Chapter Forty-eight
Was it still snowing? Lara opened the curtains to see if the flakes that had been falling were going to stick when she spotted a visitor at Flynn’s front door.
She had been wondering if she could make it over there in the new heeled boots she’d had as a present for Christmas when she saw Imogen on his step, wearing a cream furry coat. Flynn had answered with a beaming smile and a bottle of something fizzy.
Lara dropped the curtain and sat down heavily on her sofa.
Every rational thought told her that Flynn would never have invited Imogen over on the same evening that he’d asked Lara.
It had to be a mix-up or a coincidence. There was the outside chance that he’d intended to have a party or some kind of family gathering, but she doubted it very much.
The more likely scenario, her sensible side told her, was that Imogen had turned up unannounced – but why was Flynn so happy to see her, in that case?
Lara checked his message from the previous day again:
If you don’t have other plans, do you fancy coming over for New Year’s Eve dinner?
A minute later, he’d added:
No Pressure. We can just talk.
Lara hadn’t had plans, exactly, but she had been included in an informal get-together at Carlos’s flat.
If last year’s was anything to go by, it was bound to be raucous and boozy with terrible eighties music and probably end up with someone being carried back to their rooms. Pretty much exactly what a New Year’s Eve party should be.
She’d hinted she might go, but when Flynn’s invitation had come through, she’d known she probably wouldn’t.
We can just talk.
Did he really mean that?
Did she want things to go further?
If they did, wouldn’t that just put them back in the position they’d been in before? They wouldn’t be going forward or back. He was bound by the ties in the present and she didn’t want to get hurt or be on the sidelines, on hand with consolation when he needed it.
Whatever the reason for Imogen turning up, it only reinforced that Flynn was in no position to sustain a new relationship.
Ten minutes later, Lara peered through the curtains again. It was seven-fifteen and she’d no way of knowing if Imogen was still inside. She certainly wasn’t going to knock on the door and ask.
What the hell was she doing? Waiting for a man to make up his mind again?
It was New Year’s Eve. A party awaited. She zipped up her boots, grabbed her coat and a bottle of wine, and decided that it was time she stopped hanging around and let her hair down for a change.
‘Lara! Wait!’
Lara slithered to a halt halfway across the cobbles. She’d almost slipped in the slush once already.
‘Lara!’
She turned round to see Flynn, in shorts and a T-shirt, hobbling towards her across the cobbles.
‘Wait!’ he yelled. A moment later, the crutch fell to the ground, followed by Flynn. ‘Oh, f-fuck!’
Lara abandoned her bottle and dashed forward, almost falling over herself. ‘Oh God. Are you OK? What did you think you were doing?’
‘Trying to run after you,’ he said, then groaned and swore repeatedly.
‘Are you completely mad?’ she asked, high on relief that he was OK. ‘You could have done your knee in again.’
‘Yes to the first and I bloody hope not to the second. Can you help me up? My arse is getting soaked.’
‘I’ll try, but you’re not some elf, you know.’
‘Ha ha. Ouch.’
Somehow, breathing heavily, Lara helped him to his feet and handed over the crutches.
‘Thanks,’ he said, breathing heavily. ‘Where were you going?’
‘To the party at Carlos’s.’
‘I thought you were coming to mine?’
‘I saw you had a visitor and – well, I didn’t know what was happening.’
He sighed. ‘Neither did I – please come back to the cottage and give me a chance to explain. Then, if you don’t like what you hear, by all means go to the party. Though—’ he added with such hope in his voice that it made her melt. ‘I very much don’t want you to leave.’
‘Molly set me and Imogen up,’ Flynn explained, after he’d changed into dry shorts and a jumper in his bedroom. ‘She told her mum that I wanted to have a family party and asked Imogen to meet us here. You didn’t think I’d invite her when I’d already asked you?’
‘No, not really, but what could I do? I wasn’t going to intrude. There could have been an emergency or something. I don’t know. I waited a while then decided to go to Carlos’s party.’
‘You still can,’ he said, with a grin. ‘Though if you do, I’ll cancel the Uber Eats order and my flower arranging course will have been in vain.’
Lara noticed the table set for two and the greenery stuck in a vase with a couple of fading roses. She realised what a huge effort he’d gone to and was near tears.
‘Oh, Flynn.’
He took her hand and looked serious. ‘Please, sit down. Stay. At least until you hear what I have to say anyway.’
She sat next to him and he kept hold of her hand. ‘That day at the hospital … why didn’t you come into the HDU to see me?’
‘How did you know I was there?’
‘Mum and Dad mentioned they’d seen you. You must have known they would eventually.’
‘I … suppose so. I thought they might have been too worried to have recognised me or too busy to say anything to you.’
‘You should have told them who you were.’ He squeezed her hand.
Told them who she was? She daren’t let on she’d lied about being his fiancée when, in reality, she wasn’t technically anything to Flynn. Yet now she knew he was the man she’d fallen in love with, despite her vain attempts not to. The man who’d coaxed her out of her self-imposed exile.
‘Why didn’t you come and see me?’ he asked.
‘I saw Molly and Brenda by your bed – and a woman I guessed was Imogen. And afterwards your parents saw me waiting outside and they had enough to worry about and you had enough visitors. Nurses wouldn’t have let another one in. It wasn’t a party.’
Flynn shook his head. ‘God, I wish you’d come in to see me.’
‘You looked out of it and I’d seen that you were OK – alive at least – and so I went home.’
‘Do you know that, even though I was half-delirious, I did know one thing: I wanted to see you. I wanted you to be there by my bed to hold my hand and tell me everything would be OK.’ He lifted his fingers to her face and rested them there, making every nerve cell spring into life.
‘You’ve seen me at my lowest, heard me struggle, and stood by while I tried to sort my life out.
It’s time that everything was all about you, Lara. It’s time I made it all about you.’
‘All about me?’ she murmured.
‘Yes. I want you to tell me what you’re really feeling. The stuff you’ve been too afraid to say.’
‘It’s too soon for that deep, intense stuff. We’ve known each other less than two months.’
He laughed. ‘Only two months. I feel more has happened to me in those two months than in my whole life.’ He stroked her hand tenderly. ‘And it’s plenty long enough for two people to decide to be honest with each other.’
He studied her hand for a moment, then held it tightly between his two warm ones.
‘I’m a lost cause! I’ve let you down and messed you around because I felt overwhelmed by the stuff that was happening to me, but the accident …
call it a cliché, but it has focused my mind on what I really want.
Imogen calling tonight – Molly setting us up.
That’s crystallised what I want from life.
Now I want to know what’s holding you back from committing to me.
I want to know everything about you, Lara Mayhew. ’
‘Everything?’ She was glad he was holding her hand, because she wasn’t sure she could stop herself from shaking otherwise.
‘All of it.’
Telling Flynn everything would mean confessing her deepest fears and desires and risk scaring him away. Yet without doing that, there could be no future for them. She’d already thought there was no hope for them, so what had she got to lose?
‘OK. You asked for it.’ She paused for a breath and laid her heart on the line.
‘I wanted a family with Rob. I thought he did too. He talked about it from time to time, about watching the kids run around the hall, climb the trees in the orchard, and how they’d take over the reins, as he put it.
He talked about it when we were in bed, when we were alone together – more than a few times.
I was na?ve. I assumed he meant our children, when all along he’d only meant his children. ’
‘Go on …’ He squeezed her hand when she faltered.
‘And then – and I swear it was a complete accident – I realised I was pregnant.’ She ploughed on, determined not to shed another tear for a man who had never deserved a single one.
‘And I never got a chance to tell him before he broke it off and then – then—’ Her throat was thick with a sob.
‘I had a miscarriage, so he never knew.’
Flynn recoiled in shock before pulling her into his arms. ‘Oh, Lara, Lara. I am so sorry for what you’ve gone through.
None of what happened to you is your fault.
’ He looked into her eyes, his own full of empathy and passion.
‘This isn’t on you. It’s all on him. A coward, a total bastard who will never face up to his responsibilities. God help his wife.’
‘Yeah, though that doesn’t make me happy. I feel sorry for her.’ Through her tears, she managed a smile at his intense expression, so full of pain and anger on her behalf.
‘You should have told me this before …’ he said, gently lifting a strand of hair away from her tear-stained face
‘No, I couldn’t,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t because it was way too soon at first and then, once we grew closer, your life changed.
How could I tell you that I’d hoped for and lost a chance at a family when you’d found yours?
There was no way I wanted to be bitter or needy – and most of all, there was no way I was going to spoil the joy you have.
Even if it doesn’t feel like joy all the time. ’
His expression held such an intense, heart-melting tenderness that her breath caught in her throat. ‘I need you to know something. I was never going to get back with Imogen. You must have known that.’
‘Maybe, but, again, I wasn’t going to crash in if there was the slightest chance.
I wouldn’t ruin your chances and I certainly wasn’t going to threaten Molly’s plans, however misguided.
She’s a lovely girl who only wants what she thinks she’s missed: her mum and dad together at last. She wants the fantasy of a perfect ending with a perfect family set-up that we both know almost never exists. ’
‘No, it doesn’t. I realise that now. I pushed you away, thinking you couldn’t deal with it – that you shouldn’t have to.
That you’d be better off without me than taking me with all this baggage.
’ He reached up and pressed his fingers to her cheek.
‘Esme and Molly will always be part of my life. I thought that was too much of a burden for you – for anyone – to take on, especially as I knew your other workplace relationship had ended in disaster. I didn’t realise quite how much he’d hurt you or why.
And until the past few days, I wasn’t ready to accept how much pain I was causing by pushing you away. ’
‘It’s OK. I understood.’
‘You shouldn’t have had to. I should have let you in …’
‘You needed that space to process everything and I wanted to help. I was ready to help, and I want to, but only if you let me in and if you’re truly ready, Flynn.’
‘I am so ready for this, so let this be a new beginning for us. The two of us.’
She leaned in and kissed him. Any pain from his fall seemed to have melted away because he pulled her against his body, pressing molten kisses on her mouth and neck. There was a fresh intensity to their kisses, a sense of release and seizing the moment.
‘Lara. Lara …’ He kept saying her name as if she might vanish if he didn’t. ‘I want to give you the fairy tale, the happy ever after. I want to do all the romantic stuff people do when they get together, and have masses of hot sex – and I can’t even do that.’
Lara raised her eyebrows. ‘I thought it was only your knee that was broken?’
She gasped in delight as he pulled her on top of him. ‘There’s only one way to find out.’