Chapter 44
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
IAIN
The ticking clock counted the minutes where he sat in Gareth’s office. He was early, which hadn’t occurred even once in the last eighteen months or so that he’d worked here. His boss’ muted and bleak decorative choices hadn’t ever irritated Iain before, yet they did today. Where was the colour? Where was the life ? Not even a potted plant to make the cramped space seem less drab.
Here he sat in the same chair, wearing the same navy-blue suit, eight weeks on from the day he’d been warned he had to make a turnaround. But inside, Iain wasn’t the same man as before. This was the after-Maisie version of him, the edition with eyes wide open and new purpose to his life – or at least with a new purpose to find one. Because now he wasn’t afraid of what he’d come to work today to say. He’d had days to think about it, and there was no changing his mind. The old Iain wouldn’t have bothered. He would have let himself be buried under the rubble and weight of his own mind, always staying constantly stuck and downhearted, until a certain Miss Moss reminded him that life was worth living for.
No one was ever going to throw him a rope to pull himself out of his self-induced rut, so he had to do it himself.
His brain wasn’t bored anymore – he wanted more. For the first time in forever he looked forwards instead of back. He wanted a future instead of a stagnant now.
And that started here.
Gareth’s brushed-suede brogues clicked through the empty showroom and paused where Iain had left open his door.
“Ah, Iain, you’re?—”
“Early, ia .? * ”
The blonde didn’t know what to do with that. Slowly, Gareth pushed shut the door behind him. “Right … Well, let me just get settled and I’ll pull up the paperwork.”
Iain waited patiently for the man ten years his senior to sit across the desk in the chair he was certain had a permanent arse imprint on the cushion, tighten his tie, and dig the laptop out of his briefcase. In silence, Gareth clicked, tapped, and typed for the documents that would’ve been prepared last night.
They both knew why he was here. Eight weeks to improve as an employee and salesman had been a hard deadline, and the time was up.
Scratching his hand over his beard, Gareth looked over the laptop at him like a wounded puppy, as if he’d expected for more than what was written on that screen. With a barely contained sigh, he said, “Your numbers are still the same, Iain.”
It didn’t come as a shock. “I know.”
“Then I’m afraid that I may have to say?—”
“Gareth?”
“Yes?”
“I quit.”
Silence.
Frozen, Gareth blinked twice, and Iain’s mind filled the void with the sound of two chimes clinking in time. He’d never have thought that he would be so relaxed to be handing in his notice, but it was as if he’d merely asked for the date. Rolling his lips, he let his gaze wander whilst he waited for his boss to snap out of his wide-eyed trance.
“Well it was about time.” Gareth slumped back in his chair, exhaling relief. “You made my blood pressure rise thinking I was going to have to fire you.”
It was Iain’s turn to stare. That casual reaction wasn’t the one he’d prepared for, but he supposed it was better than the alternative.
With a finalised shut of his laptop, Gareth continued to surprise him. “You don’t deserve that kind of stain on your CV, Iain,” he said lightly. “I know you’re unhappy here, and I’d hoped that this challenge I set would help you decide to leave, that way I can still give you a good reference for wherever you end up.”
So what his boss was saying was that he’d been played … again.
He needed to get his eyesight checked because he really couldn’t be this blind to all of the schemes happening around him.
“A good reference?” Iain laughed, the hollow rumble coming from his chest. “I’ve been shit, Gareth.”
His boss gestured like that fact didn’t mean anything. “You’ve had a hard time adjusting to a new life here on your own – that isn’t your fault. I knew when I hired you that you wouldn’t be here long,” Gareth said, “but you just wouldn’t quit.”
Iain’s perception of his entire experience working here crumbled with the dumb grin that he was met with from across the desk. His mouth hung open and his brows stayed drawn together. This must have been how Ted felt when he’d rescued him from the rehoming centre – grateful but disorientated, wondering why he’d been picked when he was the mutt that no one else had wanted.
“Why did you help me?” he asked. “Surely it’s not in your interest to hire someone you’re going to let go six months later?”
Gareth sat up once again. “Because ten years ago, I was you. Freshly divorced, no little nippers at my knees, moving to a new town to start fresh.” The more he listened, the more Iain’s brow softened. “The boss who worked here before me could see I was a hopeless case, and he gave me a footing to get my life sorted. I promised him when I took over this job that if I could ever do for someone else what he did for me, then I would. Now, I’m not saying you were hopeless, Iain, but you were definitely hope- lacking when you first walked through those doors.”
Iain felt strangely filled with emotion. The only reason he’d been able to build some form of a life in this little coastal town was because of an act of kindness from a stranger. “And I thought you were an idiot all this time for hiring me,” he said outrightly.
Gareth laughed. “Not an idiot, Iain. Just passing the shovel to the next man so he can dig himself out of his trench.”
Blowing out a breath, Iain fell back into his chair and linked his fingers behind his head. He definitely would have been hope- less if Gareth hadn’t given him this job that he was severely under-experienced for. The full-time hours and semi-decent pay had been his saving grace when, after a non-refundable cancelled wedding, he’d sunk every penny he had on being able to move far away from that life.
His brain brought back the taste of cold baked beans and plain boiled rice to his tongue, the sustenance he’d lived off for the first two weeks whilst he’d waited for a job to open up.
All those months he’d scratched his head wondering why he’d never been fired for his ineptitude, and the reason had been smiling at him when he walked in through those doors every single day. Iain didn’t know how to say thank you for the chance he’d been given, and, frankly, his tongue couldn’t untangle for the words anyway. So he reached out his hand and nodded when Gareth took it in a firm shake.
“I’ll need a written resignation letter, just for the file.”
He sniffed as he drew back his hand. “Of course.”
“You can work out your two weeks and then you’re free to go. Actually, I believe you have some holiday days owed to you. Mari has things covered around here, so you should take them. Maybe spend some time with your redheaded friend …”
Iain squinted. “How do you …?”
“I was at the rugby game this weekend,” Gareth said with a knowing smile. “I’m glad you lads won, but I think the real winner there that day was you.”
And he’d gone and screwed it up.
Last Sunday had been a rollercoaster – and not the fun kind. The kind that dropped you into darkness without any idea of where you were or which way was up. First with his father, and then with Maisie.
The look in her eyes as he’d said that he wouldn’t risk losing everything again still haunted him. And maybe he hadn’t made himself clear enough; what he should have said that day – to answer her question – was that if there was a day where he lost her, then she was the one loss that he would never recover from.
Because he’d fallen completely in love with her.
The slow-burning, life-enduring kind of love.
The truth of the matter was that he’d felt that feeling before, been crushed by its loss, and how badly he wanted it again terrified him. He hadn’t expected for lust to transition to love so boldly, and he’d been unprepared to be confronted by it again so soon, but he was ready now.
The illusion that he couldn’t commit to something permanent had been fuelled by months of hurt and guilt, of telling himself that because he hadn’t been able to provide for one woman’s wishes there was no point in subjecting himself to the shame of letting down another.
Well, he was utterly wrong in a way that required a high level of profanity to denote.
Maisie Moss had jumped the wall of every defence he’d ever built around himself, and when Iain wondered how that had happened, he realised it was because he had let her. He’d wanted her to.
The man he wanted to be wasn’t the after-Maisie version of him, it was the because-of-Maisie version. The reality check that she’d given him the last time they’d spoken had been the bare-faced truth. How he thought he wasn’t worthy to be someone’s person again was a lie he’d told himself for far too long. Maisie spoke words to him with all of her heart, words that no woman had ever said to him, words that made him learn that he was worthy of every sweet smile and tender touch she gave – of holding her heart in his hands and keeping it safe from all the people who had ever caused it harm.
Instead, that’s what he’d done himself by running off and leaving when the realisation that he did feel the same way as her became too much. He wasn’t good with words – that’s why he’d still given her the box he’d carried all day in the hope she remembered what she’d once told him and see the gift for what it was: his declaration that he’d fallen in love.
Head over heels.
Out of a bus.
Rolling down a cliffside.
He’d fallen in love.
And if she still cared for him once this week of him figuring out how to realign his life was over, then he could promise on his knees that he was never going to leave her like that again.
“What’s wrong?” Gareth’s concerned face dipped into his eye-line.
Was he on the edge of being a man who cried in his boss’ office? Yes. Perhaps now was the time to admit that he’d been and touched some grass recently.
Iain took a steadying breath. “I messed things up.”
“How?” There was no accusation in Gareth’s voice. No judgement.
His heart pumped its fist against his ribs. “I let the best thing that’s ever happened to me slip through my fingers. I didn’t know how to deal with someone fighting to be in my life instead of fighting to leave it, and instead I was the one who left.”
Gareth stayed quiet, which Iain was thankful for.
“I didn’t want to get too close unless I ruined her … but she’s the best thing that was ever almost mine.”
“Admitting what you’ve done wrong means you’re already halfway there to making it right. So what’s stopping you?”
Iain pursed his lips as he pondered. “I am … tidying up my mess.”
“Hm. Well, the big question is, what are you going to do next?” Gareth asked.
In a bout of confidence, Iain pushed back his chair and gradually stood, his ex-boss’ eyes tracking him all the way with a slow-forming, proud smile.
“I’m going to stop feeling sorry for myself and go for what I want,” he said, taking the name tag badge from his trouser pocket and setting it on the desk. “And what I want is her.”
* ? Early, yes.