Chapter 20 #3
‘Rachel was at my flat that night.’ My heart sank, even though I already knew that fact to be true.
‘She showed up out of the blue telling me how she’d been working on herself —’ Luca’s eyes rolled a full three-sixty, his fingers wagging in lazy air quotes ‘—and after inviting herself in, she basically spoke at me for a full thirty minutes before announcing she thought we should get back together.’
I swallowed, the lump in my throat as solid as a rock. ‘Well, I’m happy for you,’ I said tightly, twisting my mouth into something I hoped resembled a smile.
Luca’s eyebrows inched upwards. ‘You don’t honestly think I said yes, do you?’
I risked a glance at him. His eyes were serious, unblinking.
‘I don’t understand,’ I whispered. But I think some part of me did understand. Or rather, it hoped it did. And that hope burned like a kindling flame in a rainstorm, flickering but refusing to go out. ‘She was wearing your clothes.’
‘After she opened my most expensive bottle of red wine, she then proceeded to spill an entire glass down herself. Personally, I think it was just a poorly executed excuse to take her clothes off – not that she’s ever needed one before – so I gave her some old clothes to wear whilst I washed her dress. ’
‘And the ring?’
‘It’s her engagement ring from the guy that she cheated on me with.’ Luca shrugged. ‘Turns out they’d had a big fight earlier that day, which makes the whole timing of her showing up at my flat very Rachel.’
I frowned, slowly rearranging the pieces in my head to reveal a completely different picture. One that made my heart soar in my chest. ‘Wait, so she’s still with the other guy?’
‘As far as I’m aware.’
‘But she introduced herself as your fiancée.’
Luca’s head flip-flopped from one side to the other. ‘Yeah, well, that sounds like something Rachel would do. She was probably jealous, trying to stake a claim or whatever.’
‘Jealous? Of what?’
‘Of you, Jenny.’
I snorted, rolling my eyes. ‘What could she possibly have to be jealous about?’
Luca’s brows stitched together, his mouth pursing in disbelief. A mouth so impossibly soft compared to the sharp lines that made up the rest of his face. ‘You really don’t see it, do you?’
‘See what?’
‘How amazing you are.’
All the breath rushed out of me, the seesaw in my chest going back and forth with the speed of a steam engine’s pistons.
The world seemed to grind to a halt for a second, the distant sound of the DJ fading to nothing, the hem of my dress stilling around my ankles in the warm breeze.
It was just us. Me and Luca. And the million questions ping-ponging round my head.
‘What—’
But Luca held up a hand, cutting me off.
‘My turn to ask a question,’ he said, his tongue running briefly over his bottom lip. ‘Why did you come to the flat that night?’
‘I .?.?.’ I hesitated, floundering for an excuse, something, anything but the truth.
You mustn’t tell him how you feel, you mustn’t let him in , some part of my brain whispered.
We did that once before, remember, and it almost broke us .
But I’d come a long way this year and while, for a second, it felt too frightening to say the words I wanted to out loud, I knew better than to listen to that voice anymore.
‘I came to tell you that I don’t have the strength to stay away from you anymore,’ I said, looking him right in the eyes.
‘You made it impossible for me not to fall for you, even though I promised myself that I’d never, ever do so again.
But then I met you and you made the fall feel like I was flying.
So, I can’t lose you, Luca. I just can’t.
And that’s your fault, with your floppy hair and your sexy serenades and your kind, impossibly giving soul.
I mean, seriously, pick a lane already!’
Luca pressed his lips into a tight line but otherwise didn’t interrupt me.
‘I came to tell you that I’m sorry. You were more honest than I ever was, even with myself – especially with myself – and I did the very thing you feared the most. I let you down, and I’m sorry.
But it was never a choice between you and Joe, Luca, and it pains me so much that I ever made you feel like it was.
Joe will always be a part of me, but he makes up the chapters of my past, and now I’m ready to turn the page and find out what happens next.
Something was going on up there the day I met you,’ I said, glancing briefly up at the stars above us.
‘I like to think that Joe had a little something to do with it. He always knew what I needed even before I did.’ I smiled fondly as a particularly bright star winked back at me, twinkling in agreement against the midnight blue sky.
Luca’s face was completely still, his angular cheekbones painting a beautiful canvas of light and shade across his face, as though they’d been sculpted specifically to be viewed under the light of the moon. By the woman trying to win his heart.
‘I’m not perfect,’ I sniffed, lifting my arms and letting them fall hopelessly by my sides.
‘In fact, I’m a bit of a mess. I’m 30 years old.
My credit score’s non-existent. I still live with my mother and, as of very recently, I am unemployed.
For the first time in my life, I’ve got no plan – I don’t even know if I want to get married, or have kids, or settle down, or whatever the hell else society says you should be doing at my age.
But I do know that I can’t imagine waking up to one more sunrise and not have your face be the first thing that I see.
’ The truth rolled off my tongue so easily.
There was no forcing it past a lump in my throat, or screwing my eyes shut to say it.
It simply flowed out of me like a breath, just another star floating bright in the sky above us.
Luca was silent. Frozen. Part of me might have questioned if he was still alive, if it weren’t for his chest rising and falling double time beneath the thin cotton of his shirt.
Shit. This was it, wasn’t it? This was the reason I’d been so scared to tell him the truth, to open myself up to the pain.
‘That’s it.’ I sniffed again, wrapping my arms tightly around myself, as if by doing so, I might somehow be able to hold the fractured pieces of my heart together.
I was crying now, big, fat tears running down my cheeks and dripping from my chin, sparkling amongst the dew in the grass below.
‘That’s all I’ve got. I mean, I think my speech was better the first time, and I don’t think that fourth glass of champagne did me any favours, but—’
‘Jenny.’
The fingers of his right hand caught my chin, coaxing it softly upwards until our eyes met.
‘You are perfect, Jenny Thompson,’ he declared feverishly, tucking a wayward curl behind my left ear.
I leaned into his touch. I couldn’t help it.
‘I don’t think you realise how beautiful you are, and I’m not talking about the way you look tonight – although Christ , you look so fucking hot.
’ His eyes roamed hungrily over my dress, the delicate spaghetti straps, the corset-style bodice, the full lace skirt, before settling once more on my face.
‘I mean all of you. The broken parts, and the bruised parts, and the parts that you’re still afraid to show me.
But guess what? I’ve got those too, we all do.
I was so busy looking for all the warning signs, pinpointing any little similarity between us and the failed relationships in my past, that I overlooked all the good.
And seeing Rachel again after so long just confirmed how different you really are.
We might be messy and complicated, but so is life, Jenny, and unlike other people, you didn’t run at the first sign of trouble.
You stayed and fought for me, or at least, you tried to, even when I was intent on pushing you away.
When we first met you weren’t ready to let go of the past and I guess, in a way, I was guilty of the same thing.
But I’ve realised – maybe with a little help from Jasmine and her 101 Reasons You’re an Idiot & You Should Be with Jenny PowerPoint presentation that she made me sit through last week – that I need to let go of that giant chip on my shoulder.
The one that constantly tells me I’m not good enough – for my dad, for Rachel. For you.’
My bottom lip trembled, and I blinked away the tears that were blurring the face of the man who’d just taken my hand in his.
‘I’ve not been able to stop thinking about you since the second we met, so I don’t know what else to do other than take a leap of faith and just pray that you’ll leap with me.
’ And in that moment his face filled with everything that for so long I’d dared not look for.
Certainty. Tenderness. Maybe not quite love, not yet anyway, but something damn similar.
And so I leapt, without hesitation, without overthinking, without anything but the overwhelming need to hold him, to call him mine.
I flung my arms around his neck, not wanting one more second of separation to pass between us, and pressed my lips to his.
That night we spent together we must have kissed a thousand times.
But not one of them felt like this, neither of us holding any part of ourselves back.
His arms snaked their way around me, feverish hands roaming over my hips, the small of my back, beneath the hem of my dress.
He walked us slowly backwards, not allowing even a whisper of breeze between us, until his hips pinned me back against the wooden fence.
‘Do you think my heart will ever stop trying to jump out of my chest whenever you touch me?’ I asked breathlessly, burying my face against his neck to stifle the sounds he was drawing out of me. He paused the slow, delicious journey his mouth was making down the side of my neck.
‘I sincerely hope not,’ he whispered against my mouth and I wished I could swallow his words, let them take root inside of me, their branches growing and twisting around every single part of me.
I kissed him again. Slowly this time, framing his face with my hands.
The kind of kiss two people might have who are only just starting to believe they have all the time in the world together.
‘So, tell me more about this PowerPoint?’
The corner of Luca’s mouth hitched as he drew me tightly against him, linking our fingers together as we walked hand in hand across the field, two sets of footprints trailing after us. ‘It was long. There were Venn diagrams and Photoshopped pictures of the two of us under the Eiffel Tower.’
‘And 101 reasons why we should be together?’
‘And 101 reasons why we should be together,’ Luca confirmed with a laugh. ‘Jasmine doesn’t do things by halves.’
‘Well, I look forward to hearing every single one over dessert.’
Luca stopped abruptly, pulling me backwards until I landed against his chest, my lips mere inches from his. ‘Dessert before main course? Miss Thompson, you really are quite scandalous.’
I shrugged. ‘This guy I know introduced me to it.’
‘Sounds like a keeper.’
I smiled up at him, watching his eyes sparkle in the moonlight.
‘You have no idea.’