I can’t help but laugh.
“What?” she asks, as we move through what appears to be the master bedroom, although this looks very feminine, and the one we went through before on the opposite side of the house was dressed in tweed and plaid. I’m guessing separate bedrooms then, unless Ruben likes plaid and enjoys sleeping across the hall from his parents whenever he stays here.
“I never thought I’d meet someone so fascinating and mysterious today, let alone someone so open and honest. I’ve known Ruben two years now and it took him that long to tell me he loves me.”
She turns to me quickly, a hand on my forearm. “Pardon? Two years, but you said…”
“We’ve been friends for two years.”
Her eyes begin to glow. “Then it must be very serious indeed. I’ll have to start putting out the feelers for florists and suits… oh, and a hat. Gosh, it’s so long since I’ve worn a good hat you know.”
She seems so Portuguese one minute with her humble nature and openness, but then suddenly I see she’s been chipped into, being married to an Englishman and living on English soil—meaning she’s also become bogged down with appearances and putting on a show.
“I meet a lot of people in my line of work,” I explain, “and you’re the most interesting person I’ve met in a long, long time. Which is why I would hate to give you false hope. For all we know Ruben might not ask, or… I might not say yes if he does. If I did say yes, it would be on the condition there’s no big wedding. I’m not close with my family and it would be hurtful if it were obvious to hundreds of people that is the case.”
She frowns deeply and suddenly looks her age. Touching my cheek, she consoles me, “That must be very hard.”
“I have a loving mother,” I assure her, “but she’s… torn.”
She wipes away a tear from beneath her eye before she thinks I’ve seen it, but I did.
“Then we’ll see what happens, bonita anjo.”
We turn out of her bedroom and she guides me downstairs where the men are waiting. Ruben has my coat and I’m about to protest, when I spot Fred wearing a dirty grin. Though I’d like to spend all day getting to know Ruben’s mum, I’ll be equally happy not spending another second in his father’s presence.
Alexia smiles sadly as she hugs Ruben, staring at me over his shoulder. Fred rounds his family to grab me in a tight bear hug, catching me against his chest like Ruben does.
“I knew someone who looked like you once,” he whispers so quietly, I have to turn my ear towards his mouth, “but that can’t be you, can it?”
I hold my breath as he pulls back. Even when he smiles at me sadistically, I’m still holding my breath and keeping my mind closed to his insinuation—that he knows something about my past.
Ruben helps me put my coat on and keeps his eyes trained on the floor, eager not to look at his father but escape as fast as he can with his dignity still intact. I can see from Alexia’s expression, neither she nor Ruben heard what Fred just said.
“See you again soon kids!”
Her voice rings out behind us, even as we stand on the doorstep, the door finally closed and our escape complete.
He finally lets out his breath, and then I let out mine.
Seems our fate is sealed.
Whatever Fred knows about me, it can’t be good.
Oh, well.
Chapter Nineteen
Thief in the Night
He pays the cab fare as I run ahead into the house using the spare key he gave me. I’m overwhelmed, everything’s too much. My heart’s racing and I don’t know what time or place I’m even in. This past week or so has been a whirlwind, it feels like I haven’t been back down to earth at all in the time we’ve been together, not really—until now.
I’m sick to my stomach with dread and fear. Ruben and I are finished, whether he forgives me or not. I can’t live with someone who knows about my past and secretly resents me for it. I can’t. I won’t.
He enters the house and shuts the front door behind him. I’m standing in the hallway, wondering what to do with myself. My coat’s slightly damp from the rain outside but I don’t have the energy to take it off.
Instead, I listen as he removes his coat, no doubt revealing the shirt he wore for lunch. It’s turquoise and brings out the various striations of his eyes. He wore no tie or jacket, just a shirt, hugging his perfect shoulders and chest.
His warm hands briefly touch my neck as he takes the coat off my shoulders and shakes it out, then hangs it up. Where he touches burns and prickles, even if he only brushes his fingertips over my skin.
Suddenly he wraps his arms around me from behind and buries his face in my hair.
“I need you so much,” he promises, “more than you’ll ever know. I couldn’t live without you.”
The heat emitting from his chest pushes against my bare back and I can’t help but react to his display of emotion.
“I love your mother,” I whisper, because it’s the only truth I can think of right now. “She’s not entirely lucid, but she makes the most sense of anyone I’ve ever met.”
“I knew you’d like her,” he tells me, sounding relieved, “and believe me, she’s the only reason we went today. Not him.”
I wait for him to say more, but he doesn’t.
“Don’t you and your father get on?”
“It’s not that,” he almost growls. “I can take him in small doses, but he’s… sour and hurtful. I don’t know why he can’t be happy for me.”
I decide Fred tried to tell Ruben about me—but Ruben didn’t want to know. He refuses to believe it. My poor romantic. He sees what he wants to see. He refuses to open his eyes to the truth.
“We’re home now, it’s all over,” I soothe, stroking my fingers over his strong, veiny hands, so warm and masculine and potentially mine (but probably not now).
If Fred was alluding to my past life with his comment, “I knew someone who looked like you once,” then everything’s ruined. I won’t live in a world in which people know about my past. It was bad enough at home with Mum and Dad knowing—only because they’re the ones who yanked me out. Not that they’re innocent in this or forgiven for their part. If I hadn’t been pushed away, I never would’ve turned to such a life.
Giving me that money was probably Mum’s way of saying, “If it goes wrong again, at least this time you’ve got a way out.” Only by your mistakes can you grow, and little does she know I’ve also been planning my escape route… ever since I moved back home, re-enrolled in college and got a job as an events planner at Claremont Estate before working my way up.
Ruben moves my hair out of the way of my nape and kisses me gently, a shiver running down my spine, my veins instantly spiked with desire. I reach back and fondle him over his trousers. He’s already a little erect.
“I love you,” he groans, spinning me around to pull me close.
I leap into his arms and a frenzy ensues. I can’t find reason for it other than, for the both of us, maybe it just feels so damn good to be away from his parents’ house and back here, safe in his humble abode.
My heels fall to the floor with a clack as he carries me towards the staircase, our tongues duelling inside my mouth one minute, his the next.
We tumble and my back hits the staircase. He’s on me before I can complain about the discomfort, his fingers inching the dress down my arms until revealing the strange sticky things holding my boobs in place. Ruben grunts and rips them away, roughly manhandling my tits, then sucking until it hurts.
Meanwhile as he’s sucking, I unbutton his shirt and put my hands on his body. The sight of the hard, flat plane of his stomach makes me groan and I start working open his belt, button and zipper. He’s in my hand before I know it, lunging his hips so his cock pushes through the grip of my fist.
My dress is up to my waist suddenly and Ruben lifts his body, then tugs down my tights and knickers inelegantly, until they’re twisted together at my ankles.
He puts his arms underneat
h me and pushes into me with an urgent thud, making me scream. I hold my breath for a moment before opening my eyes. I really love Ruben and because I do, I have to let him go.
I never, ever thought I would love a man or that he would love me just as much in return—nor did I imagine it would feel as simultaneously live-giving as it does terrifying—but the thing I imagined least was that love also means doing what’s best for them.
“Why are you crying?” he asks, bringing me back to the moment.
I dig my hands in his hair and pull him close. “I love you beyond what I thought possible, Ruben.”
“Ah, girl. Me too.”
He lifts my body and carries us upstairs to the bedroom, never leaving me.
Together we remove clothes and become entirely naked in each other’s arms, in bed, entwined and delirious, manic for one another. I let him love me in a way no man ever has or ever will again. The sheer torture of it makes me come over and over, but I embrace it, because it’s something to have felt this way at all.
By morning it will all be over, and so I give into him and let him have my tears, my pleas and my prayers. For today only, he can take it all.
The middle of the night arrives. It’s felt like forever getting here. I’ve been counting the seconds until I can leave. I haven’t slept one wink; haven’t even had to fight the urge to sleep. I am physically exhausted because of Ruben’s desires, but my mind won’t shut off.
It’s the way Fred looked at me at lunch. Something about the look all men give to women who are or have been sexually promiscuous at one time or another in their life. It’s like I’m still available in his eyes, or that he knew Ruben couldn’t have found The One, as if that’s never going to happen—and Fred can continue to live the life of riley, knowing that even if he spends all of Alexia’s money (or whatever it is he does with his time), then Ruben will still be around to bail him out—because his son shall never have a wife or child draining the coffers.
My mind goes around in circles as I lie here. I get myself in a place of absolute certainty regarding me leaving and severing this connection for good—to suddenly wondering if, perhaps, Ruben might agree to leave with me for somewhere new and we might forget either of us ever had a past at all.
What is it that they say, though? You’re the same person no matter where you go. You may feel different living in Antigua rather than London, but deep down, you’re still the same person and will still react to things similar to how you did back home.
Plus, even if Ruben realises the truth about my past and forgives me, he will always know what I used to be and he will forever, in the deepest, darkest corner of his heart hate me for it and resent me. He might say he loves me, but when he’s with his own thoughts and I’m not around, he will wonder if some other woman might make him happier—someone unsullied, clean and simple, not the complexity that is me.
Well, anyway, I had better go, because I never, ever want to have to cross paths with Fred again and I’ll be forced to if I stay with Ruben.
His arms are heavy around me as he sleeps deeply, unaware of the turmoil I’m beset by. I slink down the bed and sort of scoot out, desperate not to wake him.
I stand naked beside the bed and stare down on him, judging him to be sound asleep, completely undisturbed. I tiptoe backwards in the direction of the closet and he doesn’t budge an inch then either. By the time I’m in the walk-in wardrobe, my heart is beating a hundred a minute and I’m between bursting into tears and fleeing with nothing but a shirt on my back and the handbag I surreptitiously stuffed my passport, spare knickers, toiletries and make-up in earlier on tonight while Ruben was having a bathroom break.
I can’t cry because if I do, I’ll forget what it is I’m doing and I’ll get sloppy and wake him and it’ll all be over before it’s even begun.
I grab a pair of jeans and pull them up my legs, add some socks and tug a jumper over my head. I’ll grab my coat and boots from downstairs and put them on outside just in case me rattling around with those also wakes him up.
Then I’ll walk to the nearest underground and wait until it opens, or else find one of those all-night cafés nearby and wait there. Once I’m on the tube I’ll get myself to St Pancras and head back to France, where I’ll lose myself for as long as it takes to forget Ruben—undoubtedly, forever.
I look around the closet forlornly, staring at all the new dresses I recently purchased. I was looking forward to the weather getting warmer and us being able to go for long walks and lie out on the grass of the Royal parks in summer, not a care in the world. Then there’s Ruben’s clothes hanging up; his shirts and sweaters and jackets and t-shirts, all smelling of him.
How can I leave him? I love him. I love even the smell of him. I love the warmth of him, the sound of his voice, the beating of his heart against my back as he holds me in his arms at night. I know now that it’s always been this simple really. You love the smell and the feel and the warmth of a man and that’s all it takes to begin building something. It could’ve become a wild adventure, perhaps even the most solid of foundations on which to build a mountain of joy, but not anymore, not now. Ruben will never understand why I did the things I did. He’s not a slut like me, never has been. He might tell me we can get over it, but in reality, we never will. It’ll always be there, hanging over us. My dark past. My seedy, base former lifestyle. He’s nothing like me, he’s better, richer, more beautiful. He deserves so much more.
I take a deep breath, resisting the urge to take a shirt or something of his as a memento—or like a pup leaving its mum, just something to keep me company at night. Grabbing my handbag off the floor, I steel myself to move out of the room in absolute silence.
However, I only get as far as the doorway of the closet before a large, male form looms into sight. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed with the duvet only just covering his modesty.
It’s almost as if I can feel the acidic tears burning the backs of his eyes as he looks up at me, furiously upset and betrayed.
I gulp, stuck where I am, nowhere to go.
“Ruben, please—”
“No! Don’t even try to tell me this is for my sake,” he yells, his shoulders tight and the ropes of muscle in his arms glaringly on show.
“It is,” I whisper softly. “Please, let me go. Please, Ruben.”
“I don’t care, Freya. I don’t fucking care about your past. I care more about the fact you could fucking leave me like this when you know it’s gonna break me.”
His words shock and disarm me. My chin wobbles. The sight of him is unbearable. I feel winded, scooped out, hollow.
“The way he…” My teeth begin to chatter, snot forming in my nose and throat. “The way he looked at me… I can’t have that, ever again.” He looks shattered, shaking his head. He has to see this from my point of view, he has to let me go. “My life doesn’t have to become yours. You don’t have to share this. My parents despise the very ground I walk on because of what I am. My mother says she’s forgiven me, but she hasn’t, the same as she hasn’t forgiven Dad. She brushes it all under the carpet.” Ruben looks devastated, but he knows I’m right. “My past doesn’t have to taint you like it has me. We can just say that this was a very beautiful love affair, but it was never meant to last. Like one of those brief encounters you read about in magazines that leave people wondering forever and a day… let’s continue to wonder what this may have been and keep the daydream alive, instead of continuing as we have been… cutting each other open until one of us drains too much and there’s nothing left between us but resentment and regret.”
His nostrils flare and he grunts, angry as hell, lifting his eyes to mine with pure venom contained within. “No. I’m not letting you go. Try to leave and I’ll stop you. You’re mine. You promised yourself to me. I want you to be my wife.”
His words rip open a gash inside my heart and I’m floored, staring into space as if this isn’t happening. He’s only making it harder.
“I’m nobody’s wi
fe, Ruben.”
“You’re already my wife, in my eyes. In time, everything will get better. I’ll make you happy. We can go wherever you want to go. There’s nothing here for me without Laurent, there never has been. If you leave, I follow, that’s all there is to it. I have a stupid amount of money in the bank and I will use it to get you back, whatever it takes. There’s no point in you leaving me. We both know this is real.”
I gulp, the first tears washing down my cheeks. “No, Ruben. You don’t know who I really am.”
His facial expression freezes into one of horror. “Yes, I do.”
“No, you don’t. You think since we met two years ago that I haven’t been screwing other guys in abundance. That while your recollections were of times of yore, mine must have been too! You’re mistaken! This is who I am. Rotten. Filthy. Tainted. Don’t you get it? This is me, Ruben. You’ve got one of those complexes where you think if you save someone, you might feel better about all the guilt you’re carrying around. Ultimately though, people can’t be saved, and you won’t feel better about Laurent. Ever. I will always be dirty and disgusting. This is who I am. You will always be wondering if you could have done something to save him, but the truth is, you couldn’t; just like you cannot save me.”
He stomps towards me and gathers me to him, roughly shaking me. “Stop talking. Stop it. It’s lies, Freya. Lies told to you by someone who never loved you, not really. I love you. I’m the only one who will love you enough to help you move on. I refuse to let go of you. If you think I can’t see who you really are, you’re mistaken. A week ago, when you left the pub abruptly, I followed you to the tube and watched you cry. I knew that you were finally beginning to let down your barriers and it’s what I’ve been waiting for this whole time, because inside I could see how fragile you were and I knew if I pushed you from the beginning or screwed you on the first date, it would seem the same as everything that went before and I didn’t want that for either of us. I wanted what we had to be natural and to be something more. I wanted you to trust me. To fall in love with me.”
Kismet Page 16
