Chapter 19 #2
After the trip to visit Nate, Niall suggested they visit a local gold foundry where Carli ordered a bespoke bracelet for Luci.
Then he took her to lunch at a farm shop where afterwards, she lost herself in the shop buying lots of healthy snacks.
This was how some people behaved in a sweet shop, but to Carli a health store was a sweet shop.
‘So, tell me about your travels to Australia,’ she said as they sat in the car drinking kombucha. ‘You went to pick olives.’
‘Aye, I went to pick olives.’ Niall took a large slug of his drink. ‘Except… Well, that wasn’t the dream, was it?’
‘Is it any twenty-one-year-old’s dream? You wanted to experience the Aussie lifestyle.’
‘I didn’t go to experience the Aussie lifestyle, Cass.
I went for you, to experience getting back together with you.
’ Niall spoke these words with confidence but stared dead ahead through the car windscreen as he said them, as if he were ashamed.
It was strange. He’d always been so open about his feelings for her, from reading her poems to kissing her unabashedly in front of his friends and brothers.
Finally, he looked at her and she took the opportunity to clarify.
‘You moved to Australia for me?’ she asked.
‘Aye. It seems daft since I wrecked us, but I never stopped wanting to be with you, even when I was racked with shame. I hoped that if I could see you in person, we could sort things out. So, after uni, I got my two-year working holiday visa, packed up and hopped on a flight to Melbourne.’
‘To the olive farms.’
‘Believe it or not, I wasn’t thinking about olives when I landed in Melbourne.’
‘So why didn’t you come visit me?’
‘Really? You’d have wanted me to visit? You’d have wanted this guy who dumped you with no proper explanation to rock up on your doorstep and say he was sorry and it was the biggest mistake of his life?’
‘That’s exactly what I would have wanted.’ This had become something of a fantasy of Carli’s, even when she knew it would never happen.
‘But you were with someone else.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because,’ Niall tugged at the steering wheel as if he wanted to drive away from this part of the conversation, ‘I caught the tram to your dad’s house to find out where you lived and I saw you with him.’
‘Sorry? You did what?’ Carli reached for the steering wheel and held it still, prompting Niall to let go and turn to her.
‘Aye. It was a stalkerish thing to do but that’s me, I guess. Heart on his sleeve Butler.’ He shrugged, as if bashful about this admission.
But heart on his sleeve Butler was the only man Carli had ever truly loved.
‘Niall, oh my God, I wish I’d known. I’d have dropped him in a second if I’d turned around to find you standing there.
I was only with him as a Band Aid to cover over the pain of us and it didn’t last. All it did was drive home how perfect you and I were for each other. ’
‘Jesus! If I’d known that… I should have fought for you more, Cass. Thought fuck it, she can’t love that guy. But who was I to decide that you didn’t? It had taken such a lot to convince myself that I should come at all, so when I saw you with someone else I figured you were better off.’
‘Well, I guess there’s no point regretting any of it now.’ After the previous night’s revelations, Carli was done with regret.
‘Aye, true. If things had worked out, we might’ve have had five kids too young and ended up with you throwing my pants out the window and screaming at me to “go back to fucking Scotland”.’
She laughed. ‘Do you regret moving to Australia?’
‘Not one bit. I’d never have met Rafe and set up the surf school. And I’d never have tried to see you again.’
‘But you could have set up a surf school in Kinshore.’
‘But would I have? Would I have done all that on my own, without Rafe? I’m the type of guy that needs a wingman to get me going.’
‘You and Sean could do something like that.’
‘Ha! Me and Sean trying to get anything started together would be like asking two toddlers to organise their own birthday party. We’d have a blast, but I’m not sure it would be especially solid as a business.
But I get what you’re saying, and if I hadn’t gone to Australia then there would never be a chance to miss my family like I do, but how could I have lived with the pain of the what-if between us? I couldn’t. I had to have an answer.’
Silence settled between them, Carli digesting Niall’s words, letting them sink in.
Niall crushed his now empty can of kombucha. ‘And to cope with the trauma of that bombshell, how would you like a massage?’
Carli gaped at him. ‘What, from you? Here?’
‘Not from me. Or here.’ He laughed. ‘I mean, unless you like low-rent car massage. There’s a spa hotel near here. I’ve checked and they’ve got some spots free this afternoon.’
Are you having one too?’
‘It wasn’t the plan, but I can do.’
‘Or get a facial.’
‘Um, yeah, nah, I’ll stick with the massage. I haven’t evolved enough to be into facials yet.’
Carli laughed. This man was evolved enough to book her in for a massage and that was good enough.
When they got back to the campsite at three, the sky was darkening ominously.
‘Doesn’t look too good,’ said Niall. ‘Might be a night for reading in our tents. Maybe we should’ve got a hotel.’
‘You reckon it’ll rain?’
‘Hope not. I’m going to go for a swim in the loch before it does. You fancy it.’
‘I do not. I’m all warm and relaxed from my massage.’
‘But cold swimming is good for you.’
‘I prefer warm things, but some people swear by swimming outdoors in the winter.’
‘You could try it.’
‘I could, or I could sit and watch you.’
Carli hadn’t appreciated quite how enjoyable it would be to watch Niall swimming in the loch.
She also hadn’t considered quite how much it would send heat racing between her legs to see the beauty of him cutting through the water, muscles gleaming and then him walking towards her, those ridged abs gleaming in the dusk.
Her body betrayed her mind and fizzed with appreciation at how good he looked almost naked.
Physically, Niall pushed all her buttons.
When they’d slept together for the first time, it had been quick and a bit messy, but they’d had the luxury of knowing each other, being in a relationship, and taking their time to find out what sex could be.
And it had grown to be good. Incredibly good.
Niall had wanted to try things from his mum’s romance books, and Carli hadn’t been sure at first, but when she found scenes she liked and he read them to her and they turned her on, she’d been almost begging him to try.
Looking at him now, she wouldn’t mind bringing some of those scenes back to life.
Jesus, was she ovulating or something?
Nope, it was just Niall Butler, with his all-year-long ovulation stimulation.
Niall hobbled across the stones at the shore of the loch in only his soaked-through underwear. Carli averted her eyes to the ground at his feet, so she didn’t get caught ogling. And that was when she spotted something. On the inside of his left ankle.
‘What’s that on your ankle?’ she asked. ‘Is that a weed?’ Then light dawned. ‘Oh… It’s a tattoo?’
Niall didn’t look down, instead he locked onto her watching him. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘It is.’
‘Oh right. What’s… When did you… What does it say?’ Why was she so flummoxed here? Was it because it reminded her of his other tattoo? Or because he was soaking wet and almost naked inches from her?
‘Which question would you like me to answer first?’
‘Um.’
Niall stepped a little closer to her chair. Without invitation, he lifted his wet ankle and laid it on her knee, soaking her leggings. But that was the last thing on her mind. She travelled her gaze up to his face.
‘Read it.’ He motioned back to his ankle.
Reluctantly, Carli turned her gaze downward, unsure if she wanted to see what it said. What if it was a tribute to another girl, or something in Chinese that was cheesy or meaningless when translated?
She found her way back to the words on Niall’s ankle.
‘Go on,’ he prompted her again.
Straining a little in the dimming light, Carli traced her thumb across the words, and with more nerves than being asked to speak out loud in school, she read. ‘But to see her was to love her; Love but her, and love forever… It’s Rabbie Burns,’ she murmured. ‘“Ae Fond Kiss”.’
‘Aye.’
‘Did you get this done for a girl?’ A streak of jealousy cut through her that Niall would have shared his fondness for Burns with another woman, enough to ink it onto his skin.
‘Did you just ask me that?’ He brought his foot to the ground and stood square with her now, that wet-underwear-encased crotch close to her face, but she travelled over it to meet his eyeline.
‘Um, yes.’
‘Cass, I will answer any of your questions and apologise a thousand times over for everything I did that fucked up our relationship, but I honestly don’t think I need to answer if I got this done for a girl.
Or which girl. Do I?’ His oceanic blues glistened under wet lashes with an intensity that made Carli feel incredibly small, but, oh, so seen.
Niall was right on the money. She didn’t need any more detail.
The tattoo was for her. Those words were for her.
She might not know of the exact time or place he’d had it done, but there it was. More proof of his feelings.
‘No.’ She shook her head and tried to breathe control, sentience, rationality back into her body. ‘I… I get it.’
He nodded.
‘Have you any other tattoos?’ she asked.
‘Besides the Cass one, nope, I’m not really a tattoo person.’
Carli quirked a brow. ‘Says the man with two tattoos.’
‘I’m more of a you person.’
‘Oh.’ Holy fuck! Was this conversation actually happening?
Was a man saying these things to her? And was that man Niall Butler, standing here in soaked underpants with his rock-hard body, all wet and taunting, with ink on it dedicated to her?
Carli’s gaze dropped to his crotch again.
‘You…might want to leave something to a lady’s imagination,’ she said before looking up to catch him tilting his head and smiling softly at her.
He was glad she was back and that he’d helped bring her back. She could tell.
‘Sorry,’ he said, evidently trying to hold back the same amount of stupid happiness she was.
‘No, you’re not.’
He stepped towards her, wet underwear dangerously close, took her chin in his fingers, tilted it up towards him and spoke with crushing sincerity. ‘You know I am, Cass.’
And then he was gone. For a shower. My God. Why did he keep doing this to her? Leaving her hanging while he went off to be naked somewhere else that wasn’t in her presence.
Carli did some deep breaths to steady herself and tried to ignore how aroused he made her. Logic said she couldn’t fall into things with Niall so soon. The revelation was too raw.
Except it wasn’t. It truly wasn’t. The only thing that was raw was how much she wanted him.
He’s staying in Scotland for goodness’ sake.
Minor detail.
When Carli had seen Niall this morning, standing there cooking her breakfast, in his rough, sleepy morning haze, that adorable expression of concentration on his face, she held nothing but affection for him.
Niall had owned his mistakes, he’d said he was sorry countless times, and today he’d shown himself to be a good man.
The person she knew he was. He was the person who’d hurt her, but he’d also been the person who’d helped her heal, and he had a good, good heart.
And he had two tattoos on his achingly beautiful body dedicated to her.
As for the chemistry. It was off the charts and getting desperately difficult to ignore.