Chapter 4 #2
Strutting past him, I make it out of the bar to the landing. Thumping the lift button, I glance nervously between the exit and four lifts. ‘Come on,’ I say whisper, foot bouncing, arms folded.
‘Don’t walk away from me, Scarlett.’ His presence makes every last hair on my body stand on end, my nervous system attuned to him. ‘I came here to set you straight on a few things and you’re going to listen to what I’ve got to say.’
I squeeze my eyes shut so I don’t see but I sense that he’s moving closer to me.
I can’t let him see me breaking on the outside even though I’m shattering on the inside.
The pain I’ve tried to kill since leaving London has come crashing back and it’s striking me in the gut, crippling my body.
‘Leave me alone, Gregory.’
He’s next to me now. Too close. I can smell his fresh, rich scent. Feel his heat.
‘I will, once you’ve heard what I have to say.’
I turn to him, reluctantly looking up to find his gaze already on mine, reading me, breaking down my facade.
‘You lost the right to demand things from me when you lied to me and then sent me away.’
‘Two minutes. That’s all I’m asking. I’ll tell you what you want to know.’
He has a point. This is for me, not him. ‘Two minutes.’
‘Outside, come on.’
He reaches for my arm and I flinch as flames ignites under his warm palm but he leads us through a fire exit and onto a quiet, desolate terrace.
It’s a side of the hotel I haven’t seen but the frenetic lights of Dubai still shine in the night around us.
I break our contact and move away from him, leaning forward on the railing.
‘Your two minutes have begun.’
With a heavy exhale, he comes to mirror my pose. I inch away from him and in my peripheral vision, see his shoulders sag. ‘You didn’t let me finish last night.’
‘That’s because there was nothing left to say.
’ I can’t contain my anger and rise to stand.
He straightens – bigger than me in every way.
But I know him, at least enough to know that there are many facets to his personality and none of them intimidate me.
‘You made me promise, Gregory. You made me swear that I would accept the CPS decision, that I would see that as my justice. But it wasn’t justice at all. You bought your own law.’
‘That’s rich,’ he growls.
‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’
‘You said yourself, a good lawyer bends the law. That’s exactly why you told me to hire John Harrison.’
‘Bends the law, Gregory, not fucking evades it.’
‘Curb the attitude, Scarlett.’
‘No.’ I’m leaning towards him, finger on his chest. ‘You don’t get to call the shots here. Not with me. So tell me what you came to say because you have about thirty seconds left before I walk away for the last time.’
He rakes his fingers through his hair. Damn, I want to do that. Turning my back on him, I try to focus on anything in the distance to distract me.
‘I paid off some people but it’s not what you think.’
‘Who?’
‘The CPS.’
A weight crushes the air from my lungs for the second time tonight and I press my fingertips to my lips.
‘But not for the murder charge, Scarlett. Look at me.’
I shake my head but he gently tugs my shoulders, forcing me to face him.
‘Look at me.’
I shake my head again, faster. His index finger is under my chin, lifting it in a too familiar way.
‘Not the murder charge,’ he says gently. ‘The CPS didn’t charge the murder of their own accord. That decision is yours. That was real justice. A decision they made because the right man died that night.’
I close my eyes both to break the intensity of our connection and to help me process what he’s saying.
‘I’ve never lied to you, Scarlett. I may have withheld information but I’ve never lied to you and I’m not going to start now. You can trust me because I’m telling you this… I did bribe the CPS to get rid of any possible gun charge but that had nothing to do with the murder charge. I swear on my—’
‘Don’t. Don’t you dare swear on your life.’ I open my eyes to find those precious gems looking into my hazel-greens.
He nods. ‘I promise. I’m not lying about this. I flew here because I know you’ll have spent the last twenty-four hours thinking you did something wrong but you didn’t. This is the truth, Scarlett. Believe me.’
It takes three long breaths before I can admit that, ‘I do.’ But my relief is masked by the pain of his betrayal. The hurt of him sending me away. If I don’t get away from him now, I’m going to crumble.
‘Thank you. For coming here. For telling me.’ Digging deep for all the confidence I can muster, I straighten my back. ‘Goodbye, Gregory.’
I move past him as fast as my heels allow and head back to the landing. Once again, I’m thumping the lift button and willing it to come.
The fire exit door slams to a close, the sound of metal meeting metal echoing in the foyer, and I can feel his presence. ‘Scarlett—’
‘Please. Don’t. You said everything five weeks ago and I— I’m not strong enough to do it all again.’
The lift pings and I finally drop my shoulders from my ears. Inside, I hit the button for the fifth floor and start to breathe.
But two hands crash against the closing doors, prising them open. He’s staring right at me. Into me.
‘Scarlett, I love you.’
My lips part as I stagger back against the wall of the cart. There they are. Those three words I’ve been desperate to hear. The words I imagined him saying to me weeks ago.
But he said he couldn’t. He said he wouldn’t.
‘Why? Why now?’ My words are barely audible.
He’s motionless and he looks… afraid. ‘I didn’t come here to say that. But when I saw you…’
I shake my head as an overwhelming sense of confusion, of pain, love and anger, bears down on me. ‘I can’t do this again, Gregory. I can’t. No one has ever hurt me like you.’
He drops his head towards his chest. God, I want to hold him.
‘Please, Scarlett.’
My world begins to blur as tears fill my eyes.
He looks so vulnerable. A shell of the man I have fallen for.
The man who has ruined me for all others.
But… ‘Nothing’s changed. We didn’t end because of the case, or even because you made me leave.
We broke because you won’t let me in.’ The lift doors tremble and begin to close once more.
He doesn’t stop them, and I hear his words, almost exhaled, ‘I can’t.’
* * *
Why? Why now? After everything.
The hot spray of the shower caresses my skin and washes the salt of my tears from my cheeks.
Nothing’s changed. It’s true. I still don’t know that darkness within him.
The real darkness. The black that broke us.
It’s still there and if he won’t share it, we don’t work.
I’d spend every day wondering if it was the last. If he would do something deceitful.
If he’d push me away. I can’t do it again. I won’t survive him a second time.
Water trickles down my face and into my mouth. I want him so much. My legs feel weak under the weight of his words, replaying in my mind. I press my hands onto the tiled wall in front of me and watch the water drain away.
What if?
Maybe we could make it work. Maybe I never know his darkest secrets but he accepts that I love him regardless. I convince him that he deserves to be loved, that he won’t hurt me just by loving me back.
No. It’s not enough. I need all of him. Living in fear of his next breakdown, incomplete, isn’t a way to live my life.
After drying my hair, I lie back into the soft sheets of my bed with a towel still wrapped around my body. He was supposed to be justifying his corruption, that’s all. It’s not fair of him to ask me to do this. Has he actually asked me to do anything?
Hours pass by as the questions whir in my mind, keeping me from the sanctity of sleep.
My confusion and desire are losing the battle against my sensibility, and what I’m left with is frustration and anger.
He can’t just fly to Dubai after everything and throw out those three words like, like, like I don’t know what.
He can’t just do that. He said he’s not willing to let me in.
Right before the lift doors closed, he said no.
And he sent me away; how could he love me and still send me away?
And he did lie. He can call it what he likes, but he bribed the CPS.
Did they really accept self-defence? Were we honestly cleared?
I close my eyes and try for sleep again but it won’t come. The alarm clock at my bedside, tells me it’s 05.55. I give in.
I dress in my swimsuit, then cover it with leggings and a T-shirt and head down to the ground floor.
I’m rinsing in the poolside showers when he steps out of the male changing rooms in a pair of swim shorts, the sight of his naked torso making me wetter than the hot spray.
I ignore the dull throb between my legs and I dismiss him, moving into the pool. I take a sectioned lane in case he tries to swim near me, and I set off swimming a mile.
I’ve front-crawled three lengths before I realise he’s taken up the swim lane next to mine and dropped perfectly into rhythm alongside me.
Well that’s just pissing me off even more!
He’s fitter than me but I’ve been swimming almost every day for the last five weeks. I’m up to this challenge.
We power on. After forty lengths, he’s still matching me stroke for stroke, breath for breath. I’m starting to think what’s infuriating me more is that, whilst he’s beside me, I can’t watch his muscles move beneath the water.
Just because I’m pissed doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate him from a distance.
The only tantalising flash of him I catch is when we turn.
We summersault in time and both kick off the end of the pool but his power moves him feet in front of me, until he drops back into my rhythm.
In those brief moments, I watch him move, from his toes, through his legs, his flexing core, right to the tips of his fingers.
His power driving forward. He really is something else.
And he loves me. Me.
Shake it off!
At fifty lengths, he’s still mirroring my moves.
At sixty-four, I don’t waste time pushing up on my hands at the head of the pool and climbing out of the water.
Stomping to the showers, I rinse off. For a moment, he looks like he’s going to talk to me, so I shut down the shower, grab my towel and head into the ladies’ lockers where I switch into my gym kit.
And, of course, he’s already in the fucking gym when I get there. He feigns stretching though I know he’s actually waiting.
Oh, it’s on, Gregory Ryans.
After a quick stretch, I get on the treadmill, set the time to forty minutes and hold my finger down on the speed button until I’m running at a decent pace. I have to fight to contain my temper when he climbs onto the tread next to mine and sets his bloody machine to the same settings.
It’s a stand-off. A protest. A test of will. He wants me to concede. Like somehow beating me on the treadmill means he wins. He doesn’t win. He won’t win.
You can’t just swan back into my life and throw around ‘I love you,’ Ryans. You sent me to Dubai.
We may have been cleared of one murder, but there’s a good chance there could be a second any moment now.
At twenty minutes, I ramp up the speed further and the arsehole matches me.
Damn my body for starting to tire. I need a different beat.
Unhooking my phone from my bicep, I scroll through my tunes and, without thinking, select a song that’s become one of my favourites.
It reminds me of us, of being happy on our way to the opening hunt of the season.
As Thirty Seconds to Mars’s ‘Kings and Queens’ blasts in my ears, I cock one eye to Gregory’s phone, resting on the lip of the treadmill screen.
He’s listening to ‘Kings and Queens’?
Thank God for reflexes. As my feet stumble and lose rhythm, I throw my hands on the side rails and take my body’s weight until I’m composed enough to drop my feet back down and into my run. I can’t resist a glance at him.
He smirks. Arrogant arse.
It’s the last straw. My body has had enough and so has my mind. I slam my hand on the big red emergency stop button and roll backwards with the belt until the machine draws to a stop. Then I plonk myself down on the end of the belt, catching my breath.
He does the same.
Panting, I look up to him. A moment of weakness. Those chocolate diamonds are staring right back at me as he leans forward on his knees.
‘Have dinner with me tonight. Please.’
‘Gregory—’
‘I’ve thought about it. Damn it, Scarlett, I’ve been thinking about it, you, us, all night. And you’re right.’
I open and close my mouth without words.
‘Have dinner with me tonight and I’ll tell you everything. If you want to walk away from me after that, I’ll understand and I’ll never ask you for anything more. I’ll leave you to move on, with someone who can treat you the way you deserve.’
I watch him with an overbearing urge to wrap him up in my arms and slap his face all at once.
‘I know I hurt you. Maybe I should have told you about Barnes and the CPS but you would never have let me go through with it and I’ll be damned if we were going to prison on a gun charge after everything we’d been through.
And I know now that I shouldn’t have sent you here.
I went behind your back but I swear that I did what I thought was right by you.
I’m no good at this, Scarlett, any of it.
You, us, it’s… I’ve never had it before and I know I keep fucking up at every turn. ’
‘You do.’ Yet, on some level, I think I believe that he was trying to do right by me. The wrong thing for all the right reasons.
‘Come tonight. Let me try. Otherwise I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering about what could have been, what I threw away.
Give me a chance to beat my past, Scarlett.
Please. I can’t promise you’ll stay and if you do, I can’t promise things will always be perfect, but I can promise you that I’ll try my best to be a man worthy of you.
I’ll spend every second for the rest of my life trying to be what you need. ’
Like he always has the ability to do, he takes my breath away.
‘Okay.’
‘Okay?’
I nod. ‘Okay.’
That half-smile I’ve missed so much draws on his lips and just like that, although I didn’t think it possible, I fall deeper.