Chapter Thirty-Three
Ant
I’m feeling energised as I let myself back into our suite after a great surf. Against all odds, I’m looking forward to this wedding. It’ll give me another opportunity to dance with Lilavati. And although it means our time in Hawaii is nearly over, I’m keen to explore where we go from here.
I expect Lil to be in one of two places. Napping on the lanai or lathering herself in the shower in preparation for this afternoon’s ceremony. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s snuck down to the bay for a quick snorkel.
She’s doing none of those. She’s perched on the edge of the sofa, hands clenched around a wad of tissues, back ramrod straight, eyes puffy, cheeks blotchy. This is not the warm, soft, sleepy woman I left a couple of hours ago.
“What’s wrong? What happened?” I drop my board with a clatter and cross to sit beside her, careless of the damp towel around my waist. When I attempt to wrap my arms around her, she holds up a hand, warding me off.
“Is there something you need to tell me?” she asks, her voice low.
Fuck. My heart is thundering. What could this be about?
Did Warren somehow put a spin on what happened at the bucks’ night and make me look like the villain?
I know I underplayed it when I told Lil what happened, but I didn’t want to hurt her.
Or maybe he spun our conversation at the luau last night somehow?
There’s not much I wouldn’t put past this guy.
Despite the heat and humidity, goosebumps run up my arms.
I move back, giving her space and try to hold her gaze, but she closes her eyes, turns her face away and takes a deep, shuddering breath.
“Mum and Warren came to see me while you were out …” She pauses, and I jump in.
“I don’t know what he told you, but at no time did I threaten Miles. I wanted to. Fuck, I wanted to punch him into next year, but I never even made a fist.” Although I find myself making one now, wishing Warren were here so I could confront him.
“What are you talking about?” Lil’s eyebrows pull together in confusion.
“The bucks’ night. Isn’t that what Warren came to see you about? Or is it about our conversation last night?”
“No, it’s not about either of those.” She shakes her head. “Why didn’t you tell me you were looking for an investor in your business?”
“What?” I can’t make sense of what she’s saying. What has that got to do with anything? “What are you talking about?”
“When you finally got around to telling me about owning the cafés, why didn’t you tell me you were looking for funding to expand?
” Her eyes are sparkling with fresh, unshed tears, but she skewers me with her trademark take shit from no one look.
At least no one except her fucked up family, who dump endless shit on her.
That look makes me want to smile, but the tears in her eyes make me want to rage.
“Are you serious right now?” I’m thoroughly confused by the direction this conversation has taken.
“I asked you outright, Ant, whether there was anything else you needed to tell me, and you said no. So you … you lied.”
“I don’t understand what any of this has to do with us. It’s just business.” I’m genuinely puzzled.
She says nothing, just lifts her eyes and holds my gaze with hers. A single tear rolls down her cheek, and she swipes it away with an impatient hand.
“Just business. I see. Are you telling me you don’t know what Warren does for a living?” She’s all confrontation now.
“I thought he was retired?” I've never cared enough to ask.
“Semi. But before that.” Her beautiful lips are pressed together so tightly they’re barely visible, and her chin is trembling.
I pull a chair from the dining table, put it in front of Lil, and sit down, leaning forward with my elbows on my knees, searching her face, desperate to understand what’s going on.
“I don’t know. Did you say it was something in banking?”
Is that a look of scorn she gives me?
“He’s a partner in a venture capital firm.”
The penny drops, taking the floor under my feet with it. That fucking fucker. My first thought is I’ll tear him a new one. And then the direction she’s heading with this hits me.
She thinks I’ve been tuning her. To get to him.
I laugh. But at me. Not her. All that time I agonised over when and how to tell her I owned a business, to confess a lie, and it’s this that trips us up. A piece of information I had no idea had any relevance to us whatsoever.
It takes me a moment to collect enough calm to say, “And he told you I was using you to get to him.” It’s not a question. What’s gone on here is clear enough. Even for a dickhead like Warren, this is a low blow.
Lil doesn’t answer, but the way she drops her eyes from mine to the hands she’s twisting in her lap says it all. Big tears drop onto the backs of her fingers, splashing on knuckles white with tension. If I were kicked in the chest by a horse, it couldn’t hurt much more.
“And you believed him?”
She still doesn’t answer, so I continue. “I had … fuck … I had absolutely no idea what Warren did for a living. And if you recall, it was you who proposed this fake dating thing, not me.”
“Yes, a proposition you declined. Then you conveniently changed your mind and agreed to it. The day after Warren had been all over the news for a big deal he was doing. So, are you or are you not looking for an investor?”
Her voice is cold. Colder than the day we met in the car park and she accused me of being in the wrong in our fender bender. This time she’s accusing me of much worse. Of being the kind of man who would use a woman to get ahead in business.
I feel like I’ve been slapped.
“Wow. That’s what you think of me? Of us? That I’ve been faking it with you to get to Warren?”
The past week flashes before my eyes. Nothing I have said or done has been enough to convince her I’m genuinely interested in her. I haven’t been enough.
I don’t know what guts me more. The idea that she’d think so little of me that I’d do something like that, or that she thinks so little of herself that I couldn’t be interested in her for herself.
“What else am I supposed to think?” Her chin goes up in defiance.
“Lilavati. You know me. I’ve never told you a single lie.” Her eyebrow arches a lot like her grandmother’s. “Okay, well, yes, I lied by omission. But never an outright lie. And it honestly never occurred to me that it was something we needed to discuss.”
“A lie of omission is still a lie! You slept with me under false pretences. How am I supposed to believe anything you say?” Her breaths come fast and uneven.
“You’re supposed to believe me because you know me.
Yes, I wasn’t honest about the business thing at the beginning.
But I told you about that days ago. And now you’re accusing me of setting up some elaborate Machiavellian plan to extort money from Warren?
What did he say? That I was only pretending to be interested in you until I got some money out of him?
Or maybe he expected me to ask for money in exchange for disappearing? ”
The look on her face tells me that’s exactly what he said to her.
I didn’t expect anything more from him. This whole conversation fits with what I heard in the hallway the night we had dinner at their house.
What I did expect was better from Lilavati.
I thought she knew who I was, and her lack of belief slices at my throat until I can’t breathe.
“I’ll ask you one last time. Have you been looking for an investor for your business?”
“Lil, it’s not that—” I start, but she doesn’t let me finish.
“It’s a yes or no answer, Ant.”
If Lilavati felt for me a fraction of what I feel for her, she wouldn’t even need to ask that question. I give her the only answer I can.
“Yes.”
All emotion drops from her face. Like an echidna, she’s rolled herself up to protect her soft underbelly, and all that’s left showing to the outside world—to me—is her spikes.
“I see. Well, at least you’re finally being honest.” Cold, hard words without a hint of a tremor. The tears have stopped.
Stung pride and heartbreak are the only excuses I have for the words that fly out of me next.
“You wouldn’t know honest if it bit you on the arse.
Maybe you need to take a look at your own part in this little melodrama.
If you hadn’t been in such a hurry to deceive your parents, maybe you would’ve asked a few questions.
Done your own due diligence like Warren seems to have done.
So you can step down off that pedestal you’ve put yourself on, Lilavati, because none of us are perfect. Not even you.”