by Laura Carter
The downside is that Friday is supposed to be my weekend in the Middle East but everyone is working in London so I am, too. The distraction probably isn’t a bad thing.
I shut down for the day at four, then switch into a blue-and-white-striped maxi, tying my hair into a messy knot. The late afternoon heat is actually welcome after the chill of the air-con in the hotel. Armed with a pair of Bvlgari tortoiseshell shades, I head out to wander the dry streets, which are practically empty because everyone is chauffeured in Dubai. I soon find myself barefoot on Jumeirah Beach, water lapping at my feet and sand tickling between my toes as I look out from the man-made beach across the turquoise sea. A soft burnt-orange haze lingers in the air, adding character to the horizon and serving as a constant reminder of the yellow dessert beyond the wealth of the city.
I’m so lost.
* * *
A now familiar waiter clears the dinner plate from my table on the balcony of Broadway, visibly disappointed that I’ve only eaten half my fillet.
“Was there a problem, madam?”
“Not at all, I just don’t have much of an appetite tonight. Please make my apologies to the chef.”
He nods, satisfied, and heads off to the kitchen.
As the first act of a 1950s-style rock ‘n’ roll medley draws to a close and I finish the last dregs of my dirty martini, Paddy appears. His bicep is tight under the short sleeve of his white cotton shirt and his messy dark waves are tucked behind his ears. There’s a full glass of what looks like champagne, golden and lightly effervescent, on his tray.
“Hey lady, you look better than you did this morning.”
“Wish I could say the same about you.”
He shakes his head with a short laugh. “So listen, your man there asked me to bring this over.” He gestures to the full flute with a flick of his head.
I look to the bar and see a group of six—three men, three women—huddled by the barstools, laughing. “Thanks but you know the score.”
“No drinks from strangers,” he says in a mocking, bored voice that sounds almost mid-yawn. “I told him what you’d say.”
“Yet you’re still standing here with a drink for me?”
His cute smile pulls on his pink lips and his sapphire eyes twinkle. “Well, he tipped me more than I’ll earn in my shift to bring you this particular drink.”
“What is it?”
His smile turns to a mischievous grin. “Before I tell you, I have to know. If I’d have asked you out for, you know, a date or whatever, would there have been a chance?”
I cock my head to one side. “You mean, would I have been your rebound ex-pat?”
He laughs. “To be sure.”
“I don’t think two broken hearts make a whole one, Paddy.”
He nods, one curt move. “It’s Pol Rodger 2002,” he says, placing the drink in front of me with a small napkin that’s been folded into a triangle.
My stomach tightens as I take the napkin and unfold it. I’m holding my breath as I read the one word written there.
Aurora.
I press my hand to my chest to control my pounding heart and turn back to the bar.
Holy Shit!
He stands at the bar, leaning on one forearm, sipping from a glass that I know is filled with Scotch. His white shirt is rolled up to his elbows, three buttons open at the top. His muscles flex through the cotton as he moves. With one leg bent and resting on the low rail around the bottom of the bar, his cream chinos are pulled tight across his firm arse.
As if he feels my eyes on him, he turns, and those intense brown eyes lock on mine. The world stops turning, the room fades to nothing around us.
God, I love him.
“I take it you’re good with Pol Rodger?”
“Hmm?”
“The Pol Rodger?”
I drag my attention from Gregory to Paddy and process his words. “Yes. Sure. Fine.”
“And I take it that’s your heartbreaker.”
I don’t know whether I shake my head or nod or do neither. Paddy moves away as the most mesmerising man I’ve ever met walks towards me.
Pull yourself together, Scarlett. Now!
I’m looking up through my lashes as he reaches my table.
“Scarlett.” I’d forgotten how my names rolls off his tongue like velvet.
I subtly drag air into my lungs holding his stare. I won’t blink first. “Gregory.”
“You look skinny,” he says, finally breaking eye contact, giving me permission to close my lids.
“You flew five thousand miles to insult me?”
He reaches down, sweeps up my champagne flute and sips. I watch his throat as he slowly swallows the bubbles. My lips part.
“Actually, it’s more like three and a half thousand,” he says, placing the flute down on the table and sliding it towards me. “And no. I flew here because I don’t care to be called a son of a bitch.”
“That’s right. You don’t like the truth, Gregory, do you?”
The faintest sign of a smirk rises on his tantalising lips. “It’s funny you should mention that because the truth is one thing I came here to address.”
“Well, that would be a first.” My words are much more confident than I feel. He’s rugby tackled me sideways, but I sit back into my seat and cross one leg over, sipping Pol Rodger.
His brows furrow. He pouts. God, I want to bite his lips. “The other thing I came to address is that goddamn attitude of yours.”
I scoff a little too theatrically. “Thanks for the champagne, Gregory, but you might as well leave now because I won’t believe a word that comes out of your mouth.” My chair scrapes along the floor as I stand. “Excuse me.”
Marching past him, I make it out of the bar to the landing. Thumping the lift button, I glance nervously between the bar entrance and the four lifts. “Come on,” I say through my teeth, my foot bouncing, my bare arms folded around my stomach.
“Don’t walk away from me, Scarlett. I came here to set you straight on a few things and you’re going to listen to what I’ve got to say.”
I squeeze my eyes shut so I don’t look at him moving towards me. I can’t let him see me breaking on the outside even though I’m shattering on the inside. The pain I’ve tried to kill since leaving London has come crashing back and it’s striking me in the gut, crippling my body.
“Leave me alone, Gregory.”
He’s next to me now. Too close. I can smell his fresh, rich scent. Him.
“I will, once you’ve heard what I have to say.”
I turn to face him. He really is too close, his body just inches from mine. I look up and find him staring, reading me, breaking down my facade.
“You lost the right to demand things from me when you lied to me and then sent me away.”
“Two minutes. That’s all I’m asking. I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
He has a point. This is for me, not him. “Two minutes.”
“Outside, come on.”
He reaches for my arm and I flinch as electricity sparks under his warm palm. He leads us through a fire exit to a quiet, desolate terrace. It’s a side of the hotel I haven’t seen but the frenetic lights of Dubai still shine in the night around us. I break our contact and move away from him, leaning forward on the railing.
“Your two minutes have begun.”
“Alright.” With a heavy exhale he leans next to me, his forearms on the metal, mirroring my pose. I inch away from him and in my peripheral vision I see his shoulders sag. “You didn’t let me finish last night.”
“That’s because there was nothing left to say.” I can’t contain my anger and rise, snapping my body around to face him. He stands upright, again matching my pose. “You made me promise, Gregory. You made me promise that
I would accept the CPS decision, that I would see that as my justice. But it wasn’t justice at all. You bought your own law.”
“That’s rich,” he growls.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You said yourself—a good lawyer bends the law. That’s exactly why you told me to hire John Harrison.”
“Bends the law, Gregory, not fucking evades it.”
“Curb the attitude, Scarlett.”
“No.” I’m leaning towards him. “You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore. Tell me what you came to say because you have about thirty seconds left.”
He drags his fingers roughly through his hair. Damn, I want to do that. I turn my back on him and look at anything in the distance to distract me.
“I paid off some people but it’s not what you think.”
“Who?”
“The CPS.”
A weight crushes the air from my lungs for the second time tonight and I press my fingertips to my lips.
“But not for the murder charge, Scarlett. Look at me.”
I shake my head but he gently tugs my shoulders, forcing me to face him.
“Look at me.”
I shake my head again, faster. His index finger is under my chin, lifting it in a too familiar way.
“Not the murder charge,” he whispers. “The CPS didn’t charge the murder of their own accord. That decision is yours. That was real justice. They didn’t charge because the right man died.”
I close my eyes both to break the intensity of our connection and to help me process what he’s saying.
“I’ve never lied to you, Scarlett. I may have withheld information but I’ve never lied to you and I’m not going to start now. You can trust me because I’m telling you this, I did bribe the CPS to get rid of any possible gun charge but that had nothing to do with the murder charge. I swear on my—”
“Don’t. Don’t you dare swear on your life.” I open my eyes to find those precious gems looking into my hazel-greens.
He nods. “I promise. I’m not lying about this. I flew here because I know you’ll have spent the last twenty-four hours thinking you did something wrong and you didn’t. This is the truth, Scarlett. Believe me.”
Taking a deep, soothing breath, I whisper, “I do.” But my relief is masked by the pain of his betrayal. The pain of his sending me away. If I don’t get away from him now, I’m going to crumble.
“Thank you. For coming here. For telling me.” Digging deep for all the confidence I can muster, I straighten my back. “Goodbye, Gregory.”
I move past him as fast as my heels allow and head back to the landing. Once again, I’m thumping the lift button and willing it to come.
The fire exit door closes and I can feel his presence.
“Scarlett—”
“Please, Gregory, don’t. You said everything five weeks ago and I... I’m not strong enough to do it all again.”
The lift pings and I finally drop my shoulders from my ears. I’m already making my way inside as the doors are opening. I hit the button for five as quickly as I can and start to breathe as the doors chug.
Then two hands crash against the closing doors, prising them open. He’s standing at the entrance, staring right at me.
“Scarlett, I love you.”
My lips part as I stagger back against the wall of the lift. There they are. Those three words I’ve been desperate to hear. The words I imagined him saying to me weeks ago.
But he said he couldn’t. He said he wouldn’t.
“Why? Why now?” My words are barely audible.
He’s motionless and he looks...afraid. “I didn’t come here to say that. I...when I saw you...”
I shake my head as an overwhelming sense of confusion, of pain, love and anger, bears down on me. “I can’t do this again, Gregory. I can’t. No one has ever hurt me like you.”
He drops his head towards his chest. God, I want to hold him.
“Please, Scarlett.”
My world begins to blur as tears fill my eyes. He looks so vulnerable. “Nothing’s changed, Gregory. We didn’t end because of the case, or even because you made me leave. We broke because you won’t let me in.”
The lift doors tremble and begin to close once more. He doesn’t stop them and I hear his words, almost exhaled, “I can’t.”
* * *
Why? Why now? After everything.
The hot spray of the shower caresses my skin and washes the salt of my tears from my cheeks.
Nothing’s changed. It’s true. I still don’t know that darkness within him. The real darkness. The black that broke us. It’s still there and if he won’t share it, we won’t work. I’d spend every day wondering if it was the last. If he would do something deceitful. If he’d push me away. I can’t do it again. I won’t survive him a second time.
Water trickles down my face and kisses my lips as I open my mouth. I want him so much. My legs struggle to stand under the weight of his words, replaying in my mind. I lean my hands onto the marble fleck tiles in front of me to steady my aching body.
What if?
Maybe we could make it work. Maybe I never know his darkest secrets but he knows that I love him regardless. I convince him that he deserves to be loved, that he won’t hurt me just by loving me back.
No. It’s not enough. I need all of him. Living in fear of his next breakdown, incomplete, isn’t a way to live my life.
After drying my hair, I lie back into the soft sheets of my bed with a towel still wrapped around my body.
He was supposed to be justifying his corruption, that’s all. It’s not fair of him to ask me to do this. Has he actually asked me to do anything?
Hours have passed by as the questions whir in my mind, keeping me from the sanctity of sleep. My confusion and desire are losing the battle against my sensibility, and what I’m left with is frustration and anger.
He can’t just fly to Dubai after everything and throw out those three words like, like, like I don’t know what. He can’t just do that. He said he’s not willing to let me in. Right before the lift doors closed, he said no. And he sent me away, how could he love me and still send me away? And he did lie. He can call it what he likes, but he bribed the CPS.
Did they really accept self-defence? Were we honestly cleared?
I close my eyes and try for sleep again but it won’t come. I turn to face the alarm clock at my bedside. 05:55. I give in.
After cleaning my teeth and tying my hair in a knot on the top of my head, I dress in my black swimsuit, then cover it with leggings and a T-shirt. Grabbing my gym kit too, I head down to the ground floor.
I’m rinsing in the poolside showers when he steps out of the male changing rooms in a pair of swim shorts, the sight of his naked torso making me wetter than the hot spray. Bloody hell, he’s gorgeous. I ignore the dull throb between my legs and I ignore him, moving from the showers into the pool. I take a sectioned lane of the empty pool, just in case he tries to swim near me, and I set off swimming a mile—sixty-four lengths.
I’ve front-crawled three lengths before I realise he’s taken up the swim lane next to mine and dropped perfectly into my rhythm, swimming alongside me.
Well that’s just pissing me off even more!
He’s fitter than me but I’ve been swimming almost every day for the last five weeks. I’m up to this challenge. More than that, I accept his challenge and I raise him the gym once I’m done.
We power on. After forty lengths he’s still matching me stroke for stroke, breath for breath. I’m starting to think what’s infuriating me more is that, whilst he’s beside me, I can’t watch his muscles move beneath the water.
Just because I’m pissed doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate him from a distance.
The only
snippet I catch is when we turn. We summersault in time and both kick off the end of the pool but his power moves him feet in front of me, until he drops back into my rhythm. In those brief moments, I watch him move, from his toes, through his legs, his flexing core, right to the tips of his fingers. He really is something else. And he loves me. Me.
Shake it off!
At fifty lengths, he’s still mirroring my moves. At sixty-four, I don’t waste time pushing up on my hands at the top of the pool and climbing out of the water. Stomping to the showers, I rinse off the chlorine. For a moment he looks like he’s going to talk to me, so I shut down the shower, grab my towel and head into the ladies’ lockers where I switch into my gym kit.
And, of course, he’s already in the fucking gym when I get there. He feigns stretching when I know he’s actually waiting.
Oh, it’s on, Gregory Ryans.
After a quick stretch, I jump on the treadmill, set the time to forty minutes and hold my finger down on the speed button until I’m working at a run. I have to fight to contain my temper when he climbs onto the tread next to mine and sets his bloody machine to the same settings.
We run. It’s a stand-off. A protest. A test of will. He wants me to concede. Like somehow beating me on the treadmill means he wins. He doesn’t win. He won’t win.
You can’t just swan back into my life and throw around “I love you,” Ryans. You sent me to Dubai.
We may have been cleared of one murder, but there’s a good chance there could be a second any moment now.
At twenty minutes I ramp up the speed further and the arsehole matches me. Damn my body for starting to tire. I need a different beat. Unhooking my iPhone from my bicep, I scroll through my tunes and, without thinking, select a song that’s become one of my favourites. It reminds me of us, of being happy on our way to the opening hunt of the season. As Thirty Seconds to Mars’s “Kings and Queens” blasts in my ears, I cock one eye to Gregory’s iPhone, resting on the lip of the treadmill screen.
