I knew he was broken when I first met him; I saw the pain in his eyes and still I went and fell in love with him. Maybe Noah’s right. Maybe that’s my thing. Maybe I like men who are closed off. Maybe I’m addicted to healing and fixing.
I reach the bottom of the steps and turn to face the door. No. It’s more than that. Aaron wasn’t broken when we fell in love. At least, not in any of the ways I could have recognised. His wounds were buried deep inside him.
And I love Noah despite his hurts, not because of them. I love him anyway. I love all of him, body and soul, mind and magic, and that means accepting him as he is.
But this? How can I possibly accept this?
I swear under my breath, wrapping my arms around myself. There is a bar somewhere nearby and it’s playing Christmas music. I move in that direction without thinking, my feet going one in front of the other. The crooning sound of Diana Krall is instantly familiar to me. ‘What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?’ makes my stomach drop.
Because I know that whatever I’m doing, it won’t be with Noah.
My life suddenly drags before my eyes—everything I’ve been, everything I’ve done and now this. The absence of him.
I’ve acknowledged that I love him, but it’s only now, right here, that I understand what that really means. It’s a complete infiltration of my life. He has found a space in my being, in my home life, despite the fact he’s never been there, in my family life, even though he’s never met Ivy. I have imagined him there, I have foreseen a time when he would be with me all the time, by my side.
I dash at hot tears that are clinging to my lashes. What a foolish, idiotic woman I’ve been!
To let him so deep into my soul when he’s insisted all along that he doesn’t want that.
Hurt morphs to fury, carrying me farther down the pavement, away from the bar. I step out onto the road without looking and might have been hit by a black taxi cab had it not blared its horn loudly and swerved to avoid me.
My heart beats a frantic tattoo in my chest, and I support my weight against a thick tree trunk. I stare at the road and, beyond it, the Thames, and I curse. I curse Noah, I curse Gabe, I curse Julianne, and everything that conspired to bring him into my life. How dare he do this to me.
How dare he think we were ever just about sex.
Fuck him!
I glare back in the direction from which I’ve come and I begin to walk that way, my back straight, my eyes unwavering from Noah’s door. He thinks he can do this to me? No way.
He’s going to hear exactly what I think of this decision—to hell with his pains and hurts. This is about me now.
* * *
The girl from the bar has helped herself to a drink and is looking around my place.
I’m bored of her. I want her to go. I feel invaded and angry that she’s here.
But I don’t want to admit that, even to myself.
‘So, sweetheart. What do you do?’
‘Do?’ She lifts a brow. ‘You mean sexually?’
I laugh, but it’s a sound of despair. Frustration. Confusion. What’s happening? Is this a dream? Can I shake myself awake from it? I look down at my hands. They’re real enough. Shaking slightly.
‘I mean professionally.’
‘Oh. I’m a model.’
‘Of course you are.’ I can’t help—and don’t bother trying to hide—the derision that curls my words.
‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’ Her fingers find the straps of her dress, toying with them.
My body doesn’t respond. Not even a little bit.
‘What do you do?’
‘Software development,’ I say, somewhat disingenuously. It’s been a long time since I’ve coded for more than fun.
‘That explains all this.’ She waves a hand around.
I don’t want to sleep with her. I want to get rid of her. Holly’s eyes are in my mind again. Filled with tears. Her lips parted. Her face pale.
Fuckety-fuck.
‘Look, sweetheart, you’re very attractive, but you’re not really my type.’
Her eyes narrow. ‘You don’t like models?’ she prompts, sashaying towards me, her skinny hips jerking from side to side. I would have gone for her a month ago. Three weeks ago. Pre-Holly I’d be stripping that dress from her body and pulling her against me.
‘I’ve never been with a model.’
She pauses in front of me, locking her hands behind my back. Still my body doesn’t respond. I am impatient to be alone now. ‘And I don’t intend to be now.’
She lifts up on her toes, dragging her lips against my cheek. I step back.
‘I think you should go.’
‘What the hell? You invited me back here.’
‘I changed my mind.’
‘Well,’ she snaps, but steps away from me, ‘you could at least let me finish my drink.’
She throws it back in one go. I remember Holly on that first night, when a few glasses of champagne knocked her sideways, and my gut clenches.
I call the model a cab, and when I hear it beep out the front I open the door, intending to make sure she at least gets safely inside, feeling somewhat responsible for her fully drunk state.
Holly is standing at the bottom of the steps when I open the door. Our eyes lock and my body squirms, my heart throbs, my blood stills.
Holly.
She looks away almost instantly, her arms crossed. She’s bundled up in a huge coat, wrapped tight against the weather. She’s pale, her face pinched, her eyes firing into mine.
I press my lips together, walking Model to the waiting cab and holding the door open for her. She smiles at me as she slips in and I slam the door shut with more force than intended.
Holly.
I turn back to my steps and walk towards her, my expression guarded.
‘What are you still doing here?’
She opens her mouth to speak, but she can’t. She’s gaping like a fish out of water and then she shakes her head, digging her fingertips into her chest and staring at me like she’s drowning and only I can save her.
‘I...I don’t know. I just... I’m so angry at you! I had to tell you...’ But she doesn’t sound angry. She sounds like someone who’s deflating slowly before my eyes.
‘And I guess... I guess I had to know. I had to know, without a doubt, that you’d... I had to know that you’d slept with her,’ she says thickly, gripping the railing again, needing its stability.
Thinking I’d fucked the model is killing Holly and I don’t want to do that, not even a little bit. I’m angry with her and she’s angry with me, and I know I can’t see her again, but I don’t want her to hurt because of me. Not because of this. There are enough things I’ve genuinely screwed up without adding a phantom lay into the mix.
‘I didn’t sleep with her.’
She nods. ‘Fucked her, I should have said.’
‘I didn’t do that either.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I’m not lying.’
Her eyes narrow. But she shakes her head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Doesn’t it?’
‘No. If I hadn’t been here, would you have slept with her?’
I open my mouth to deny it but can’t. ‘Yes. Probably.’
She sweeps her eyes closed, the pain on her face unmistakable. ‘God, Noah. You’re seriously messed up.’
‘No shit.’ And suddenly I want Holly. I want Holly so damned bad. I need her. I take a step towards her, but she shakes her head, lifting a hand to hold me at bay.
‘Don’t. Don’t you dare touch me.’
Had my intent been so obvious?
‘You don’t get to touch me,’ she says, as though the idea is repugnant to her when I know otherwise.
‘Why are you here?’
‘Bec
ause I love you.’ She says the words as though they offend her. ‘I can’t be with you, Noah, and God, you make me madder than hell.’ I see then that she’s been crying and my chest heaves. I ache for her. ‘Maybe you were right about everything in my office today.’ It’s just a whisper, an admission that I am desperate to rebut. ‘But that doesn’t mean I don’t care about you.’
It’s the last thing I expect her to say.
‘It doesn’t mean I don’t still want to help you.’
‘Come inside,’ I say gruffly, but she shakes her head.
‘No. I don’t... I don’t ever want to go into your house again.’ She swallows, her beautiful throat bobbing with the action. ‘But I’m going to make an appointment for you with Dr Chesser.’
‘No.’ I’m emphatic. ‘No more doctors.’
‘He’s great at what he does. You won’t be able to pull your crap with him.’
‘I said no.’ The words are forceful. ‘If you’re not going to come inside, Holly, then go home. This conversation is over.’
I give her a second to agree, to join me, and when she doesn’t I storm into my home and shut the door. As before, I lean against it, waiting for my breathing to return to normal, waiting to feel like myself.
I don’t. I don’t know how long passes with me standing like that, but eventually I straighten. I wrench the door inwards, wondering if she’s still there, not knowing what I’ll say if she is.
She’s not, but a carrier bag is on the top step. I hadn’t noticed it before.
I reach for it automatically. It has the Rivière logo on it. I peer inside. A dozen oysters and a small bottle of champagne, as well as a little box. My heart races as I open it. There’s a single ornament inside. A turtle dove made of silver, with a red velvet ribbon and a bell at its base. It twinkles as I shove it back in the bag and then my fingers curl around a piece of card. A business card, as it turns out. Her name is on the front, and on the back...
This isn’t over, Noah.
She obviously wrote it before tonight. Before this.
And maybe she believed it when she wrote it. But I’d sure shown her. She walked away from me like everyone else—but only after I made it impossible for her not to.
* * *
I had Christmas lunch around the corner from her house.
I had Christmas lunch surrounded by happy families, couples, people drinking and eating turkey, ham and pudding, and now I am here, half-cut, staring at her door with a belligerent rage. A rage at how beautiful her house is. At how picture-perfect, like all those houses I coveted as a child. A big, fluffy green wreath on her door, made of holly and ivy, and more strung down the steps that lead to it.
The windows are glowing now, the light from within warm, and my heart achingly cold, like the rest of me.
I nurse the bottle of beer against my gut, leaning on a fence across the street from Holly’s perfect house, biding my time.
It underscores how bad I am for her. How wrong. Wrong in every way. Holly is beautiful, smart, with a daughter just like her. Holly has suffered enough. Holly has a great job and a beautiful home and she deserves to be with someone who will slide into this lovely life of hers. Who’ll sit by her side and eat roast turkey and sing carols and laugh with her.
My stomach has a stitch deep in its lining. It’s not me. That will never be me.
Eventually, another couple leaves and I’m sure this must be the last of them. I stare at her house, waiting to catch a glimpse of Holly, just a glimpse.
She is my kryptonite and I am hers. She talks of love, but that’s not how it’s meant to be, is it? Love is meant to strengthen people, not weaken them, and Holly has unpicked me to the end.
Or is it the absence of Holly?
My needing Holly?
I grimace and cross the street unsteadily, waiting on her doorstep to see if I hear noises within but catching only the faint rasp of Christmas carols.
I lift my hand, thumping it loudly on the door, then step back, arms crossed, waiting.
She answers quickly enough, but it feels like an eternity. Her surprise is obvious.
‘Noah?’ She grips the door jamb. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘You invited me. Remember?’
Her eyes narrow and a pulse point jerks at her throat. ‘I invited you to Christmas lunch. It’s almost eight o’clock.’ She shakes her head. ‘And that was a long time ago.’
It wasn’t. Just over a week. But a lot’s happened in that time.
‘I don’t want Christmas lunch,’ I say simply. ‘I want you.’
Her eyes sweep closed and she swallows. I feel her weakness. I feel her swaying towards me.
‘I... This is my home. My daughter is asleep upstairs...’
‘I’ll be quiet,’ I say, and now I push past her, into her house. It is so picture-postcard perfect that I almost groan. Everything is cosy and pretty and normal and so very fucking Holly that I feel like I’m at my wits’ end. I spin around as she closes the door, latching it in place.
It is a home. The kind of home I’ve only known once before—at the Morrows’. Love and happiness is visible in every corner; every knick-knack is chosen for its rightness and significance to Holly.
‘Noah.’ Her brow is drawn lower, her expression wary. ‘You said you didn’t want to see me again.’
‘True.’ I shrug, like it doesn’t matter, when it matters so damned much. The idea of not seeing Holly again fills me with a strange drowning sensation.
I step towards her; she holds her ground.
‘I thought I meant it. But I’ve been thinking about that session in your office.’ Her eyes lift hopefully to mine, as though I’m here to fucking talk, to let her ‘fix’ me in the ways she thinks most valid. With therapy.
I need to dispel that notion. I wrap an arm around her back and pull her towards me, holding her tight against my body, pushing my arousal forward so she feels it for herself.
‘I’ve been thinking how we need to finish what we started.’
And I step forward, pushing her back against the wall, supporting her body there while I kiss her, hard, desperately, hungrily. I taste her tears in the kiss and still I don’t stop.
She is my kryptonite.
‘Noah.’ She says my name into my mouth. ‘You’re drunk.’
‘So what? Who cares? I want to fuck you, Holly. Drunk, sober—what does it matter?’
She sobs, her hands pressing against my chest. ‘No.’
‘No?’ I hadn’t expected this, and I don’t know what to do with it. No means no, always, without exception, and yet I know Holly and I know what she wants. Or do I? Maybe she doesn’t want me as much as I want her. Isn’t that what I’ve been fearing all this time?
‘This isn’t the answer,’ she says, her fingers relaxing, dropping to the bottom of my shirt, finding my skin, running over it hungrily.
‘Maybe not, but it’s something.’
Her eyes hold mine and a shiver runs the length of my spine.
‘It’s another mistake,’ she says quietly, and now she pushes at me—pushes me away. ‘We’re not having sex.’
My cock jerks hard in my pants, its rampant needs unwilling to be quashed.
But Holly is strong—stronger than I’ve ever known myself to be. She offers me a smile, but it’s tight and it’s sad. ‘You can stay and have coffee, sober up, before you go. You can stay and talk to me about the Morrows and the boys’ home and Gabe Arantini. You can stay and sleep this off—in the guest room—but you don’t get to touch me any more.’
‘I thought you loved me,’ I respond sarcastically, even as her words are doing weird shit to my gut.
‘I do love you,’ she admits softly. ‘But I can’t sleep with you.’
‘That’s not love, then.’
She responds with a calmness that is somehow terrify
ing. ‘Believe me, Noah, it is. If I loved you less, I’d sleep with you now, but we both know it’s just letting you run from what you really need to sort out. I won’t be a party to your denial any longer. I never should have been.’
‘You’re saying you regret this? What we did?’
She bites down on her lip, stares at me, and then she nods. ‘Yes, Noah. I regret it. But we can’t change the past. You and I both know that through personal experience.’
Of all the things we’ve said and done to each other these last few weeks, her admission now is what breaks me apart fully. Her desire to undo everything we’ve shared, her fervent wish to go back in time and not sleep with me. Maybe to not even meet me.
I stare at her for a long minute and then turn away.
‘I was wrong to come. Forget I was here.’
‘Noah—’ she follows me ‘—you can’t go home like this. Have a coffee...’
‘I don’t want a fucking coffee.’
I slam the door behind me and don’t look back.
* * *
‘You said this was urgent?’
God, he is so like Noah my heart stutters in my chest. I know they’re not related by blood, yet there is something in them that is instantly familiar. In looks, they are similar, both bigger than the average man, strong-looking, with a raw sort of animalism tangible. Gabe Arantini is wearing a suit, though, and a top-quality watch. He looks every bit the expensive banker, and he speaks with an accent that is tinged with Italian and Australian.
He’s looking at me with barely concealed impatience, and I know it’s impatience to hear what I have to say, not to be away from me. Because he cares about Noah. And I am happy—so happy Noah has someone in his life who will fly internationally on the day after Christmas because a woman he’s never met called him.
‘Yes. Please, take a seat.’
‘I’m fine standing.’
So like Noah, a tired smile slides across my face. ‘As you wish. This won’t take long.’
My penance is the smallest part of my concerns. Confessing to what I did weighs on me like a ton of bricks, yet it is just the beginning of what I need to tell Gabe.
The Season to Sin Page 15
