Chapter Forty-Two Mo
Chapter Forty-Two
MO
Mo woke the next morning with a brutal emotional hangover.
The titanic weight of yesterday’s confession pressed on him, pinning him to the bunk bed, where he’d insisted on sleeping so Netta wouldn’t feel obligated to pity screw him.
Thoughts swept in and quickly out again, unfinished, itching to get away, leaving a burn in their wake, like someone had released a swarm of fire ants into his brain.
He’d ruined things with Netta, he knew it.
He should’ve kept all his shit buried deep, where it belonged.
Now it was a wedge between them he’d never be able to take away.
He could never again be the man she’d been falling for, because she’d never be able to see him that way again.
But then, he never really was that guy in the first place.
Christ, it was all so messed up. He groaned and rolled over, burying his face into the pillow as regret simmered in his veins, flooding his body with an unbearable heaviness.
The drive back to London today was going to be absolutely fucking awful.
‘Mo?’ Netta’s voice drifted through the closed door. ‘You awake? We should probably get going soon.’
He checked his phone. Eight thirty. He’d slept in. They needed to get on the road so Netta could make it back to the hotel in time for the magazine interview. ‘Yeah. I’ll just be a sec.’ His voice fell from his throat like lumps of concrete.
He squeezed his eyes shut. He’d done this. It was all his stupid fucking doing. Twenty-four hours ago, they’d been making love for the third time—he’d even thought they might’ve been falling in love—and now they were having stilted conversations through closed doors.
This is what the truth does.
He pulled on Don’s bizarre Christmas get-up for the last time and drifted down the stairs in a bleak haze. He glanced around the spick-and-span cottage, his eyes landing on Netta as she wiped down the kitchen bench.
‘You’ve cleaned up already?’
‘I couldn’t really sleep,’ she said. ‘I got up pretty early. It gave me something to do.’
She smiled at him, but Mo could see it was forced. She just wanted to get out of there and away from him. She couldn’t be making it any clearer.
***
Heading back to London, Netta fidgeted in the front seat, fiddling with her phone, her hair, the radio.
‘Everything okay?’ Mo said.
She turned to him, eyes searching. ‘I’m nervous about the interview,’ she admitted. ‘And I’m confused about what happened back there, with us. You went for that walk and you came back a different guy.’
Mo felt his guarding walls clicking into place, towers of impenetrable steel replacing the crumbled bricks. ‘Stopped off for a personality transplant on the way,’ he said mirthlessly.
‘Mo—’
‘I shouldn’t have told you all that stuff. Just forget I said anything.’
‘I had the most beautiful couple of days with you.’ There was an edge to her voice that made Mo’s conscience flinch. ‘I’m glad you told me.’
Mo gripped the steering wheel, his eyes glued to the road ahead, as she placed her hand on his thigh. A swell of grief gathered in his chest. For his mum, for what he’d done, for what he could’ve had with Netta.
He cleared his throat. ‘So, what’s the deal with the interview today?’
Netta’s hand retreated and she turned to look out the window as the countryside zipped by. ‘They’re coming to the hotel at lunchtime. I’m grateful for the chance to tell the truth, especially after seeing him at the gala, but I’m also shitting myself.’
‘Don’t be nervous. They want to bury him,’ he said. His voice felt detached from him. A separate entity. ‘They’ll be on your side. Just tell the truth.’
Netta looked at him. ‘The whole truth and nothing but the truth.’
Mo shifted in his seat, uncomfortably exposed under her gaze. The truth had killed the beautiful thing that had been growing between them—like a flower yanked from the ground, roots and all—and now here he was, telling her to bare her soul to a bone-picking magazine reporter. What a hypocrite.
They were silent for the rest of the drive. Awkward didn’t even begin to cover it. Mo’s head whirred—a broken revolving door, thumping him with every rotation, letting the same thought in over and over and over: You’ve fucked it.
When he pulled up at the front of her hotel, she turned to him, her face tense.
‘Thank you for such an … unforgettable Christmas,’ she said.
Mo nodded feebly. Thirty years of running and now, in one weekend, the black smoke he’d kept walled up was consuming him, filling his lungs with an indescribable darkness he was powerless against.
‘Will I—’ she hesitated. ‘Will we see each other again?’
Mo’s wall was almost rebuilt now, he could feel it, like a demolition played in reverse. ‘I’ve, ah, got some stuff I need to do,’ he lied. ‘I’m not sure when I’ll be free.’
‘Oh.’ Her eyes were downcast, her nod almost imperceptible behind the curtain of her hair. ‘Right.’
‘I don’t really do this sort of thing.’ The words erupted from him, their edges sharper than he’d intended, Netta’s wounded expression proof of their damage. He swallowed, looking at her through lowered eyes. ‘I shouldn’t have …’
‘What?’
‘None of this should’ve happened,’ he said flatly. ‘It was a mistake.’
Netta’s teeth sank into her bottom lip and she nodded. ‘I see.’
Mo stared out the window and chewed the inside of his cheek, willing it to swell, to bleed, for his physical pain to match his bruised brain and battered heart.
In his peripheral vision, Netta straightened and looked to him.
‘So, it was all nothing?’
Mo kept his eyes averted and sniffed. ‘It wasn’t nothing,’ he said, ‘but it can’t be anything more, either.
I thought …’ His voice withered, sucked dry by the parasitic blackness surrounding him.
‘I thought I was different with you. I am different with you. But I can’t be different.
Different is— It just doesn’t work.’ He turned to look at her to find her eyes glossy with tears, her brow drawn into a frown.
‘I’m sorry.’ His voice was robotic. Nothing about him felt natural—he was sure she could see straight through him to his mechanical bones and rusted heart.
‘I should’ve known better,’ she said, a hardness creeping over her face. ‘You practically came with a warning label slapped across your forehead.’
‘Netta—’
‘No, don’t explain. I can’t believe I’ve made this mistake again.’
‘It’s not you—’
‘Yeah, yeah. I get it, Mo.’ She held her hand up to silence him. ‘Look, I didn’t ask you to tell me about the diary. I flew across the planet to bring it back to you and I never asked you about it once. I respected your privacy. Genuinely. Have you … Actually, don’t worry about it.’
‘Say it.’ He wanted to feel her barbs. Sharper the better.
‘Have you been playing me?’ she asked. ‘Tricking me into thinking you were interested just to get your reputation back on track? Has it all been for show? Because I thought we had a connection, Mo. I thought it was real. And that took some work, to be honest, because the thought that someone like you could like someone like me is pretty far-fetched.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Oh, come on, Mo,’ she said. ‘You’re a world-famous, rich-as-God celebrity who looks like—’ she waved her hands at his face, ‘—that. And I’m just me.’
‘There’s no just about you, Netta.’
‘Don’t pull that shit on me, Mo. It’s pretty clear it only happened because I was your only option.’
Mo felt as though he’d been stabbed. ‘I’m sorry I’ve made you feel that way.’ He meant it, but his voice had turned to stone and there was nothing he could do about it.
‘Well, what am I supposed to think? I was on cloud nine. And not because of who you are, but because of how we were together. I thought you were up on the cloud with me, which makes me feel like a total idiot.’ She slumped back into the car seat, deflated.
When she spoke again, her tone was flat.
‘Did you tell me that story about your mum to turn me off? Was it an exit strategy?’
‘That’s not fair. I’ve never told anyone about my childhood before. Or about Mum. You’re the only one.’
Her face softened, dropping into sadness. ‘I’m glad you told me. But it was like, as soon as you did, you vanished.’
Some distant, inaccessible part of him wanted to touch her.
To pull her into him. To bury his face in her neck and sob thirty years of pain into her soft skin.
‘I’m sorry. I really am. But you don’t want this.
’ He placed his hand on his head. ‘It’s a mess.
All the other stuff, it’s just bullshit. I’m only shiny on the outside.’
Her chin crumpled. ‘What happened to your mum wasn’t your fault. But I know you can’t hear that from me. You need to get there on your own, and I really hope you do, for your own sake. And you should tell Mav the truth.’
Her words pierced his chest as she opened the door to leave. Mo said her name, low and rough, but when she turned back to him, he couldn’t speak. The tsunami had swept his words away.
He’d lost her.