Chapter 6
We’ve been alone for approximately a second and a half and Hannah hasn’t bawled me out yet, so that has to be a good sign.
She spins around and heads toward the foyer. “I’ll wait out here till they’ve driven off. Then I’ll go.”
Not such a good sign.
If we have to live under the same roof for the next two or three months, it would be preferable that she tolerate my presence and not disrupt my desire for peace and relaxation by filling the house with grudge vibes. So the best use of this time would be to try to win her over enough to ease the atmosphere. Plus, I am kind of fascinated to find out about her life.
“I know you can’t bear the sight of me. But please, have some food.” If she’s working here and for her cousin, her financial situation can’t be awesome. “I mean, just take some back to your place. Then you won’t even have to look at me while you eat it or anything.”
She carries on walking and ignores me. How does someone’s back manage to look resentful?
I cross the kitchen to the fridge. “Having been a teenaged boy, I know they can eat a person out of house and home.”
The footsteps stop.
That kid is clearly her weak spot.
I open the fridge door. “Whoa.”
“What?”
Ah, a response. “Seriously, you have to take some. I knew when Maggie said she’d made a lot, there’d be a lot. I mean, this is a woman who says she’s going to make a small snack and pulls out a charcuterie board the size of a garage door.”
My gaze rises to the top shelf and stays there. “Shit.”
Can looking at food be like looking at a ghost? Can it transport you back in time? Can it reproduce the exact feeling you experienced when you last looked at it, smelled it? Even if that was more than a decade and a half ago?
“What?” It’s the same for-fuck’s-sake-I’m-pissed-off-with-you tone, but it’s closer now.
I peer around the fridge door to find her standing in the doorway. “Come look.”
“I get it. There’s a lot of food.” Her eyes are steely. “I already have food for me and Dylan. I can look after us.”
I deliberately adopt an opposite, gentler tone. “Even if you won’t take any, there’s something you should see.”
She inhales like she’s trying to draw air down to her toes, rolls her eyes, and closes them as she exhales in a huff. With another snort she takes a few reluctant steps, stopping close enough to be able to see into the fridge, but not close enough to risk brushing against me.
“Remember that?” I point at the top shelf.
Her hand flies to her mouth, stifling a little squeaking sound, and her big eyes widen in either surprise, disbelief, or horror—or possibly a mix of all three.
“My memory is a bit shit,” I tell her, “but I think it’s exactly the same.”
“It is,” she says behind her hand, her eyes fixed on the chocolate cheesecake scattered with white chocolate stars—a replica of the one Maggie made for Hannah’s sixteenth birthday, two months before I left for London.
“Anyway.” She steps back, sniffs, and clears her throat as she turns away. “I’m going.”
“Maggie means well,” I say as I shut the fridge.
“I know.” Hannah’s tone is softer now, but she still heads back toward the door.
“And I’m sorry about all…you know…that.” I gesture to where Maggie and Jim were standing when they broke into their performance piece about being fans of Overlord Hybrids.
She sucks in her lips. I swear to God she’s suppressing a giggle. But hell will freeze over before she shows any glimmer of joy in my presence.
She might despise me, but there’s no way I’m going to see her spend what little cash I imagine she has on food when it’s impossible for three humans without the appetites of blue whales to consume all this before it goes off.
I’ll put some stuff together, then she’ll have to take it.
I start opening cabinets, looking for containers. I know she’s staring at me—I can feel her eyes boring holes in the back of my head.
As I try a fifth cabinet, she can contain herself no longer. “What are you looking for?” She follows up with an exasperated sigh.
“Tupperware.”
She stomps around the kitchen island and snatches open a drawer two cabinets along from where I’m standing and points at its contents.
“Thank you.”
“What do you want Tupperware for?”
“To put together a takeaway box to end all takeaway boxes for you.”
“I’ve told you. I don’t need any food.”
“And I am ignoring you.” As I approach the Tupperware drawer, she takes a step back. But when I look at her, she doesn’t avoid my eyes. “You’re not the only one who can be stubborn and pigheaded, you know.”
She huffs, eyebrows raised, head tipped to one side. “I’m the only one who has a reason to be, though.”
I set out a bunch of Tupperware containers of various sizes on the counter and grab stuff from the fridge. There are bowls of different salads, plates of assorted cheeses and meats, a quiche of some sort, a rice thing, a pasta thing, something that’s pink so must have beetroot in it, and a couple things I’m not culinarily inclined enough to identify. Jesus, Maggie must have been at this all day.
I pull open another drawer. “You think you’re the only injured party here, huh?” Then I try another drawer.
“I’m absolutely fucking certain,” she says.
I try a third drawer. And a fourth.
“What are you looking for now?”
“A big spoon thing to dish out some of these salads.”
She leans across the counter in front of me and I catch a faint scent of something sweet that might be vanilla. With a rattle, she yanks a large metal spoon out of a pot marked Utensils sitting right behind where I’ve laid out the Tupperware.
“Here.” She slams one hand onto her hip and jabs the spoon toward me with the other like she’s an Olympic fencer.
I ease it from her grip. “Thank you.” I tip some leafy greens and tomatoes from a bowl into a container. “We were just kids, Hannah. And I was a mess. You know I was a mess. It’s because I was a mess I went to London.”
Silence hangs between us for a moment as I await the next verbal swipe.
“You said you missed me.” Her voice is no longer strident—it’s more like it was back then. “You said I could come visit.” She hugs herself tight and rests a hip against the counter. “Then you just stopped replying to my emails.” The anger is gone now, replaced with disappointment. “You said you loved me.”
She falls silent, her head dropping forward, shoulders drooping. “And it was all bullshit,” she adds in a choked whisper.
I put the bowl on the counter and drop the spoon in it. “It wasn’t bullshit.” I reach toward her, but she takes a step back. It’s a slow step, but a retreat from me all the same. “Just because I couldn’t cope doesn’t mean it wasn’t real. It just means I couldn’t cope. I had a lot of things to figure out. And I was a teenager in London, for Christ’s sake. I was distracted.”
“And I was here.” She looks up at me and prods herself in the chest. “I was waiting for you to come home. I was waiting for you to at least reply to my fucking messages.”
Shit. Look at the hurt I’ve caused. All these years, and I had absolutely no idea of the consequences of my actions. Maybe I was the total dickwad she thinks I am.
But I sure as hell am not that teenaged dickwad now. And the pain in her face makes my chest ache.
“I’m so sorry, Hannah. I truly am. I was a stupid, thoughtless, selfish kid. And I’m sorry.”
I reach out again to touch her. This time, as if sensing I’ve finally grasped it, she doesn’t move away. She lets me wrap my fingers around her upper arm. “After a while, when I got myself together and decided to stay there, I just figured you’d have moved on.”
Seventeen years of heartbreak behind her eyes rip right through me. “Didn’t have much choice.” She shakes her head slightly and her mouth quirks up at one corner. There’s that dimple again. “And boy, did my life change.”
“You named him after Bob, right?” Instinctively my thumb slides back and forth across her arm, stroking her, doing what little I can to soothe her hurt.
This time I get a full smile, one filled with love and pride. “Of course.”
I can’t bear the thought of what I unwittingly did to her. And I can’t bear that she hates me for it. But she’s obviously a devoted mother. “He seems like a good kid.”
“He has his moments.” She straightens, like she’s just remembered she should be pissed off with me. “Anyway.” She sniffs and moves her arm out of my grasp. “I need to go.”
I can’t let her leave now, just when her armor has cracked a little and there’s something I can work with to lessen the tension.
I could do without having to deal with any of this at a time when most of my emotional energy has already been wrung out of me, but I need to give it a shot.
I grab the bowl and spoon. “Just let me finish getting some food together for you. Please. There’s no point spending your hard-earned cash in the grocery store when a lot of this will go off before we can even eat it.”
She says nothing but doesn’t show any sign of actually leaving.
“Makes sense, right?” I try again. “For you to take some?”
Being broke and unable to disagree with the logic, she gives me a reluctant nod. “Sure.”
“Good. This’ll take me a few minutes.” I can spin this out, buy some time to try to repair at least a tiny bit of the damage. “I just saw some wine in the fridge. How about you open a bottle and we have a glass while I do it.”
I’m not the only one who would benefit from an improvement in the atmosphere. Being stuck with me and hating me the whole time can’t be any good for her either.
“No, thanks.”
I place the glass bowl on the marble counter with a clunk. “Would you really prefer to stand there awkwardly till I’m done?”
She shrugs the shrug that means she wants to do what I’ve suggested but also doesn’t want to back down. At least that’s what it always used to mean. But maybe she’s a completely different person with completely different mannerisms now.
“At least having a glass of wine would occupy your hands.”
She throws her gaze to the ceiling and sighs. “Okay.”
“Great. Just don’t open anything with a homemade label. That shit is lethal. As I discovered on my first night here.”
She walks around behind me to get to the fridge, her electric aura prickling my back as she passes. “Is that why you ended up wandering the hallway naked?”
“Thank you for reminding me of that.”
“I’ve never seen anyone grab their crotch so quickly in my life.” There’s a clink of bottles as she takes one out, decides against it, and switches it for another. “Not that I haven’t seen it before.” She closes the fridge door and pulls a corkscrew from a drawer.
She can’t think I forgot about that, can she? That, although we never went the whole hog, there had been some hand action.
I pick a baby dill pickle out of the bowl and hold it up to her as she takes two glasses from a cabinet. “Could we please not discuss my genitals while I’m dishing up salad?”
And there it is. The Hannah smile that comes from her heart. One at my expense, but I’ll take it. It lasts for only a fraction of a second before she yanks herself back under control, but it was there. Perhaps there is hope I can smooth things over.
She slides a glass of white wine along the counter toward me. I pick it up to tap it against hers, but she turns and strolls around to the other side of the large island.
I hold it up anyway. “Cheers.”
“Please don’t propose a toast,” she says, taking a sip to preempt it.
“You can’t stop me.” I raise my glass higher. “To renewing old acquaintances.”
She blows out a long breath, indicating exactly what she thinks of that.
“Okay, well, at least take a seat and enjoy your drink while I sort out all this.” I wave my glass at the array of Tupperware containers, suggesting it’ll be a big job—one long enough to get her to think better of me. I do not want to wake up to another day of having to tiptoe around the house avoiding her.
Remarkably, she takes a seat, then places her glass on the counter, staring at it as she turns the base in circles.
I return to the task of doling out Maggie’s feast. “I keep hearing you singing all the time. Are you still in bands?”
“Nope.”
“No?” I glance over my shoulder. “What a waste of your voice. How come?”
“Why do you think?”
Oh, good. We’re back to the snippy tone.
I turn to face her, a plate of meat and cheese resting on the palm of one hand. “I don’t know, Hannah. I truly don’t. But I would like to know. I genuinely would.”
I put the plate on the counter, step toward the island and lean on the edge. I might not be touching her, but I’m touching the same thing she’s touching and that’s probably the closest to a connection I can hope for right now. “I get that I hurt you. And I’m so very sorry. I can’t turn back the clock and not be a wanky sixteen-year-old. But I wish I could make it up to you.”
“You can’t.” Keeping her head bent over the wine glass, she moves just her eyes, raising her gaze until she’s looking at me under her knitted brow. “That time’s all gone. It’s lost.”
I clasp my hands against the cold marble and drop my forehead onto them.
Christ, how is it possible to have caused someone so much hurt and been so unaware? So stupid, so selfish, so ignorant, so fucking unaware.
When I decided to stay in London, I’d thought I was leaving behind my own pain at my parents’ death and the pain I’d caused Maggie and Jim by behaving like a total twat after they’d been generous enough to open their hearts and home to Walker and me. I never thought for a second I might have left a whole other bunch of pain behind in Hannah.
“I had to stop being in bands when I had Dylan,” she says quietly.
I raise my head and rest my chin on my hands. “What?”
“That’s why I’m not in bands anymore. I had Dylan. And I had to look after him. Alone.”
I push myself back upright. “Why alone?”
“Because his shithead of a father vanished when Dylan was six weeks old. And my parents had already stopped speaking to me because they were ashamed.” Her blue eyes, shiny with emotion, meet mine. “You know what they were like.”
Jesus. What total fucking bastards. “I do. And I wondered about that the second I knew about Dylan.”
Her parents were dicks. Controlling, all about appearances, her mom constantly trying to impress by having lunch with this mayor or that congressman’s wife, her dad constantly vying for a seat on the city council, but never quite winning.
My heart aches for her—cast aside by an arsehole guy and her parents. Alone with a baby. And I had no idea.
Drawn by instinct to protect her, to ease her suffering, I slowly make my way around the island, dragging my hand along the edge.
“Dylan’s thirteen, right?”
She takes a sip of her wine and nods.
“So you had him when you were twenty.”
“Hey.” She looks up at me as I get closer, a hint of a wry smile on her delicate, sad face. “And you used to be so bad at math.”
I reach her side. My hand is just inches from where she puts down her glass. “I sometimes have to use spreadsheets now.”
“Who’d have thought it, huh?” She makes a microturn toward me in her seat. “Rebellious Tom, with the guitar-playing, and the pierced ears, and the hair, running a billion-dollar company.”
“Not me, that’s for sure.” I rest my backside against the counter. As I look down at her, my heart pumps a wave of hot blood through my veins. “Nor anyone else who knew me.”
We’re both silent for a second, the air between us thick with history.
It’s half awkward and half the most natural, normal thing in the world. Like we’ve waited a lifetime to be this close to each other and it’s all falling back into place.
But this time, she has nothing and I have everything. I fight the urge to reach for my checkbook and solve all her problems with the sweep of a pen. Nothing would make me happier. But this oh-so-proud independent woman would blow her lid again if I offered to help. And the last thing I want is to take ten steps back from this inch of progress.
I’ll just have to think of a way to help her that doesn’t look like I’m helping her.
The silence is shattered by a rumble in her belly.
“Right, that’s it.” I head back toward the food spread out on the counter. “Do not move. I’m bringing you something to eat.”
Again, I open one cabinet, then another, then another.
“Plates are in the one next to the stove,” she says.
“Thank you.”
As I open the cabinet door and gaze at Maggie and Jim’s best china, it’s impossible to suppress the chuckle that rises within me.
“What?” Hannah asks.
“You know what’s hilarious?” I look at her over my shoulder.
“Not a clue.” Her face is no longer tight with sadness.
“The thought that Jim is currently trapped in a movie theater for two hours watching robots smash the living shit out of aliens to a heavy metal soundtrack.” A laugh spontaneously rocks out of me.
Hannah’s cheeks blossom. “And it’s not funny that Maggie’s there too?”
And we laugh together. For the first time in seventeen years.