Chapter Twenty-eight #2
He threads a hand through my hair. “I know.” But he doesn’t say whatever it was on his mind, his fingers keep smoothing strands of my hair, slowly, over and over.
Against my better judgement, my face leans into his touch, just a little. “What is it?” I whisper.
“Oh God, Evie, you have no idea what you’ve done to me. What a difference you’ve made in my life.”
He pulls me closer, much closer, so we’re forehead-to-forehead. “Evangeline.”
No one calls me by my full name; even when strangers use it, I quickly correct them. It’s a long, old-fashioned name that belongs to someone’s grandmother. Yet from him, just now…
“Evangeline,” he says again, drawing it out as if savouring every letter.
I want this man so much. My hands go to tangle in his fair hair. Just as I move to touch him, he eases away and begins to move back. His body a mixture of guilt and regret. And my mind catches up instantly.
The room is no longer soft or intimate with shadows. It’s a vacant room that used to belong to an old lady with advanced arthritis.
I’ve been dreaming, seeing what I wanted. Feeling like I’ve been slapped awake, I turn away from him and walk to the French windows. My legs feel stiff but I make them move because I am not going to stand here and let him slap me again.
Outside it’s dark, but the rain has indeed stopped. In the distance, the terrace’s blue solar lights are on; I head that way, every step faster, trying to get away from mortification.
What did I just do? Throw myself at him when all he’d done was unburden himself to a friend he thought he could trust. Of all the times I’ve misread a situation, this has to be the worst. Not even getting engaged to Marcus compares to this.
I walk faster and faster, as if running away from that room could leave my humiliation behind. It’s maybe five minutes before I hear running footsteps behind me.
“Slow down,” he calls. “You don’t want to trip and fall in the dark.”
My feet obey him even if the rest of me doesn’t know what to do.
“Someone had to stay behind, wash the cups and tidy up,” he says, coming level with me. And damn him, he’s not even breathing hard.
“Trust you to be practical,” I try, half-joking, half-pretending, but both halves hurt.
We walk on in silence, following the path towards the lights. As we reach the steps, he touches my arm lightly.
“Evie, can we please talk?” He sounds… I can’t describe how he sounds, but it’s not a voice I can ignore.
“Of course.” I aim for casual and probably miss it by a mile.
We climb the steps but more slowly now. When we’re nearly at the doors, he takes my wrist as if to delay me. I stop to give him time to find the words.
The light above the doors shines in a circle and makes the blond hairs on his temples gleam. Did I really think to touch him earlier? It feels like another universe.
“I’m sorry, so, so sorry.” He gives me a desperate look. “This was all my mistake.”
What mistake? That he told me about her? That he trusted me?
Say something, Evie, tell him something to make it seem okay, to save face. But no words come to me. My dependable autopilot has let me down at the worst possible time.
“Evie,” he says. “Do you know, your name. I looked it up. It means the angel of good news. And that’s what you’ve been to me from that first morning I met you.
Even if at times it must have seemed…” He grimaces then, realising he has hold of my wrist in his hand, he lets go suddenly and folds his arms over his chest. “You can have no idea what you mean to me. You really have been my Evangeline…”
He looks down at his feet. “I never meant to lead you on. I’ve been so careful around you.
At least, I tried to be,” he amends. “Every time I caught myself getting too close, I made myself pull back. The last thing I want is to sour things between us. Because…” He pauses, seeming to struggle a little with himself.
We stand there in the pool of weak light from the lamp over the door. The floor slates glisten from the recent rain. All around us, the smell of wet soil.
“The thing is”—he sighs long as if giving up hope—“I know myself. I can’t do relationships. Not since she died. Never again.”
Never again? He’s thirty-three. There are no words to answer this, no words that wouldn’t betray my own feelings for him. Then, finally, my verbal autopilot comes to my rescue with a joke. “Are you going to be a monk?”
“No, of course not!” His answer is quick. Then he stares at his feet and says more carefully: “I have had sex. I do have… But only casual. I never see the same person twice.”
My mind focuses on the logistics of this. “How? Surely you must see them a few times before it gets to the bedroom.”
“What I mean is casual one-offs. I never – never,” he repeats with emphasis, “see the same person afterwards. I make that clear from the start. And on Tinder it’s easy.”
It sounds so cold, so lonely. “How is that enough?”
He shrugs. “Sex is sex.” Then he meets my gaze and his expression turns so sad. “It is all I can give; all I have. Because my heart will always belong to Kirsten.”
And here it is. The second slap I wanted to avoid.