Chapter Twenty-Six
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Heath didn’t give her time to phone. He turned up soon after Ottilie had showered and dressed, standing hopefully and sheepishly on her step, bouquet in hand. She tried to look pleased, and then remembered her promise to herself and let her face do its natural expression – which at this precise moment was somewhere between annoyance and exasperation.
‘I told you I needed time.’
‘I know, but you wouldn’t answer my calls.’
‘That’s because I needed time. That was kind of the point of not answering.’
‘I’m sorry, I…I couldn’t leave it. I’ve been going out of my mind. I need to know what you’re thinking.’
‘And I need time to finish thinking.’
‘I know, I just…’
‘You’d better come in.’
Heath offered the bouquet. It was lovely – huge and obviously expensive, a burst of bright tropical colour on a muted, cloudy day. Ottilie took it from him as he followed her inside. Ordinarily, she’d have arranged it in a vase immediately, but today she took it to the sink and ran some water to dump it in until she was ready.
‘Ottilie, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for what Mila did?—’
‘I don’t care about what Mila did. I could have expected that from her. What I’m upset about is what you did.’
‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. But put yourself in my shoes for a minute. Would you have told me?’
‘Yes! I would have had more respect than to assume you’d never find out! If the tables had been turned you would have felt like an idiot. It’s not nice being the last to know – even your gran knew more than I did!’
‘I didn’t want to lose you! I thought if you knew about Mila’s cousin, then…’
‘It would have been weird as hell but we could have figured it out.’
‘Can’t we figure it out now?’
‘I don’t know – you’re pushing again. Like I keep telling you, I need time. I don’t know how I feel about any of it yet. And it’s not only this – the trial is coming up and that’s going to complicate things all over again. I’d hoped to have you there with me when I went through all that?—’
‘I will be! I want to be!’
‘But how can you be? For a start, you must know Mila’s family, and they’re related to?—’
‘I swear I’ve never met Ashton. I’ve never met half of them – it’s a massive family and they’re not all close.’
‘How can I believe you when you’ve lied to me before? And if they’re not that close, why is Mila so hell-bent on getting him off the charge?’
‘I didn’t lie. I kept it from you, yes, but?—’
‘It’s the same as lying, so don’t try to make a fool of me all over again with technicalities. You knew it was huge and you knew it mattered and you didn’t tell me. Now you’re saying you don’t know this guy, and I want to believe you, but surely you can see why I’d have a hard time with that.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to make a fool of you. But I swear it’s true this time. I’ve never met him, not even once. Mila kept me at a distance from a lot of that side of her family because…’ He shrugged.
‘Because they were all bad people?’
‘Of course they’re not all bad. But I suppose some of them are less than saintly.’
‘Less than saintly?’ Ottilie threw her hands into the air, her voice rising. ‘I’d call beating someone to death a lot less than saintly!’
‘Sorry…’ Heath flushed. ‘I didn’t mean to make light of—I didn’t mean it like that.’
‘I know you didn’t, but that only proves to me what I already knew. You don’t really understand how it is. How can you when it’s never happened to you? You think I’m overreacting.’
‘I don’t!’
‘If you didn’t then you wouldn’t have said what you just said. You wouldn’t have turned up here thinking flowers would fix everything. You wouldn’t have asked your gran to come and plead your case.’
‘I never—Gran came over?’
‘It doesn’t matter. You can’t fix this. You can’t change Mila’s family ties. I’m sure you regret the way this has all played out, but you can’t change that now either. Please, I feel like a stuck record because I have to keep saying this, but I need time, and that’s the only thing that can maybe fix this. And I can’t even promise that – I won’t promise that because then it puts me under pressure to make a decision, and that’s not fair.’
‘What about me? Is it fair to make me wait for your decision, not knowing how long that might be?’
‘Yes,’ Ottilie said simply. ‘I think it is. You made this problem.’
‘I didn’t!’
She frowned and whatever words had been about to follow were never uttered.
‘If you love me,’ she began slowly, still not even certain that he did because he’d never said so, ‘then you’ll at least give me this. If you think I’m worth it then you’ll wait.’
‘But…I feel like you’ll have time to think and then decide I’m not worth it.’
‘If that happens then it was probably going to come to that one day anyway. You know how I feel about you, but things are more complicated than that now, and I don’t feel like you get it at all.’
‘Then tell me! Explain it to me and I’ll try.’
‘I shouldn’t have to. I’ve told you it matters and that ought to be enough. I can’t explain it to you, even if I wanted to, because it’s impossible to explain to anyone what it’s like to lose someone you love that much, especially in those circumstances. Only someone who’s been through it can understand.’
‘So it’s not my fault.’
‘No, perhaps it’s not, but it’s not my fault either.’
‘What does that mean? Are we…? Are we over? Is that what you’re telling me?’
Ottilie shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘You’re just going to leave me hanging until you figure it out?’
‘That’s up to you. Nobody’s forcing you to wait for me. If it’s too hard, then you need to do what you need to do.’
‘That’s not fair.’
‘I think we’ve established that none of this is fair.’ Ottilie gave a rueful smile. ‘Since when did fair matter? If life was fair, we wouldn’t even be here right now.’
She realised at once the implications of her statement and Heath’s obvious hurt. Because it meant so much more than them having an argument. It meant that in some other universe, where things were fair and as they should be, Josh would still be alive and Ottilie would be living blissfully in Manchester with him, and she and Heath would never have met. She’d never wish Heath out of her life now, but in that world, she’d never wish Josh out of it. In that world she wouldn’t have given Heath a second glance on the street. What did that say about what they had now? Was it somehow second best? She’d never believed that and she’d been happy with Heath, but she’d inadvertently presented the question to herself in the starkest way and suddenly everything was different.
‘If that’s how you feel…’
He backed away, holding her in a gaze that was at once challenging and yet sorrowful, and a little betrayed. She wanted to go to him and tell him she was sorry, but in the end, that would be a bad idea. She couldn’t allow her heart to decide what was best this time. It was too easy to think that Heath was the answer to everything, but this was her life and it was about time she took control. If she let him think that what he’d done didn’t matter, where would that lead them? To more things that she let slide when she didn’t want to? If they were to have a future then she needed to be stronger than that. And if her being strong ruined everything, then perhaps they’d never been meant to have a future.
Josh had always told her to know her worth. He saw the people-pleaser in her, the aversion to conflict, the need for affirmation from others, and he saw how it sometimes led not to the conflict she’d so desperately wanted to avoid with others but to the conflict it created within her own self. ‘You don’t have to be a pushover for people to like you,’ he’d say. ‘They’ll like you anyway because you’re a good person.’
So right now, she was going to know and acknowledge her worth.
‘You’re right,’ she said, taking a deep breath. ‘It’s not fair to leave you hanging. I think we should take a break.’
‘For how long?’
‘I don’t know. So I suppose that’s leaving you hanging too. In that case, maybe we ought to end it.’
Heath stared at her. ‘You’re dumping me?’ he asked incredulously.
‘Is it that much of a shock? Considering what’s happened? Did you really think I’d just shrug and carry on?’
‘No, but?—’
‘You said you needed certainty, so now you have it. Now we both know where we stand, no more hanging. It’s better this way, and in the end you’ll see that.’
He was silent for a moment, studying her face intently, perhaps hoping to see some sign that her resolve would give way. In another life, in another time, maybe it would have done, but not today. And then he shook his head.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t realise how bad this was and that’s on me. I suppose all of this is on me.’
‘I didn’t say that, but you played your part. Maybe it’s a bit on me for letting you think you could. I should have made my lines clearer, but there we go. So for that, I’m sorry too.’
‘Can’t we at least talk about this?’
‘We have. Isn’t that what we’ve been doing?’
‘But this is a big decision – it’s not one we can?—’
‘The decision’s made, Heath. When are you going to start taking me seriously? This is part of the problem – you don’t take me seriously. You think because I’m nice and good you can get away with whatever you like. Mila did it too.’
‘Of course I take you seriously!’
‘That’s not how it looks to me. That’s not how it’s felt the past few days. It’s – us – it’s been lovely, but I think we’ve reached the end of the road.’
‘You really think that?’
Ottilie nodded. She was oddly calm, considering she was about to cut the man she loved out of her life. It was almost as if someone else was doing it for her while she watched from the sidelines. She had Josh’s words floating around in her consciousness: know your worth. Never had they meant more to her than they did now, perhaps because she’d never needed to understand them as fully as she did at this moment.
After another moment of charged silence, while Heath considered his next move and Ottilie waited, he finally looked as if he’d given in.
‘If that’s what you want. I can’t believe you’d throw this away but I’m not going to beg.’
‘I didn’t ask you to.’
‘Goodbye, Ottilie.’
‘Bye, Heath.’
She was still calm as he walked out of the front door and let it slam behind him. And she was still calm as she went to the window to watch him drive away.
And then the floodgates opened and the tears began to fall, and she wondered what on earth she’d done.