Chapter 27 #2
I edged us out of the parking space.
The evening June sunshine was pushing through the trees and gliding across The Ramblings windows, serenaded by the birds.
It was a stunning, contented scene, and yet inside I was still torturing myself over what might have been.
It had been a mess, which we could have unscrambled together. But Evan had decided to return to London, and I’d realised too late that he had his reasons for being Fox and not divulging his secret in the first place.
Grandpa persisted with his concerned glances across at me as I edged up the driveway and towards the country lane.
Alison, Bennett, Cayla and Louise’s pensive faces wavered in my rear-view mirror.
‘You ok, Daisy chain?’ Grandpa asked.
I nodded. ‘I’ll be fine.’
I clutched the steering wheel and watched a couple of cars flash past. ‘It’s ok. I mean, I’m ok.’
Grandpa shook his head. ‘You don’t have to pretend with me, sweetheart. I can see how much you’re hurting over Evan … Jesus! Look out!’
I slammed on the brakes as Dane’s bashed-up, white truck came swinging round the corner of the hedgerow, almost smashing into the front of Marlene.
‘For goodness’ sake, Dane!’ I erupted. ‘You took that corner far too fast…’
My voice petered to a stop.
Sitting beside Dane in the passenger seat and staring out at me, as though I were a ghost, was Evan.
The second Dane switched off his engine, Evan leapt out of his side of the truck.
He kept looking at me, oblivious to everyone and everything else.
I just gazed back at him through my sun-splashed windscreen trying to fathom what was going on.
‘Well?’ said Grandpa beside me. ‘Are you just going to sit there and gawp at him, or are you going to speak to the poor lad?’
I blinked for several moments out at Evan, as though I couldn’t move, before my fingers fumbled to unclip my seatbelt.
I clambered out.
My heart zoomed into my throat as I drew closer to him.
I was so preoccupied that I barely noticed Dane slipping out of his truck, too.
Evan walked to meet me halfway on the gravelly drive. The sun was brushing through his hair.
‘What are you doing here?’ I blurted. ‘I mean, I thought you said you were returning to London.’
‘I was. But I didn’t want to. I thought you didn’t want anything more to do with me after you found out I was Fox.
’ He motioned his head back, indicating Dane behind him.
‘I’d switched my mobile off for a while because of all the texts and calls I was receiving after going online.
But when I turned it back on, I saw Dane had messaged me repeatedly. ’
Dane shrugged and delivered a bashful smile.
I was struggling to sort everything out in my head. ‘I thought you had a gig tonight?’ I asked him.
He coughed dramatically. ‘Had to postpone it. Think I might be coming down with something.’ Then he winked at me.
What was going on here?
Evan continued. ‘I kept telling Dane to leave me alone, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Then he showed up at the airport.’
Behind us were Alison, Bennett, Louise and Cayla, who had come spilling back out of The Ramblings on hearing the commotion.
‘What’s going on here?’ asked Alison. Her gaze settled on Evan. ‘Evan? What are you doing? I thought you said you were going back to London.’
‘Mum. We’ll tell you in a minute, ok?’ said Dane. ‘Just let Evan speak.’
The four of them fell into a hush.
Evan picked up the story again. ‘Dane told me down the phone that I’d been a stupid prat, and that if I allowed Fox to ruin what I could have with you, then I was even more of a prat than he thought I was.
’ He let his toned arms rise and fall back down by his sides.
‘Like I said online, I only took on the Fox column because I wanted to help my parents stop this place from going under, and then Fox and that column took on a life of their own.’
He sighed and looked down at me with his warm, dark eyes.
‘But now I’ve come clean about everything, I feel free.
Ok, so I’ve lost my work at The London Gazette, but I couldn’t keep pretending to be someone I wasn’t, especially when my words were damaging other people.
’ He paused, his handsome features focused on me.
‘Most of all, what effect they’d had on you. ’
I swallowed and took a couple of faltering steps even closer to him, my trainers crunching the gravel.
‘I get how becoming someone else can be a compelling thing. I know only too well.’ I fought to hold back tears.
‘I did everything I could not to fall for you. I kept telling myself that you were a London townie, and that after my messy breakup, I needed another one like a hole in the head.’
I paused, appreciating every plane and angle of his face. ‘I tried to pull back, but I couldn’t.’
I folded my arms around myself. ‘Then, when I saw that email and discovered you were Fox, my world felt like it was falling down around me again. I thought, “Here we go. More deception,” and I was so angry at you for being like Leon. Or at least I tried to convince myself you were.’
Evan shook his head. ‘Fox is in my past now. Sure, I’ll have to deal with the fallout for a bit.’ His brown eyes locked with mine. ‘But that’s a small price to pay.’
My stomach pirouetted. ‘What are you going to do now?’
Evan broke into a smile. ‘I’ve had offers already. Would you believe that a major publisher just called me and offered me a book deal to write about my time as Fox!’
‘What?’ I gasped.
‘It’s true,’ interjected Dane behind Evan. ‘The jammy sod took the call while I was driving him back here.’
But Evan was quick to swivel his attention back to me again.
‘I don’t care about any of that. All I care about is you, Daisy.
’ He let out a sexy, low laugh that made my skin tremble.
‘How you were with Shaun during the road trip; what a terrific actor you are; how you’ve helped Mum and Dad with the tour; supporting Cayla; you do everything you can to make other people happy. ’
He gazed down into my face. It was as if everyone and everything else was falling away: the past; Grandpa, Louise, Bennett, Alison, Cayla; The Ramblings with its golden brickwork glittering in the sunlight. ‘You think about other people before you think about yourself.’
‘I came up to Loch Crawe to look for you after you’d been on social media, but I couldn’t find you.’
‘I know. Dane told me.’ He reached out one hand and stroked my cheek.
Dane dropped his eyes to the gravel, and behind me, our spectators tactfully turned their attention to the nearby shrubs and flowers and ambled off down the side of the gardens to give us some privacy.
I took his hand and pressed it against my cheek.
I was worried that, if I closed my eyes and opened them again, he wouldn’t be standing there.
‘I didn’t come to the airport to try and find you because I thought you might have done what you did for closure.
You made that revelation on social media, and I came to the conclusion that it was an unofficial tying-up of loose ends.
’ I grimaced. ‘I thought that really was it between us.’
Evan shook his head. ‘You weren’t the only one carrying around baggage after a bad breakup. I was frightened, too,’ he admitted. ‘Frightened after what happened with Sacha that I’d end up feeling like an idiot and being let down all over again.’
‘And now?’
‘I’m not frightened of anything anymore, Daisy. I’m not frightened about having been Fox, and I’m not frightened of the future. Not if I have you.’
Evan lowered his lips to mine, and we kissed slowly, the promise of what was to come in the future spreading out ahead of us.
‘Wait until I get you alone,’ he murmured against my mouth. ‘I can’t do what I want to do with the oldies around.’
I grinned against his mouth.
And as Evan picked me up and swung me around, any doubts about who I was and who I wanted to be evaporated. It didn’t matter who we’d been before or why.
All that mattered was the love we had for one another.