Chapter Forty-Three
I didn’t actually cross each passing day off the calendar. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t aware, down to the hour, how much longer Rhys and I would be in the same hemisphere.
‘Please don’t call me. Don’t message me,’ I’d implored him in the shadows of the oak tree. ‘That would just be too hard. It’s far easier if we make a clean break of it right now.’
The green light in his eyes had looked somehow dimmer. ‘Nothing about any of this feels easy,’ he’d said, shaking his head slowly.
‘Please, Rhys. Just let me go.’
I could tell he hadn’t understood my reasons. That made two of us, but I hadn’t let my uncertainty show. And Rhys had done exactly what I’d asked of him. If he hadn’t run into Mel, I wouldn’t even know his departure was now just two days away.
I shivered, even though the heating in the office was set to a very comfortable twenty-three degrees. I was cold – I had been for weeks – but it was the kind of chill that came from deep within me, and no amount of radiators or extra layers could fix it.
‘It’ll be better when he’s actually gone,’ I murmured softly, but not quietly enough to have escaped Simon’s attention.
He was sitting at the second desk I’d managed to squeeze into the office, looking far more productive than I’d managed to be all morning.
‘Did you say something?’
I shook my head. I’d talked my reasons through with Mel and Jackson so many times that they’d finally stopped trying to persuade me to change my mind.
I would get over Rhys in time, I kept telling myself, as though imprinting it in my head would make it true.
I only had to get through another forty-eight hours, and then the healing could begin.
It was a plan that fell apart the moment the bell above the door rang and the man I was trying so hard to forget walked into my office. I gasped, losing any hope of trying to appear unaffected by his unexpected appearance.
‘Rhys.’ Just saying his name felt like a luxury that soon wouldn’t be mine to claim.
‘Ellie,’ he said, his eyes devouring me with an intensity that made me feel naked.
The seconds stretched on, and I wanted to say, ‘You shouldn’t be here.
We agreed not to do this to each other.’ But I truly don’t think I’d have been able to persuade my tongue to form those words.
It felt wonderful and terrible seeing him again and I was hungry – no, starving – for just a glimpse of his face.
Although what I saw didn’t exactly comfort me.
Mel had been right. If there was a contest for who had the most impressive dark circles beneath their eyes, it would probably be a draw.
A scrape of a chair made me tear my eyes from Rhys and I saw Simon getting to his feet.
‘I think I’ll pop out and get us some coffees,’ he declared, blatantly ignoring the takeaway cups on each of our desks that were still hot enough to be giving off steam, and slipped out of the office.
Maybe I smiled weakly in his direction, or maybe I just meant to.
To be honest my eyes were having a hard time looking anywhere except at Rhys.
When we were eventually alone, I finally remembered how to make my vocal cords work.
‘What are you doing here, Rhys?’
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, looking uncertain.
It was a look I’d never seen on him before, nor the broken one currently in his eyes.
Guilt as powerful as a wrecking ball struck me.
I had done this. I thought I was making it easier for him to leave, and look what I’d achieved.
I didn’t think it was possible to hate what I’d done any more than I already did, but it turns out there were sub-basements in hell that I hadn’t even begun to explore.
‘I know I promised not to bother you again.’
‘Bother’ hit me like a poison dart. Did he really think I’d wanted for a single minute to never see him again? I was trying to make things easier. But all at once I wondered if the price I was making us both pay was too steep.
‘I won’t take up too much of your time. I know you must be busy.’
Busy thinking about you. The words were right there, and for one dreadful moment I thought I’d actually said them out loud.
But Rhys was still standing on the other side of my desk.
He wasn’t crushing me in his arms. His lips weren’t frantically seeking mine.
His tongue wasn’t making mine wish it had never said all those awful lies.
‘I can spare a couple of minutes,’ I said, which sounded as prissy out loud as it had in my head.
He gave a ghost of a smile.
‘I don’t know if Mel mentioned that we’d run into each other recently?’
I nodded. I got the impression he was waiting for me to say something, but my lips felt as though they’d been superglued together. Beneath the desk my hands were tightly clasped, as though I couldn’t trust them not to reach across the space between us and pull him to me.
‘Then she probably told you I’m booked to leave in two days?’
‘Yes, she said.’
I saw the shaft of pain that knowing his departure was imminent still hadn’t prompted me to reach out to him. If he only knew how many times I’d summoned his number onto my phone screen and been on the verge of pressing the Call icon.
‘There’s something I wanted to give you before I left.’ His lips twisted in something that was almost a smile. ‘Kind of a farewell gift.’
I noticed for the first time there was a flat package tucked beneath his arm.
‘What is it?’ I asked, eyeing the package as suspiciously as though it was a bomb. I still hadn’t freed my gripped hands to take it from him.
‘It’s just something of mine that I didn’t want to pack into storage with the rest of my stuff. I thought you might like something to remember us by.’
As if there would be a single day for the rest of my life when I would ever forget him.
‘That’s very kind of you,’ I said, reciting the words by rote, like a well-trained child at a party.
His eyes softened. Almost as though he knew that beneath the desk my nails were digging into my palms, leaving tiny half-moon wounds in the flesh.
Very gently he set the parcel down on my desk.
‘Don’t open it yet. Wait until I’m gone.’
Gone, as in out of my office – which looked like it was about to happen – or gone to the other side of the world, which was scarily imminent? Perhaps it didn’t matter. Maybe it was best that he didn’t witness my reaction to his gift.
‘The rest of my things are in storage. I’ll have them shipped out when I find somewhere to live.’
His words hung in the air between us. I knew what they meant, and I struggled not to let the reaction show in my eyes. He wasn’t moving in with Annalise and Tasha.
‘I’m going to look for a place where I can wake up and see the ocean.’
I tried hard not to let his words find a place in my heart, but they were already halfway there. Was he remembering how I’d once told him that one day I wanted to live beside the ocean? Or was I looking for hidden clues that simply didn’t exist?
He took a step back from my desk and I felt it in my soul.
‘I’ve already broken all the rules, so I don’t have a problem in crossing one last line,’ he said, his eyes travelling over my face as though memorising every line.
‘I love you, Ellie. That’s never going to change. I just wanted to tell you that one last time.’
Responding would have been impossible because my throat was too thick with tears. In any event he left me no time to even think about replying because with the words still echoing in my heart, he turned around and walked out.
I doubt Rhys was even halfway back to his car before I ripped the brown paper from the parcel he’d left me.
From its familiar size and shape I was almost certain I knew what it was.
It was the same as the many pen-and-ink drawings he’d done for my clients when properties were sold or rented out.
Had Rhys done a drawing of my own home, I wondered as I freed the frame from beneath a second layer of tissue paper?
It felt like a very grown-up game of pass-the-parcel, one with hidden consequences.
Perhaps that’s why my hands were trembling when they finally revealed the drawing.
It wasn’t my house at all, but the image was as familiar to me as the place where I lived.
Because I’d seen this piece of art many times before, only then it had been hanging on Rhys’s wall.
I stared down in amazement at the detailed depiction of the oak tree where we’d both been struck by lightning. This was so much bigger and so much more important than a new piece of artwork. I knew how connected Rhys felt to this particular drawing, and it spoke volumes that he had given it to me.
Was that why my vision blurred and a single tear fell upon my desk, followed by another and then another. Or was the cause the small piece of card he’d taped to the edge of the frame. My fingers traced the bold strokes of his handwriting.
The start of us.
I carefully detached the card and lifted it to my lips as though it were his that I was kissing.
Simon would be back at any moment with the coffee neither of us needed, and because I didn’t want him finding me sobbing over a drawing of a tree and asking questions I didn’t feel up to answering, I went to rewrap the gift in the brown paper.
That was when I noticed a second note tucked into the back of the frame.
It was a single sheet of paper, carefully folded over and over until it was small enough to be slipped into the corner. I opened it carefully.
‘Oh, Rhys,’ I whispered as I looked at his second message. It gave the details of the flight to Sydney he was due to take in two days. Beneath the name of the airline, flight number, and departure time was another poignant sentence.
Please don’t let this be the end of us.
I cradled the paper to my chest, close to my heart where all important decisions since the lightning were made. The only problem was I had no idea what to do.