mother. There might be another woman—”

“Not for me,” Tom cuts in firmly. “She’s the only one for me. You said you saw Mom and knew. I saw Ari and I knew.”

“Okay. But I don’t want you to end up a lonely, bitter man. I want you to be happy. I’m your father. I need to know you’ll be okay, once I’m... once I’m not around anymore.”

At that, Tom feels tears begin to sting his eyes. “Dad.”

“It’s okay, Tom,” Doug replies. “It’s okay. Things will be okay, I promise. So long as you face up to your troubles and stop running from them, things will always work out. Go back to Europe, Tom. Find this woman. Make things right. If it’s the last thing you ever do for your dad, do this.”

Tom nods, still clinging to his father’s hand.

And after he nods, his face crumples, and then he begins to cry.

* * *

He found himself in his father’s old work shed. Doug had been a pilot — with a hangar full of light aircraft and a small runway on one side of the estate — but he’d also been a racer, and kept a shed full of old cars and parts he’d tinkered with. Marnie hadn’t had the heart to get rid of any of it, and so it still sat to this day, dusty and neglected and worn. Just like my heart, Tom thought with a scowl. He sat by the side of an old Chevy, his long legs touching the nearby wall, playing with an old wrench and spark plug.

He found solace in keeping his hands busy, being both furious and disgusted with himself.

He’d run away. Again.

It was an old habit he found hard to break, running from his feelings and his troubles. And tonight, with Ari once again in his life, he’d been assaulted by both.

Ari. Ari.

The wrench fell from his hands, and once again, Tom felt that old ache build within him. He’d told himself for years that he no longer loved her. He’d told himself for years that this ache — this constant, fucking awful ache for her — was just a residual feeling of old. That it wasn’t love he still felt for her, but merely nostalgia.

But that had been a lie, not just to himself but also to Sasha. He still loved Ari. He’d always loved Ari. He was always going to love Ari, and both she and Sasha needed to know that.

Tom took a deep breath, feeling the calm of his father’s presence wash over him. Whenever he felt trouble at his mother’s house, he did one of two things: went up into the sky in one of his dad’s beat-up old planes, or came in here to mess around with one of his dad’s beat-up old cars. He needed his dad. Needed his memory. Needed his father, even when his father was gone.

He picked the wrench back up as resolve ran through him.

He couldn’t marry Sasha. He just couldn’t. Not while he was still in love with Ari.

And Ari... he needed her to know how he felt. Needed her to know the truth. Needed her to know how sorry he was, how sorry he would always be.

He stood, intending on returning to the house, when a nearby rustle caught his attention.

Someone else was here, he realised. Someone else had followed him.

Ari, he immediately thought — or maybe hoped. Ari’s here.

“You can come out,” he said softly. “I’m here.”

The wrench dropped from Tom’s hand again, the noise bouncing around the old shed, because it wasn’t Ari.

It was Reine.

She was dressed in a pair of pyjamas, a robe around her shoulders, her hair dressed in braids down her back. She was clutching the old, battered pink bunny Tom remembered from years ago, and was staring up at Tom with wide, almost fearful eyes.

“Reine,” Tom said, stepping back and looking desperately from side to side. “What are you doing here? Does your mom know you’re here? Does mine?”

But Reine continued to stare up at him, clutching her bunny. She chewed on her lip in a way that reminded Tom instantly of Ari, and he could see the small child was working up courage. But courage for what?

“I know who you are,” the child said, her voice barely above a whisper but full of bravery. “I know who you are.”

Tom felt his mouth go dry. “Do you?”

“Yes.” The child nodded, and Tom could see that her hands were gripping the bunny with a tightness that must have been hurting her fingers. “Yes, I know.”

“Who am I?” Tom asked, terrified already of her response.

The child stood taller. “You’re my father.”