“Dana she – she came with me.”
I look at him as he hands me a glass of wine, and I frown slightly as I take a sip. “She’s here? In Manchester?”
“I couldn’t do this alone, Lola.”
I can’t help smiling, it’s so strange, to hear him admitting to this kind of weakness. “Evan King needs his hand holding, huh?”
His eyes meet mine and for a second neither of us says anything. And then he breaks the stare, dropping his gaze as he leans back against the counter.
“She suggested something that I’m beginning to think is a pretty good idea.”
I drop a few handfuls of dried penne into the pan of boiling water and give the sauce a stir, and I wait for him to elaborate on that.
“She thinks I should move to L.A. Help run the Cavendish King offices over there. They’ve moved into entertainment law in quite a big way now, being based so close to Hollywood, and she thinks…”
“What do you think, Evan?”
He raises his head and his eyes are back on mine. But he lets a good few beats go by before he answers me. “I think it’s what we need, Lola. A change of scenery, a new life. I think we need that.”
I stir the sauce again and check the pasta, anything to give me just a few seconds of distraction.
“Lola?”
I look at him, and I know I can’t do this now. I can’t stay here, because I can’t be without him. I’ve been an idiot, letting stupid insecurities build to a point where I just let them get out of control, but I also know that we weren’t perfect. We aren’t perfect. We have flaws, problems, things we need to sort out, and maybe he’s right. Maybe moving to a whole new place and starting again, maybe that’s what we need to do, if we really want to make this work. “Can you set the table, Evan? Please?”
There’s a good chance I’m going with him. There’s a good chance I’m going home. But if he thinks it really is as simple as that, he’s wrong.
Evan
I told her, over dinner, what my mother told me. How she’s sorry, for what she did, what she said, and how I think reconnecting with her is something I need to do. And she listened, and she took my hand and she squeezed it gently when I found all this shit too much, I’m kind of tired of talking now. I want to start doing something.
“She really did seem genuinely sorry, Lola. She wanted me to tell you that, how sorry she was…”
“It wasn’t all her fault, Evan. It wasn’t all anyone’s fault, it was a culmination of so many things.” She takes a sip of wine and lays down her fork. “It was a mess.”
I’m not sure I can argue with that. “But we can make it better, Lola. We can start fixing what was broken, start to heal those wounds, and in time, baby, maybe we can even begin to think about starting a family…”
“I’ll clear up.”
There’s a part of her that’s scared, I can tell, and I am too. Lola and me, we happened so fast, too fast, she was right, about that. We never took the time to take a step back and look at us. We never got to know us. She was right, when she said that, but we can fix that. We can.
I pick up some more plates and carry them through into the kitchen. “Was it something I said?” I smile, and she throws me a small one back, shaking her head.
“I just think it’s a bit soon to be talking babies, that’s all.”
I put the plates down on the counter and dig my hands into my pockets. “Yeah. Maybe you’re right.”
She turns around and carries on rinsing plates and glasses under the faucet, and for a few seconds I just watch her. Her shoulders are tense, and I can see there’s still a part of her that’s not entirely comfortable right now, and that kills me. She feels almost like a stranger, even though I know she still loves me. I know she still wants me. But she feels so far away from me, and I need to get her back before we can do anything; move anywhere…
Lola
I feel his fingers gently push my hair away from the back of my neck, and as his mouth connects with my skin I close my eyes, my fingers gripping the edge of the counter. It’s been so long since I felt him touch me like this, and I’m just not prepared for how much I’ve missed it. This. Him. So when his hand rests against my hip, slowly sliding up under my dress, I don’t stop him. I breathe in deep and throw back my head as his lips brush the side of my neck, his fingers tugging at my panties, and as he slowly pulls them down I grip the counter edge tighter and I try to breathe, but my throat’s tight and my heart’s beating so fast I’m struggling to catch my breath.
And then he turns me around and he lifts me up onto the counter, and as I wrap my legs around him I wind my fingers in his hair, throw my head back again as he kisses the base of my throat; as he pushes inside me, and once again he’s got me. I’d almost weaned myself off this man, cleansed myself of that insane need for him, but going cold turkey didn’t work. All it’s taken is one shot, and I have my fix. My addiction is back, I can’t shake it. And the fact he came here, that tells me he needs that fix, too. We just need to learn how to manage it in a way that won’t destroy us.
His thrusts are slow and gentle and I cling onto him, and I love that he’s inside me again, that I can feel him there, but then something hits me, from right out of nowhere, a realization I don’t want to have to think about, but I can’t stop myself.
“Lola?”
I push him away, and I pull myself down from the countertop, yanking my dress back down over my thighs.
“What’s going on, baby?”
“Did you sleep with anyone? While we were separated? Did you have sex, with anyone?”
“Come on, Lola…”
“We were apart, so, it was okay. Is that what you were going to say? Oh, and the usual ‘it didn’t mean anything’, of course.”
“It didn’t, mean anything…”
His words slam into me so hard I can’t breathe for a second. But what the hell did I expect? Evan King needs sex, I’ve always known that, and I’d walked away. We’d left each other, ended our marriage, so what the hell did I expect? That he’d suddenly turn into a monk? That he’d give up sex until after we were divorced? Am I being completely irrational here? It’s just that, thinking about him touching another woman, the way he touches me, I don’t know if I can deal with that.
“Who was it?”
“She was nobody. I don’t even know her name…”
“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“I was falling apart, okay? I thought I was handling our separation okay, but I wasn’t, I was falling apart. I was drinking, staying out late, throwing myself back into the kind of life I thought I wanted, thought I needed, again. And I made mistakes, Lola…”
“Mistakes?”
“I don’t even remember what happened…”
“Jesus!”
I go into the living room and I head straight for the sideboard, pouring myself a large whiskey.
“Lola, please, listen to me. Listen to me, baby.”
I look at him, and I love him so much I don’t know if I can take this. “Why did we do that to each other, Evan? Why couldn’t we just make it work? Without all of this?”
“There was so much shit surrounding us, Lola; so much fucking baggage, on both sides, that this was always gonna happen.”
I close my eyes and take another deep breath. I have to accept what happened, believe him when he tells me it was a mistake; forget that he slept with other women, or I’m going to lose him again and I don’t want that. I don’t. I can’t let him walk out of here again, I can’t lose him, again, so I’m sucking it up and I’m letting it go. Because I have to. I have no other choice.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, and he looks at me, and it’s at that moment that I actually think we might get through this. If we stop playing games and start working at this marriage.
“So am I.” He walks toward me, and he cups my cheek and he kisses me so softly I feel tears start to prick the back of my eyes.
“Let’s go to bed.”
Thirty
Evan
Placing the mug of tea on the nightstand I slide back into bed and lie facing her, running my fingers lightly over her cheek.
“Hey. You awake?”
“I am now,” she murmurs, slowly opening her eyes, and she smiles at me. Which, God help me, makes my stomach flip over a hundred times. And I’ve just got to learn to accept that I’m capable of feeling this shit, and that I like it. “You made me tea, huh?”
“I made you tea.”
I kiss her slightly open mouth, and she sighs quietly and stretches out before she sits up and reaches over for the tea I’ve just brought her.
“I’ll have to go see my new boss today. Tell him I won’t be taking that job after all.”
I sit up too, pulling her back between my legs. “Do you want me to book the flight home?”
She nods, and takes another sip of tea. “Last night, when you mentioned starting a family – is that what you really want, Evan?”
“Well, truth be told, the idea scares the shit out of me but, yeah. I’d like to think we’d have kids, one day.”
“You do realize how old we are, don’t you? I’m almost forty, you’re nudging forty-six, we aren’t that young anymore. Having kids now, at this point in our life, when we have so much shit still to sort out…” She looks down into her tea, and she closes her eyes. “Evan I… Jesus, I don’t know how to… I… I already have a child. Had a child.”
And I just wasn’t fucking prepared for that…
Lola
There’s a part of me that wonders if he needs to know this, if I really have to tell him this. But I know that, in reality, I should have told him a lot sooner. And I feel his fingers dig into my thighs, and his silence is understandable. Coming out with something like this, just like that, as though it’s nothing, it’s just a passing conversation, of course he’s confused.
“What happened?” he whispers as his fingers slide between mine.
“It was a long time ago, almost twelve years but… It’s a pain that never goes away, not really. It never goes away it just…” I take a deep breath before I speak again. “We were walking to school.” My eyes are still closed, as though the darkness will somehow diminish the memory, but it’ll never do that, it never has, done that. “It was just another, ordinary day and we were walking to school, me and her and my best friend Jed. We’d met at university, worked together in the same law firm, lived around the corner from each other. He was a big part of my life, and a huge part of hers.” I open my eyes and look down at Evan’s hand holding mine. “Her father, he wasn’t around. As soon as I found out I was pregnant that was it, he wanted nothing to do with me or the baby, so he left. Just like that. And Jed, he was there, supporting me, being the kind of friend I needed… He used to walk with us to school a lot, before we’d head into work together. So this particular day it… it really was just like any other. She was excited because her class were all going to start learning to play a musical instrument that morning, and I was just happy that she was smiling again because she’d recently had a really bad stomach flu that had knocked her for six, she hadn’t been well. But now she was back to her usual, chatty self, talking ten to the dozen… And then it happened. It just happened, it came out of nowhere, this car, it just mounted the pavement, and I can still hear people screaming, that noise, it’ll stay with me forever. All that screaming… mums and dads running, dragging their kids away, and it was only then…” I close my eyes again and I squeeze his hand so tight it must be hurting him, but he doesn’t do anything, he just keeps me wrapped in his arms and for that I’m grateful. “It was only then that I realized that neither I nor Jed had hold of her hand anymore. She wasn’t there, and I don’t even know how that happened, how or why we let go of her, but, she wasn’t there. She was gone. She’d been hit, tossed into the air like a rag doll, and when I – when I found her she was lying there, in the middle of the street, and it was… it was like she was just asleep, you know? That’s how I try to remember her, how I try to deal with that image – I try to remember her, asleep.” I take a deep breath and drop my gaze again, exhaling slowly as once more Evan’s hand grips mine that little bit tighter. “She was six years old, and she was gone. Just like that. She’d been taken from me in a heartbeat, and I don’t even remember what happened after that, it’s all still a blur, maybe I keep it that way because it’s easier to deal with, I just… I just remember all these people flocking around me as my world ceased to exist…”
I swallow hard, because I don’t want to cry, but reliving this again is harder than I thought it would be, even after all these years.
“She would’ve been eighteen by now. She would’ve been giving me sleepless nights, had me vetting every boy she brought home because none of them would’ve been right for her. She would’ve been beautiful and strong, I know she would’ve been…”
Evan turns me around and he pulls me over so I straddle him, and he takes my face in his hands and he kisses me gently, and I can’t stop a few stray tears from falling. “Why didn’t you tell me, Lola?”
“Because I didn’t want to have to relive it, Evan. The pain was so bad, it was so, so bad and I just couldn’t cope. For six years she’d been my world and to have her taken away like that, in such a devastating way… He was still drunk, the man who’d driven into her. He’d been out the night before, apparently, only had a couple of hours sleep, and the alcohol was nowhere near out of his system. He’d lost control of the wheel because he’d momentarily closed his eyes, and that’s when he…” I trail off and I look down at Evan’s hand clinging onto mine. “She was called Frankie. Francis, after my grandma, but we always called her Frankie. When I fell pregnant, it was a shock, I mean, she wasn’t planned. I hadn’t even thought about kids, I was too busy working, having fun, making a life for myself. And her father – I didn’t love him. He was a good guy, or at least I thought he was, until Frankie happened. I’d been on the pill, but I’d been sick for a few days and I made that stupid mistake of not taking extra precautions… But she wasn’t a mistake. Frankie, she wasn’t a mistake. I loved her so much, you have no idea… She changed everything, and even though I still worked, because I had the best mum and dad in the world who helped me raise her while I tried to forge a good career for myself and provide for my daughter – even though I still worked, my priorities changed. Everything I did was for her. It was all for her. So losing her, in that way, it tore me apart. I couldn’t cope, couldn’t find a way to grieve. I was broken. I tried, for almost two years I tried, I went back to work, and that was probably the best thing I did because it gave me something to focus on. And I threw myself into my career, I stayed late, helped out with anything and everything because I didn’t want to go home to a house that didn’t have Frankie there anymore. Her laugh, her incessant chatter, it was the life and soul of our home, and without it everything was just too silent. At work I could forget. At home I didn’t want to. And in the end that wasn’t healthy. I mean, Jed – he was there, too, doing anything he could to try and make it better; try and make me better, and sometimes I forgot that he’d been there, too. That he was actually grieving, too, because at times he’d been like a dad to her. But even he couldn’t help. That’s when I decided to make the move to New York. And my parents, they didn’t stop me. Because they thought it was what I needed, too. A complete change, a new start. And I wanted to see the place where I’d been born, that wasn’t a lie. But I also needed to be as far away as I could from the memories. Staying in the UK, it was too painful. I had to learn to move forward, start living again, and I will never, ever forget her, Evan. Ever. But I knew I couldn’t carry on the way I had been.”
“Jesus, Lola…”
He tucks a finger under my chin and lifts up my head so I have no choice but to look at him.
“I should’ve told you. But I didn’t want you to think I was this damaged woman with a broken past, and the kind of man you were…”
“You thought it would scare me off?”
I smile slightly, and he smiles back, quickly kissing my forehead.
“I don’t know, Lola. I can’t say it wouldn’t have done, in the beginning. But I’m not that man anymore.”
“I don’t want kids, Evan. I can’t, have any more kids. Because I don’t want to go through that again.”
“What happened was tragic and cruel, baby, and I can’t even begin to imagine what you went through, but there’s no reason to believe that anything even remotely like that would happen to another child.”
I shake my head and I grip his hand tight, because he doesn’t understand. He’ll never understand. But I want him to. Maybe I need him to.
“I don’t want another child, Evan. There was only ever Frankie, and she’s gone. I’ve learned to live without her, and I can do that now. But I don’t ever want another child. That’s just how I feel. And I really need you to understand that.”
“Okay. All right, I can do just you and me.”
He smiles again, and I suddenly feel like a weight’s been lifted, from both of our shoulders. Like someone’s slowly pulling back the curtains and the light’s finally starting to push through.
“Just you and me, huh?”
“It’s all I want, Lola.”
I close my eyes as he kisses me, as his arms wrap around me, and for the first time in a long time I feel safe.
Willfully Hers (The Dirty Business Series Book 2) Page 26
