Chapter One #2
‘I’m John, by the way.’ He extended his hand, and I took it without breaking his stare. His grip was warm and firm, sparking an erratic pounding in my chest.
He jolted; his darkening eyes piqued with interest.
‘Lucy.’ I introduced myself, before scrambling to my feet. I had to put some distance between us before I got carried away with myself. ‘I’m going to the bar. I need to get the girls another drink.’
‘I’ll give you a hand.’ He stood up and followed me, dropping a protective palm across the base of my spine as we weaved our way through our drunken friends.
The chemistry between us rendered me shocked, vulnerable, and painfully aware of every tingling cell in my body.
I looked at him and swore he could read my mind. His twinkling eyes roamed the entire length of me before shooting a boyish smirk.
Heat crept into my cheeks as we perched on two high stools and ordered drinks. Before I could finish ordering the round, John handed over a credit card. I stood in protest, but he gestured to the bar stool encouragingly.
‘Sit down, Lucy, I promise I won’t bite.’ His teasing tone did nothing to reassure me. ‘Tell me about yourself.’
I dropped back into the seat and searched my brain for something other than, ‘I’m a fucking hot mess in your company and I can’t be trusted not to throw myself at you’.
I glanced at his left hand. It was without a ring, or even the tell-tale mark of one. Did he never wear one? Or had he taken it off deliberately tonight?
His gaze followed mine and he shrugged, a small smile curling at his lip.
I was entirely unsure what he was smiling at, because to me, there was nothing remotely funny about the intense, crackling attraction between us.
What could I possibly tell him about myself?
I’d already told him I was married, but the truth of my situation would send him running for the hills, or to the nearest airport to hop on the first flight back to Ireland.
Those knowing eyes silently coaxed me to open up to him.
So I did.
‘When I was nineteen, my father died. He was sick but it was quite sudden. The grief and guilt were a lot to bear.’ I swallowed thickly.
‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ His velvety voice was solemn.
‘Then a few months later I graduated college and experienced a different type of loss. The loss of the routine, the familiarity of college, and the daily banter with my best friends. Everyone started making plans for the rest of their lives. One by one, they left the city we’d settled in.’
His eyes watched intently as my lips revealed truths that I had never spoken to anyone, not even my best friends.
‘Something about everyone leaving terrified me. Then Rob, my boyfriend at the time, was going to have to leave too. His visa was on the point of expiry. I couldn’t face another loss – of any sort. So, I married him.’
I took another large gulp of my drink, allowing the alcohol to work its magic and take the edge off my newfound nerves.
I had never admitted my reasoning for doing what I did, out loud – not even to myself.
‘And is that a decision you’ve since regretted?’ His head tilted closer towards me, and something like sympathy shone in his sensational eyes.
John’s earnest interest encouraged me to reveal my deepest truths. Knowing he was from a completely different country, that we would more than likely never cross paths again was emancipating. ‘It’s a decision I’ve deliberately never analysed or spoken about with anyone before.’
‘Do you want to talk about it now?’ His warm hand reached out to clasp mine, and the same crackling charge of energy surged between us, its intensity triggering the tiny fine hairs to rise on my arms, along with tell-tale goosebumps.
‘My parents’ divorced when I was a child. I craved stability, strength, and support. Does that make me pathetic?’
‘No.’ He rubs a thumb over his square. ‘It makes you human.’
‘The ironic thing is I’m more than capable of supporting myself. I have a great job and great friends. As a married woman, I’m strangely more independent than I ever was when I was single.’
So used to pretending that my life was a perfect fairy tale, it was liberating to be honest for once. As the words escaped my chest, the weight I’d been subconsciously carrying shifted.
John listened more intently than any therapist might. Never had I been so brutally honest about my situation. Even to myself. It was cathartic, but unnerving.
And it set inevitable wheels in motion.
I could no longer deny the situation needed addressing.
Change loomed ahead, regardless of how much it terrified me.
I figured my magnetic new companion must have some empathy being married himself, no marriage was perfect, even the great ones supposedly needed two people working at it.
So they tell me anyway.
‘Tell me about yourself, John.’ I fired his own question back at him, seeing as he hadn’t run a mile at my deepest, darkest revelations.
‘I’m a farmer.’ His enthusiasm for his job echoed in his words,
‘Seriously?’ It wasn’t what I expected.
‘I have a dairy farm.’
‘I’ve never met a farmer before.’ Out of all my confessions this evening, this was the one that caused him to laugh outrageously.
It seemed our lives were worlds apart, not just in location. He described his family, and his parents’ pub in Ireland.
Bizarrely, I found myself longing to meet them. I liked them already. I listened, attempting to conjure an image of the stunning scenery he described, imagine the kind of life he led amongst the countryside and cattle.
‘Do you live near the sea?’ I grew up on the Isle of Wight. There’s something so reassuring in the swell of the waves and the sound of the sea lapping the shore.
‘You could say that.’ His full lips curved into a smirk, but he chose not to elaborate.
He was so different to anyone I’d ever encountered before. His accent was addictive; I could have listened to him talk forever. He was self-assured, but completely grounded. His manner was wholesome, understated, but full of promise. The attraction escalated with every exchange.
Hours passed. The bar emptied; the night drew dangerously close to an end. I did something I’d never done during my married life.
‘Can we swap numbers?’ I was infatuated and the alcohol had made me brave or stupid. I wasn’t sure which.
‘I thought you’d never ask.’ A chuckle rumbled in his chest. He took my number and rang my phone, so I’d have his.
Guilt scorched my stomach lining, but the thought of him walking out the door never to be seen again crushed my core.
‘Visit me in Ireland, anytime. No strings attached…’ Sincerity hung on his every word.
Call it instinct. I believed him.
His quiet confidence allowed me to imagine for once I might be able to let someone else take the reins, and hand over some carefully collected control that I normally relinquished.
‘Stranger things have happened.’ Just not to me.
It was embarrassingly late, or early, whichever way you wanted to look at it. The impending goodbye loomed, and the thought physically nauseated me.
The sun had risen. Soon, breakfast would be served in this very room, as if everything was normal, as if my world hadn’t been turned upside down in the space of a few short hours.
There was no excuse for me to still be here, yet I couldn’t tear myself away.
‘I wish I wasn’t married,’ I blurted, before I could overthink it.
‘I wish you weren’t married.’ John glanced wistfully at me.
‘It was never my plan.’ Apparently, I hadn’t quite finished unburdening all of my secrets.
‘We have nothing in common. We’re a habit.
Like an old jumper with bobbles on. There’s a familiar sort of comfort in it but you know you should throw it away; it would never be the same again.
Except it isn’t a jumper, it’s a person.
A person I made a promise to in front of all my friends and family, at a point where I thought it was what I wanted.
Needed, even. I got married knowing I wasn’t in love.
But I was looking for a partner, not that mad head over heels, crazy in love.
I don’t believe in that.’ I paused and swallowed the lump forming in my throat.
‘I didn’t believe in that.’ I corrected myself, fleetingly wondering if it were possible to be half in love with this stranger already.
The man whose allure pulled so deep, tugging at the strings of the heart I’d forgotten I owned.
Was this what it felt like?
‘I don’t want to be the person that failed, that gave up. But there is nothing there. And to be honest, there never was. I’ll never have children with him. I can’t be forever tied to him, so I’ve accepted I’ll never have a family.’ The cold hard facts stung as I uttered the words out loud.
I blinked back a tear threatening, praying it was just the alcohol making me so unrecognisable to myself.
Oceanic eyes gazed thoughtfully back at me.
‘It never bothered me before. I often find myself thinking if I got hit by a bus in the morning, I’ve had a good life.
I’m twenty-seven. It’s no way to live. It’s not easy being married, is it?
’ I pleaded with him to acknowledge my truth, tell me that none of it was simple, and everyone felt this way to some extent.
I wondered about the woman he’d married. If they were happy. How I envied her right now. How I would love him to be mine. To feel his skin against my skin. The prospect ignited every nerve ending in my neglected body.
He hesitated for several seconds. ‘The thing is, Lucy, I’m not actually married.’
‘What?’ I’d spilled my soul to this man, opened my heart, only to be told he’d lied to me from the beginning. Is that what happened when you let your guard down?
I wanted to be mad, I really did. But instead, I felt the faintest glimmer of hope when I was in no position to hope for anything.
Anxiety bubbled in my stomach. Things were spiralling out of control. An unfamiliar, dangerous stirring of butterflies swooped through my stomach.
‘If I said I was single you wouldn’t have talked to me.’ He looked at me from under indecently long eyelashes. ‘You are the best-looking woman in the bar.’
‘I’m the only woman in the bar.’ I waved my arm at the empty silence surrounding us. ‘You are a wolf in sheep’s clothing!’ I cringed, remembering all I’d shared with him, unsure if I was mad or delighted.
Our entire encounter was morally wrong, but something about it felt ridiculously right.
The shift in the atmosphere was clear. Now the cards were on the table. The ball was in my court.
I gathered my handbag and my heels and walked barefoot with him into the lift. A heavy silence lingered between us for the first time that night. The atmosphere was charged with illicit possibility.
As the lift doors opened on the first floor, my empty bed awaited me.
I stood motionlessly staring at his questioning features, my feet cemented to the floor, unable to leave.
The doors closed again, and the lift progressed upwards to the fourth floor.
Our eyes locked in an unspoken agreement.
My clammy hand felt small in his as he guided me along the narrow corridor to his room. It was dark, despite the fact it was broad daylight outside; the heavy curtains had been long since drawn.
We stood a foot apart, our hands still entwined. My breath caught in my throat as he attempted to close the distance between us. The masculine scent of his aftershave lingered in the air around us, enveloping me.
The temptation was like nothing I’d experienced before. The devil on my shoulder whispered in my ear and begged me to take a big juicy bite from the forbidden apple.
Guilt ripped through me.
Lust battled logic.
I couldn’t do it, this wasn’t me.
It went against everything I claimed to believe in. I’d never wanted anybody more in my entire twenty-seven years, but I wasn’t allowed. I signed a contract to prove it.
I bolted before I could change my mind, running out the door as fast as my swollen feet would carry me, tackling the stairs two at a time until I reached the safety of the first floor.
Heidi lay snoring four feet away from me.
From my cold crisp bed, I sent him a text.
I’m sorry.
And I truly was. For myself, as much as him. A deep sense of loss penetrated my core, though it had no right doing so.
My heavy heart was crushed by my own stupidity. I should never have put myself in that situation, or let it get that far.
Though I couldn’t bring myself to regret it fully.
My eyes had been opened.
Change was imminent.