Chapter Two
A proposal. The word ricochets inside her skull, while her heart does some kind of complicated jump that makes it temporarily painful to breathe.
For a second, it’s like the word takes up all the space between them, making her think of another proposal she thought she’d get from him, before that fantasy came crashing down around her—at his sister’s engagement party.
“What the hell are you talking about, Finn?”
“Can I come in?” Finn asks, his boot still against the door to stop her from slamming it.
“No,” she says shortly.
“Okay.” He leans against the doorway, shoulders relaxed under his big black winter coat—like he can see how pissed off she is and doesn’t give a flying fuck.
God, she hates him. She hates the way he can lean there, so unaffected, whereas her heart is beating as if she’s sprinted for the train.
She feels hot and cold at the same time, her nervous system all over the bloody place.
This was not supposed to happen. He was not supposed to show up unannounced when she’s tired and has a hole in her tights and is completely unable to control her reactions.
If she ever did see him again, she was supposed to be prepared, and looking hot as hell, and she was supposed to have no reaction to him whatsoever.
Not this, whatever her body is doing right now.
He is watching her, waiting for her next move.
She hates that too—the way he’s always been able to hold his nerve like this.
Downstairs, the sound of “Merry Christmas, Everyone” rises up louder—a party, maybe?
And, God, she doesn’t want someone to come by, see them—what if someone stops to talk, the way people always seem inclined to do at Christmas?
“Fine,” she says, turning on her heel and leaving Finn at the door. She knows what he’s like—he will just stay there if she doesn’t relent, until he gets his own way.
She heads to the little kitchen area, picks her wine up off the counter. “You look like you could do with a glass,” she says.
He looks a little taken aback. “Ah, that would be great, if you’re offering.”
“I’m not. I finished the bottle.”
His lips twitch, almost a smile, and she turns from him, wine in hand.
They’d shared this flat together. She’d brought it thinking it would be for the both of them—a place to call home for a couple of years, a way to get out of the rental they were living in.
Then, after a few years, maybe they’d move somewhere else together, maybe out of London.
But he’d been in it all of six months—and now she’s aware of how empty it looks, with only her things to fill the shelves.
And how un-Christmassy. She put no decorations up at all this year—she hadn’t been able to conjure up the Christmas spirit.
If she’d known he was coming, she could have prepared—she’d have had a whole damn spread out, waiting for an imaginary party to arrive.
“How are you, Mel?” His eyes are traveling up the length of her, as if he’s reminding himself what she looks like.
She holds up a hand. “Either explain what you’re here for or get out.” She doesn’t want the small talk, doesn’t want to hear how well he’s doing—or hear him pretend to care about how she is.
He nods, opens his mouth, hesitates, then frowns, a number of different expressions flickering over his face. Then he blows out a breath. And she senses, for the first time, that he is nervous. “Okay, so you know my mum.”
“I remember Susan, yes.” She says it tightly—because there was a time when his family was her family too.
Three years. They’d been together three years and then, in the space of one conversation, it was over.
She was cut from his life, and the people who had been her people, too, were taken from her, just like that.
“Well, the thing is, she’s booked a cottage in the Highlands for Christmas this year.”
Mel frowns. “Right.” She’s not really sure where he’s going with this.
He clears his throat. “Yeah, so, I may have accidentally told her you and I were back together.”
She feels the wineglass spasm in her hand.
“What? Are you serious? Why on earth would you do that?” Although, come to think of it, this explains the missed call she had from Susan a few weeks ago—one she hasn’t returned, because she hasn’t been able to figure out what to say.
And because she hadn’t wanted the heartache she knew the call would bring.
Finn rakes a hand through his hair, making it stick up at odd angles, the way it used to after they’d—
No. She’s not thinking of that. She does not want to think of that.
“She was just so upset about the breakup.” He can’t quite look at her as he says it.
“So you thought you’d lie to her?” She almost spits it, and forces herself to take a sip of her wine, hoping it might help calm her.
He grimaces. “It sort of…slipped out. I thought it might cheer her up, and after enough time had passed I could…I don’t know…” He trails off.
Mel arches one eyebrow. Finn used to tell her it was sexy, the way she could do that. “Break up with me again?”
He raises his hands, palms up. “It was stupid, okay? It was a ridiculous thing to do, and I didn’t think it through—”
“Such a shock,” she says acidly.
He ignores the jibe. “But now she thinks we’re together, and she thinks you’ll be coming to the cottage this Christmas because we always used to spend Christmas together.”
And they had—starting when they’d been together less than a year. In their three years together, they’d spent one with his family, one with hers, and one alone. It’s her first Christmas without him this year and she’d been trying very hard to forget that fact. Of course he’d show up and remind her.
“I don’t get what you want from me here. You want me to call her, tell her I can’t make it? Because no way am I doing that.”
“No,” he says slowly. “I was thinking…” His gaze flicks to her, then away again. “Well, I was thinking maybe you could come.”
“Come. Come where?”
“To Scotland. To the cottage. For Christmas.”
She stares at him. This has got to be a joke. But his face is dead serious.
She laughs, slightly hysterically. “You can’t mean it.”
“I’ve thought about it,” he says quickly.
“It’s only a week. She’s factored you into the whole thing, and I know she’ll think something is up if you’re not there.
You know what she’s like about Christmas, and this year she keeps saying it’s going to be even better than usual and I just…
” He swallows. “I don’t know how to tell her, Mel, and now it feels too late. ”
Mel shakes her head incredulously. “Too late to tell her you lied—but right on time to ask me to, what, get back together with you? For a week?” She honestly can’t believe she’s hearing this.
“Not actually get back together.” No. Of course not. He made it perfectly clear how little he wanted her, after all. “I thought we could, you know, pretend.”
“You are,” she says slowly, enunciating each syllable, “totally insane.”
He meets her gaze and she holds it, refusing to be the one to back down, even if it hurts to look at him like this.
She’d forgotten—she’d told herself she’d forgotten—just how attractive he is.
He has that kind of face that opens doors, the kind of face that screams a warning—one which she’d ignored, to her detriment.
Well, she won’t make the same mistake again, will she?
“I can’t believe you’d ask this,” she spits. “After what you did. You, you…” You broke my heart. “You humiliated me, Finn. In front of everyone.”
“I know.”
“And now you want me to go back and face them all and…” She heaves a breath. She can still see the last time she saw his family, the way they’d all looked at her as she’d stood there, stunned.
“I could pay you.”
She glares at him. “Are you kidding me right now?”
“Right,” he says quickly. “Sorry. But, I mean, there must be something I can do, to return the favor?”
She lets out a bitter laugh. “This is more than a fucking favor, Finn.”
He winces at the harshness of her tone. They’d never really fought.
Bickered, sure, but never exchanged ugly words, never full-blown shouting matches like some couples.
“I know. Look, I know it’s ridiculous. I know I shouldn’t be asking you.
Believe me, I’ve thought of other options.
But I promise it’s not for me, it’s for—”
“Your mum. I know.”
She turns from him, taking a sip of her wine. Her hand is shaking, ever so slightly. She can feel a headache skirting at the edge of her temples. And something deeper than that, something that, if she let it, could give way to a full-on crying jag.
“I have to work,” she says, still not looking at him. “I’m taking Christmas Day off, and that’s it.”
“I know,” he says to her back. “Or, I mean, I guessed. But you can still work—we can make excuses. You can work from the cottage while we’re out.”
“Got it all figured out, huh?” She’s pretty proud at how scathing her voice is. She closes her eyes for a beat. He is serious. He actually wants her to do this. “You didn’t think it might be better to text me to ask me about all this? Instead of showing up unannounced?”
There’s a pause, then, “I did. I sent you a few messages. You didn’t reply.”
She doesn’t answer even as her stomach drops a couple of inches.
Of course she didn’t reply—she hadn’t seen the messages.
She’d spent weeks and weeks waiting for him to call, to message, to apologize to her, to explain why he’d done it, to talk it through, or to just check in and see how she was.
But Priya had convinced her to block his number, so that she could stop jumping every time her phone beeped, grabbing it in the middle of the night in case it was him, only to spiral all over again.
Priya had been right. It had enabled her to lock him away in a corner of her mind, concentrate on her job.
And now…Why isn’t she just throwing him out? Refusing point-blank to consider this? Because she absolutely shouldn’t say yes. She does not want to spend a week with Finn, doesn’t want to put herself through that.
But the thing is that she loves his family.
She misses Susan. It’s so weird when someone breaks up with you—it’s not only them you lose, but a whole group of people who you love, and who loved you.
Half your life is taken away, without you having any say in the matter, and you’re supposed to just let go of that, get on with things.
She never got the chance to say goodbye to Susan—or to his siblings.
Hattie. She misses Hattie too. She hates the fact that their last memory of her will be of her standing in the hotel at Hattie’s engagement party, clutching a glass of prosecco, staring at Finn as she realized what she was hearing.
As Mark ushered them all away, so Finn and Mel could “talk.” His family must have thought that she’d done something wrong for him to do that to her—she certainly had, at first. Until she realized, with some help from Priya, that he was just a dick.
“Please?” Finn’s voice is soft, the tone he’d used when whispering into her ear, in a way that rose goosebumps.
She hates that, too, makes herself harden her heart to it—to the memories it brings up.
Priya was right. He is a dick. He’s just currently a dick who is at her doorstep.
“Please, Mel. I know it’s a lot. If you have other plans, for Christmas… ”
He leaves that hanging—like he knows she doesn’t.
He knows Priya is gone, that her parents are away, doesn’t he?
And that’s the other thing. She’s staring down the barrel of the loneliest Christmas of her life—while everyone around her plays Christmas music and drinks Buck’s Fizz and opens presents.
She’ll be sitting here with her M&S meal for one.
And now she’ll be thinking of this, won’t she?
She’ll be thinking of Finn with his family, in the Highlands, without her.
Thinking of the excuses he’ll make—of the judgments his family will form about her.
If they really do believe they’ve gotten back together, then she’ll be the villain of the piece, won’t she?
The one who bailed on Susan’s perfect Christmas.
Because Finn will make it sound like that when he tells them, won’t he?
For a moment, she feels trapped. It’s a lose-lose situation, isn’t it? But then again…Does it have to be? Because maybe, she’s starting to get an idea here. Maybe there’s a way to make this work for her too.
She turns back to him. “Okay.”
His eyes spark, the green in them lighting up. She tries not to notice. “Okay? Seriously?”
She nods curtly. “I’ll do it—but on one condition.”
“Anything,” he says immediately.
“I want to be the one to break up with you.” She waves a hand in the air.
“Fake break up with you in this fake relationship. At the end of the holiday. I want to end things, in front of your family.” She wants to take control of the narrative—she doesn’t want to be seen as the victim, the one to feel sorry for.
She’ll use the time to say goodbye to his mum, his family. And then she’ll get her own back.
He hesitates. “On Christmas Day?”
She bites her lip, then shakes her head. If she’s doing this, she has to give Susan that, at least. “Boxing Day. When everyone’s packing up to leave or something.” Then she can get the hell away from there, after it’s done.
He presses his lips together, thinking it through.
Then, “Okay. That seems fair.” Fair. Bitterness rises up inside her.
He doesn’t get it, does he, just how in love with him she was?
Just how hard she’s worked, these last few months, to pull herself together.
It isn’t fair, not in the slightest. But this way, she’ll get the closure she needs.
She’ll be able to put Finn Hawthorne behind her for good.
“Okay, then.” She draws herself up to full height. She’s nearly as tall as him when she does that. “You have yourself a deal.”
He lifts his hand, as if he’s going to hold it out for her to shake. Then, as if the thought of touching her is too much to bear, he drops it. A flicker of a smile softens his slightly crooked mouth, and his gaze does not drop hers as he nods. “Deal.”