Chapter 9
Nine
LEWIS
PRESENT DAY
Ididn’t want this conversation to devolve into a bitter argument, even though it frustrated me beyond measure how she perceived our breakup.
One of the reasons I’d decided to leave, not to stay and fight for her, was because I was pissed off that she didn’t even try to understand.
She cut me out of her life. No mistakes, no errors, no wavering allowed.
That was her failure in our breakup.
Mine was walking away instead of fighting for her. But I was a kid, and I could give myself grace for that decision.
However, I was a man now.
“Drink?” I changed the subject.
“You got any whisky?” She surprised me by asking.
I raised a brow. “I have a bottle of Ardnoch.”
“My favorite. With ginger ale, if you have it.”
That made me smile. “I don’t.”
“Straight it is, then.”
As I poured us both a dram of my uncles’ whisky, I was aware of Callie looking around the flat as if in search of something.
Finally, she took a seat on the couch and pulled her phone out of her clutch.
I hated that my immediate concern was that she was texting some bloke.
I despised being a jealous guy, and I felt like I’d been playing that role for seven years now.
“Just texting Eilidh to let her know we left.”
Shit. Though my sister had plenty of friends to keep her occupied, I hadn’t even thought to let her know I was leaving. I’d been concerned with chasing Callie. “Good shout, thanks.”
I handed her the whisky and sat down on the other end of the sofa, turning my back to the armrest so I could face her. Raising the glass, I said, “To reunions.”
She gave me a droll smile that didn’t reach her eyes but raised her glass too. “To reunions.”
We stared at each other as we sipped.
“Mmm. Your uncles don’t know how to be bad at anything, do they?” Callie murmured.
“Since when do you drink whisky?”
“I had a glass on my eighteenth. Took a liking to it, much to Mum’s surprise.”
Her eighteenth. Her birthday is August 2.
Mine’s in March, so I’m only a few months older than her.
We’d celebrated my eighteenth with an unsupervised party at Fyfe’s, and Callie and I had gotten drunk and had sex in Fyfe’s mum’s old room while everyone partied beyond the doors.
For Callie’s eighteenth, my uncle Arran, the youngest of my uncles, had taken me to Inverness so I could get obliterated.
We’d had a lot of whisky that night too.
Dad had been furious when we returned the next morning with the worst hangover, but Uncle Arran must have talked to him because he got over his snit quickly.
It was the worst summer of my life, avoiding Callie before I left for London.
Wondering if she was kissing someone else on her eighteenth birthday.
But she’d asked Fyfe to her party, and everyone else in our class who was still in Ardnoch that summer.
Fyfe said she didn’t kiss anyone else, and that she was sad, though she pretended she wasn’t.
“Where did you go just now?” Callie asked, brows pinched.
I shook my head. “Nowhere.”
She frowned but shrugged, taking another sip of her whisky. Her lips plumped over the rim of the glass and glistened with the amber liquid after her sip. I found myself licking my own lips at the memory of how soft her mouth felt beneath mine, on my skin, around my—
“So …” She gestured around the room. “This seems like a nice part of London.”
Small talk. I could do small talk if that’s what she needed.
“Aye. Lucky to be blessed with a wealthy family,” I answered dryly. “Hopefully I’ll start earning enough to cover my own bills now, though.”
The corner of her mouth kicked up. “I hear that. Mum paid for me to go to school in Paris. There was no way I could afford it otherwise. But I’m hoping that what I’ve learned will benefit her, too, by benefiting the bakery.”
“Sometimes it makes me feel guilty. The money. The advantages. I have a friend. Sean. Really nice bloke. From Dublin. He was brought up in care, moved from foster home to foster home. Worked his arse off to go to UCL to study architecture and then had to work harder than any of us to stay here. The guy barely slept he had so many side jobs, just so he could afford the shitty flat he had to share with two other blokes, who were not good human beings.” I scrubbed a hand over my beard.
“I asked him in third year to move in with me, that my rent was covered, so he could focus on class and the internships. He got so pissed off, saying he didn’t need the handout.
It made me feel like a privileged arsehole. ”
“I think it was a kind offer.”
“But do you say that as someone who comes from money?”
“No.” Callie shook her head. “You forget that before Mum and I came here, back when I still called her Mom”—she slipped into her American accent with ease—“we had nothing. We lived in a studio apartment and instead of a living room we had two twin beds. Mum tried to hide how hard things were, but I could always sense her worry and stress. Any help we got was so appreciated. Our neighbors were this amazing couple, Juanita and Eli, and even though they didn’t have much themselves, they helped us out when they could.
” Callie gave me a reassuring smile. “Your offer to your friend was generous. I’m sure deep down he was grateful for it.
But sometimes we must do things for ourselves.
Especially if that’s all we’re used to.”
“I’ve never had to do anything for myself.
I’ve always known that if shit hit the fan, I had my family’s money to bail me out.
Doesn’t say much for me, does it?” I didn’t know why I was telling her this stuff.
It was so easy to fall back into real conversation with Callie.
And for the most part, our relationship had been strong because we could tell each other anything.
The one thing I hadn’t been able to voice had been the very reason we broke up.
I believed now if I’d been honest with her, we’d have worked things out.
“I’d agree if you didn’t work your arse off. You didn’t get into UCL because of your family, Lewis. You didn’t graduate with job offers to several top architect firms because of your family. That was all you. You’ve never been lazy, and it would be so easy to be lazy in your position.”
Pleasure rippled through me. “How do you know about the offers from the firms?”
Callie rolled her eyes. “Don’t get a big head. Eilidh told me. Your sister likes to tell me things about you all the time that I don’t ask to know.”
I didn’t want to believe her. I wanted to believe that she ate up whatever bit of information about me she was fed. Like I did with her. “So … why Paris?”
If she was surprised by the change of subject, she didn’t say so. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, when we were together, you never mentioned it. How did it come about?”
“I actually was going to talk to you about it before we broke up,” she said tonelessly, like our breakup no longer bothered her.
“Thought we could come up with a plan. Maybe for you to do a transfer to a French uni for a couple of years while I trained at the pastry school. Or we’d wait until you’d graduated and then go.
I knew you wanted to travel, so I thought you’d have liked the idea.
” That’s when I saw it, the crack in her facade. Her smile was pained.
As for me, I felt like my chest was splitting down the middle.
“I would have loved it.” It wasn’t a lie.
It would have been the perfect balance for both of us.
A chance for me to live elsewhere for a time, to see a bit of the world, until we came home to Ardnoch.
Knowing what I knew now, missing my home like I never imagined I would, I would have been more than happy with that plan.
Instead, I came to a city that made me lonelier than ever and Callie went to Paris and thrived there.
Life was ironic that way.
“It took me a while to get up the courage to go alone, but a few years ago I decided it was now or never.”
“And you’re glad you went?”
“I loved living there and learning and experiencing another culture … but I think I loved it because I knew I’d return home to my family at the end of the adventure.”
“To Ardnoch.”
She nodded.
“I’m proud of you,” I said quietly. “Am I allowed to say that?”
A strange expression crossed her face for a moment.
Then she nodded. “Of course. I’m proud of you too.
You set out to do exactly what you wanted.
And here you are in London, about to start your career at a prestigious design firm.
” Callie’s gaze dropped and she shook her glass at me. “Got any more?”
I nodded and stood up. When I reached for her glass, our fingers brushed. Callie snapped her hand back like she’d been burned.
This time, it didn’t hurt. This time her reaction gave me hope.
An hour later, my skin was flushed from my fourth whisky, and I could tell by the slight glassiness of Callie’s eyes she was feeling the effects too.
“Don’t you worry about her?” Callie had kicked off her shoes and was curled up on the end of the sofa. Her elbow rested on the back, while she leaned her head on her palm. “Sometimes when we talk, I feel like she’s got this wall up. And I don’t remember Eilidh ever having a wall up.”
I nodded, because I knew exactly what she meant.
For the past hour, we’d talked about everything and nothing, skirting the tension between us and catching each other up on our families.
Currently, we were discussing Eilidh’s career and her sudden overnight fame.
“She says she can handle it, but I wonder if she’s too proud to admit that maybe she wasn’t quite as ready for this life as she thought.
Probably because my uncles tried to warn her, and she was so adamant that she could deal with it all. ”
“Have you tried talking to her?”
“Of course. She tells me she’s great. Never better. And then she changes the subject.”
“Yup. That’s exactly what she does to me.”
My tongue a wee bit loose from the whisky, I said, “I’m glad you and she remained friends after our breakup.”
Callie stared at me, cheeks flushed, eyes narrowed. “It wasn’t Eilidh’s fault.”
Her tone suggested she thought it was mine. I sighed. Heavily.
“You’re like a different person,” she whispered sadly.
That made me frown because I didn’t think I’d changed that much.
“Not a different person.” She waved off that thought. “Just older and a little changed for being older. I didn’t see you become who you are now and … it’s weird.”
“How so?”
“The tattoos.” She gestured to my arm. “The bike. The beard. The man bun.”
My lips twitched at how angry she sounded on the words man bun. “You don’t like it?”
She rolled her eyes on a huff. “You know you look good, Adair. Don’t fish for compliments.”
I grinned. “You look good too. Better than good. You look sexy as fuck.”
Her eyes flared. “Don’t flirt with me.”
“I’m not. I’m merely observing and speaking a truth. You grew up sexy, Callie Ironside.”
Callie’s cheeks flushed a deeper shade of red at the hoarseness in my voice. “That’s something else that’s different about you. You never used to be so flirtatious.”
“I used to compliment you all the time.”
“That was different. You’d call me beautiful. But the Lewis I knew was reserved with that stuff.”
“I’m not now,” I promised.
She shook her head, sitting up. “No doubt you’ve had plenty of practice flirting with a smorgasbord of women over the last seven years.”
If only she knew. “As opposed to all the practice you had with Remy and Gabriel and whatever other French bastard you let taste you.”
Her eyes flashed. “Taste me? Really? And how do you know their names?”
“Eilidh,” I lied. “She’s a wealth of information about how easily you got over me, sweetheart. How many guys have there been?”
“None of your business. Just like it’s none of my business how many women you’ve slept with.”
Jealousy was a tight ball of heat in my chest. Possessiveness made my brain foggy.
Or maybe it was the whisky. Or both. But right then, all I wanted to do was throw this woman—my woman—over my shoulder and then on my bed so I could erase every single man she’d ever been with.
“Funny how it still feels like my business.”