Chapter 22 #2
‘Everything okay?’ Amanda asks from the leather chair closest to me where she’s drinking tea and flicking her eyes between Gregory and me.
‘Absolutely.’ I move to the table between the sofas and chairs to collect a cup of coffee. ‘Just Neil, he wanted my answer about the Dubai secondment.’
‘So is he mad that you’re not going?’ She casts her eyes to Gregory but his back is now turned to the room as he looks out at Lara’s acres of land, his shoulders around his ears.
I sip my coffee and try to calm my nerves and keep my voice even. ‘Actually, I am going. He didn’t leave me much choice.’
I watch Gregory’s shoulders rise and fall with his breath. Even now, I don’t want people to know his underhand tricks; I don’t want people to think badly of him. I’m such an idiot.
‘Shit! When do you leave?’
‘Tomorrow.’
I hug everyone when lunch is finished but I keep my arms locked around Sandy and Amanda because as much as I can talk to them on the phone, absent an emergency, I won’t be holding them for six months.
I leave tomorrow, that much is certain because Gregory made certain I couldn’t get out of it.
Going to Neil was conniving but I have to hand it to him, it was the best way to make sure he got what he wanted.
Rid of me. He got the CPS decision, made sure I could move on like he’d intended the moment he got the police involved that night. Then he pushed me away.
The question I don’t have an answer to and the question I ponder through our stubborn silence all the way back to the Shard, is why bother with last night? Last night, I believed, more than ever, I even thought I saw, rather than just hoped, that he loves me.
I get that he has to let me in. We have hurdles to surmount. But I thought we’d have a clear run now, stand together, have the chance to fall in love, know everything about each other without darkness or obligation looming. What’s clear to me now is his shadows run deeper than one night.
The silence of the car serves to heighten the tension but I won’t ask him here, now. I want to see his face when I ask him, why?
He holds open the door to the apartment.
I don’t look at him but I feel him scrutinising every move I make.
He watches me from the centre of the open lounge as I pour a glass of water from the fridge filter and sip.
The car ride home gave me time to think about what I wanted to say but now, face to face with the man I love, I’m lost for words.
Katrina Martin was right in the interview room three weeks ago. A perfect stranger could see it when I couldn’t. This is unrequited love.
‘Are we going to talk about this?’ he asks, as if he hasn’t already spoken a thousand words.
There’s a shift in his expression to something that resembles pity. The look churns in the pit of my stomach and cripples my chest. Then my eyes sting and there’s nothing I can do to stop the silent tears from rolling down my cheeks.
‘Why?’ I whisper with no strength in my words.
He takes a step towards me, his arms raised like he’s going to touch me. I jerk away from him.
‘Don’t touch me. Don’t you dare touch me.’
‘Scarlett, please don’t cry.’
‘Just tell me why. Why are you so desperate to get rid of me?’
His head falls to his chest and he looks up at me through burdened eyes. Despite everything, I want to hold him.
‘You were right, Scarlett, when you said we’re bad for each other. Except you’re not bad for me.’
‘Then why push me away?’
‘For your own good. You should be with someone ten times the person I am.’
‘Fuck you, Gregory, and your fucking righteousness.’ My tears turn to spitting anger.
‘You’re a coward. You don’t love me and you’ve made damn sure you can get rid of me without having to tell me that.
The last three weeks have been a joke, haven’t they?
In fact all of this, two months, since the start.
You wanted me to help you with your hostile takeover but you didn’t anticipate my dad being murdered as a consequence.
So you stayed, felt like you had to, thought you’d let me down gently, eventually. ’
‘Scarlett.’
‘No. You didn’t think I loved you enough to kill a man, did you? That’s a game changer right there. You had to keep me here until the case went away. Now you can finally get what you want: rid of me.’
‘Just hear me out.’
‘Oh, you mean discuss something with you? The way you discussed stealing my phone and emailing my boss behind my back?’
He sighs and rolls his set jaw. ‘I wanted you to have space, away from me, away from all the shit that I brought on you. Time to think about whether you want to be with me. I want to give you the chance to walk away.’
‘Bullshit! You’re not giving me a chance; you’ve sent me halfway across the fucking world. What is there to think about, Gregory? I love you. Everything bad has gone away. Why now? Why after last night? I thought… I thought…’
‘Last night was selfish, I know. And I’m sorry. I wasn’t ready to lose you. I wanted you to have one night, and… I wanted to have one night. I wanted you to have the fairy tale you deserve.’
I snort and shake my head. ‘I deserve? When are you going to realise that you deserve it too?’
He takes a deep breath and furrows his brow, looking almost pained.
‘Scarlett, there’re things that you don’t know about me and if you knew them, you wouldn’t want to be with me. You’d run.’
‘Is that what this is about? Are you afraid if I know, I’ll leave you? Because, Gregory, I don’t want to go anywhere or be with anyone else.’
He pulls his fingers tightly through his hair. ‘No! Damn it, Scarlett, you should go. Can’t you see that’s exactly why things had to be this way?’
‘So I have no option but to leave.’
He lifts his chin and looks blankly at me. The lost boy from my dreams.
‘Tell me. If this is about giving me space to realise I want to be with you despite whatever it is you won’t tell me, explain. Make me understand. Tell me what I need to know to make up my mind.’
He stares. Unrelenting. Silent.
‘No. Because this is about me leaving you, Gregory. Call it how it is. You don’t want me to think and decide to be with you. You want me to go. For good.’
He reaches out to me and for the briefest moment, I think I see panic on his face.
‘I do want to tell you and God, Scarlett, I want to love you. Each time you’ve looked at me, desperate for me to tell you I love you, I’ve wanted to.
It’s broken my heart to hear you say it and not say it back to you. ’
I step towards him. ‘Then say it. Tell me you love me. Tell me everything.’
He closes his eyes. ‘I just… can’t.’
I drag in three long breaths and tell him, ‘Fuck you, Gregory.’
He’s sitting on the coffee table in the lounge staring out to the black sky when I carry my suitcase downstairs.
‘Where are you going?’ His words are devoid of emotion, of fucking humanity. I can’t stand to look at him.
‘I’m staying in a hotel tonight. I fly tomorrow. Let’s not drag this out.’
He stands now and I shudder. I’m just about keeping it together but if I feel him or smell him, I’ll crumble.
‘If I wanted to come and see you?’
‘Don’t. Spare me the let’s-be-friends and it’s-not-you-it’s-me speech. Just let me go.’
The pressure behind my eyes is building again and the lump in my throat is making it hard to breathe.
I need to get out of here. I reach the door, struggling to hold it open and manoeuvre my suitcase, which makes me want to cry out in frustration.
In my frenzy, I miss him come up on me. He lifts the suitcase to the hallway.
He doesn’t touch me but he stands close. Too close.
‘Scarlett…’ My name rolls off his tongue in a soft, desperate whisper. But desperate for what?
There’s nothing left to say.
He exhales, long and shallow, then there’s a shift in his mood, in the air. ‘Please be safe.’
I look at him now. I fix my eyes on his.
‘All this time I’ve been hoping you were in love with me.
’ I shake my head as a change settles over me.
‘You know what, Gregory? You don’t deserve me.
And not for whatever reason you keep telling yourself, whatever secrets you keep.
You don’t deserve me because you can’t see what’s standing right in front of you. ’
In the lift, I stare at the closed doors, my hand across my chest, making sure my heart is beating because at least part of me just died. Another part of Scarlett Heath, gone.
He was my constant, the anchor in my new world, the reason for everything that’s happened in the last two months. The only reason I knew I could get through it.
Now he’s gone and I don’t know who I am.
Nothing makes sense.
I’m alone and I’m terrified.