Extra Time

by Michelle Betham

‘Things have… I don’t believe you… Is this just some kind of game to you?’

  ‘Your marriage is, by all accounts, finished, Amber. And the world and its mother seems to think that’s because of me and you anyway, so why not just go with it?’

  Amber was still staring at him, almost speechless. Almost. ‘Why not…? I’m not hearing this. You really do have to be taking the piss… Get out of here, Ryan. Go back to your hotel, get a good night’s sleep, then get on that plane tomorrow and start that new life. Okay? Get your head together, get it sorted, and come back a grown-up.’

  She took one last gulp of wine as she stood up, grabbing her bag from the banquette beside her.

  ‘I’m serious, Amber.’

  She looked at him again, still unable to get her head around the fact he’d had the nerve to come here and do this to her.

  ‘Two weeks, Ryan. It’s been two weeks since my husband told me he wanted a divorce and I’ve had to go through it all with the eyes of the media on me constantly. And as well as that, I’ve had to put up with rumours that my marriage broke up because me and you were having some kind of affair, which couldn’t be further from the truth…’

  ‘I still love you, Amber.’ He stood up, too, reaching for her hand, but she pulled it away, shaking her head as she quickly made her way out of the bar, pushing past the growing crowd of people in there, almost running across the car park.

  ‘Amber, wait!’

  She really wanted to jump into her car and drive off, away from this ridiculous situation, but something – some feeling she hadn’t encouraged and didn’t welcome – was causing her to stay rooted to the spot.

  ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘Do you know how sick I am of hearing people say that to me lately, Ryan?’

  ‘I still love you.’

  ‘Which is why you’re going away.’

  ‘And I want you to come with me.’

  ‘Which then renders this whole loan period a pointless waste of bloody time! Don’t you get it, Ryan? Are you listening to yourself?’

  ‘Amber, it’s over. You and Jim, it’s over. And I’m still here. I’m still in love with you, still waiting for you to come back…’

  She shook her head again, blinking back tears that she was so angry had appeared in the first place. She was trying to be strong again, trying to work out in her own mixed-up, messed-up head how she was going to get through these next few months, and the one thing she’d been more than relieved about was the fact Ryan would be far away. He wouldn’t be around to confuse her or make her think she wanted something she really, really didn’t. And yet he was here, doing exactly that, saying things she really didn’t want to hear.

  ‘You have no right, Ryan… no right to come here and do this. It isn’t fair.’

  ‘Okay…’ He pushed a hand through his hair, looking away for a second. ‘Okay. Maybe I’ve played this completely the wrong way…’

  ‘You think?’ Amber asked, raising a sarcastic eyebrow.

  ‘Maybe I’ve played it all wrong. There’s no way you’re just going to up and leave everything you’ve got here to be with me in a different country, I see that.’

  ‘Oh, now he’s finally talking some sense.’

  ‘It’s a mess, right?’

  ‘Understatement, Ryan.’

  ‘But maybe, at the same time, it’s fate guiding us in the direction we should have been going all along.’

  She frowned as she stared at him, still feeling as if she was in the middle of some surreal dream. ‘And now you’ve stopped. Talking sense, I mean. Fate doesn’t come into this, Ryan. Not anymore.’

  ‘You used to believe in it.’

  ‘I used to believe in a lot of things.’

  ‘Do you blame me?’

  She looked at him, right into those dark blue eyes, just staring at him for what felt like ages but was really only a few seconds. ‘Blame you for what?’

  ‘For your marriage breaking up. I mean, it all happened just after me and you…’

  ‘Go back to the hotel, Ryan.’ She turned away from him, opening the driver’s side door, but he quickly grabbed her arm before she had a chance to climb into the car.

  ‘Come with me, Amber. Please.’

  She swung round to look at him, laughing slightly. ‘You are joking, aren’t you?’

  ‘He’s left you, your marriage is over, what’s stopping you…’

  ‘No, Ryan.’ She shook her head, wishing he hadn’t turned up here. Wishing a lot of things.

  He carefully pulled the car keys from her grip, sliding them into his pocket, which was met with another incredulous look from Amber.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘You’ve been drinking, Amber. Remember? And I suspect, even though we may just be talking slightly here, that you’re over the limit. So I can’t really be seen to condone you getting behind the wheel of that car now, can I?’

  ‘Saint Ryan. How ironic is that, huh?’

  He just smiled, his hand still gripping her wrist. ‘The last thing you need is any more headlines.’

  ‘Yeah. Thanks for your concern.’

  ‘We’ll get a cab, okay?’

  ‘Okay… Hang on. What’s with the we? We aren’t doing anything. I’ll call for a cab, thanks. Go on. You can go now. Just give me my keys back first.’

  He let go of her, shaking his head, smiling as he shoved his hands in his pockets, along with her keys. ‘You’re not getting those back until the cab gets here and you’re safely in it. With or without me.’

  ‘Without. Definitely without. And you really are quite irritating, do you know that?’

  He was still smirking, leaning back beside her against her car. ‘Well, from one irritating person to another, I’ll take that insult with a pinch of salt.’

  She just looked at him before turning away, scrolling down the contact list on her phone to find the cab firm Cloud Sports used. Just a few more minutes and she’d be safely on her way home to her little house – her quiet, empty, little house…

  ‘Is this really what you want, Dad?’

  Jim looked up, placing his fork down on his half-eaten plate of food. ‘It’s what I’ve got to do, Brandon.’

  ‘Why? You see, I don’t get it. I don’t get why… If you love her so much, why do you need to do this? I mean, a divorce? I know what she did was wrong, but you were no saint either. By your own admission.’

  ‘I didn’t sleep with anyone else while we were together.’

  Brandon looked at his dad from across the table. ‘Not this time around, maybe, no.’

  Jim held his son’s gaze for a minute before turning his attention to the glass of whisky by his side.

  ‘You kept secrets from her, Dad. Big secrets. Things you probably should have told her about and…’

  ‘Are you saying I drove her to sleep with Ryan Fisher?’

  ‘No. Of course I’m not saying that. What I’m trying to say is…’

  Jim scraped his chair back and got up from the table, throwing his napkin down beside his unfinished food. ‘It was a mess, Brandon. From the start it was a mess and we should never have tried to go back there. Too much had happened already, too many things had been said that couldn’t be taken back. We were naive to think we could make a marriage work.’

  ‘You said you loved her like you’d never loved anyone before.’

  Jim looked at Brandon, picking up his glass of whisky and taking a sip. ‘I did. I do. But sometimes that isn’t enough, when other things get in the way.’

  ‘What things?’ Brandon asked, following his father into the living room.

  ‘Things that you don’t need to know about, Brandon.’ He sat down on the arm of the sofa, finishing his drink in one mouthful. ‘I love her, yes, okay. I love her. And she probably still loves me, but that doesn’t mean we should be together.’

  Brandon leaned back against the wall, confused by everything his father was telling him. He didn’t understand any of it. Surely, if you loved someone, a
nd you knew they loved you, too, you’d do anything to make it work. Even if mistakes had been made. Surely, if the love was still there, then there was no mistake that couldn’t be rectified, somehow. In time.

  ‘It’s not like you to quit anything, Dad.’

  Jim got up and walked over to the sideboard, pouring himself another drink. ‘I’ve got my career to think of, Brandon. I’ve got a club to run and a title to defend.’ He turned around, sipping his fresh whisky. ‘And I need to have my wits about me in order to do all of that. I’ve got people relying on me.’

  ‘So you’d rather put your career ahead of the woman you love?’

  ‘She slept with Ryan Fisher. Now he’s on his way to Spain, and she’s got her own career to keep her busy, meaning I can finally concentrate on what needs to be done here.’

  Brandon narrowed his eyes as he stared at his father. Did he really mean everything he was saying? His expression was almost stoic, so it was difficult to tell. Jim Allen had always been a man who never really showed his feelings, if he could help it, so knowing whether everything he was telling him was the truth or not was difficult to work out.

  ‘You’re really not even going to try and fight? Really?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it anymore, Brandon.’ Jim walked over to the fireplace, taking a long sip of whisky as he looked at a photograph of him and Amber, taken in the back garden not long after their whirlwind wedding. ‘It’s over. It’s time to move on. Amber and I had some good times, but that’s all they should have stayed – good times. It should never have turned into marriage.’

  ‘And what if doing this – if you refusing to fight for your marriage, what if that sends her running straight back to Ryan Fisher? What if that happens, huh? What if his plan to leave Newcastle Red Star actually backfires and instead of it being like some kind of therapy for him in order to forget what he thinks he can’t have; what if, instead, it turns out to be the one thing that actually pushes him and Amber back together? What happens then?’

  Jim took another sip of whisky, his eyes on Brandon’s all the time, never wavering, never flinching. ‘Then Ryan Fisher will never play football in the U.K. again, Brandon. That’s what happens.’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Amber closed the front door behind her, leaning back against it and closing her eyes, taking a long, deep breath. It had been a tiring day, and in hindsight she wished she hadn’t let Ronnie talk her into going for that drink after work. She should have just come straight home, ran herself a bath and gone to bed early with a hot drink and the movie channels. Maybe then she could’ve avoided Ryan – who was she kidding? He would have tracked her down somehow. She knew him too well. When Ryan Fisher wanted something, he usually found a way to get it.

  She threw her bag down on the chair next to the door and walked into the kitchen, filling the kettle. For the past couple of weeks she’d felt as though she was operating on some kind of autopilot – she was going through the motions but not always feeling everything that was happening. And all of a sudden it was a feeling she didn’t like, one she didn’t want to feel anymore. She wanted some control back in her life. But the only way she could do that was to do the one thing she’d avoided doing up until now.

  Grabbing the phone, she tapped in a number, hoping the person she was calling would answer before she had time to change her mind and hang up. They answered after just three rings, and as soon as Amber heard his voice she felt her stomach dip, as if someone had just pushed her over the top of the biggest roller coaster there was.

  ‘Amber?’

  Just the sound of his voice caused tears to well up and she blinked rapidly to try and stop them from falling. ‘We need to talk, Jim. Please. What’s happening here, it isn’t fair…’

  ‘You sleeping around behind my back wasn’t fair, Amber.’

  Could he really be that cold? His voice certainly didn’t sound as though it had any warmth to it. ‘We… we just didn’t handle things properly, Jim. We didn’t… we didn’t talk about anything, and we should have done, we should have talked to each other but instead we…’

  ‘It’s too late.’

  She closed her eyes, swallowing hard, not wanting this conversation to be happening, but, at the same time, knowing it had to. She had to do this, to know where she stood with a man who had never really made her feel safe or settled – but he was a man she loved so much. Too much. She always had, and she always would. No matter what. He was under her skin, embedded there like a permanent tattoo, and there was nothing she could do about that. Nothing. ‘You really believe that?’ she asked, her voice quiet, shaking slightly, those tears now streaming down her face so fast her cheeks were soaked within seconds.

  She kept her eyes closed as he stayed silent, her question hanging in the air, and she couldn’t stop a fleeting glimmer of hope bubble up inside her. Maybe he didn’t believe it. Maybe it had taken her calling him to realise that what they were doing was stupid, throwing everything they could still have together away just because they’d let things get out of control for a while.

  ‘I do, Amber. I believe that. It’s too late.’

  She took a deep breath, squeezing her eyes tight shut as though doing that would change his answer, make this whole situation miraculously better. ‘I… I know I didn’t handle things well, Jim. I know that. But finding out about Brandon, finding out I couldn’t have a baby, it… it all happened at once, it all hit me too hard, all in one go, and I know I didn’t handle it well…’

  ‘Neither of us handled anything well, honey. We’re both to blame. We both did things we shouldn’t have done, and I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry…’

  She didn’t want to beg, but she could feel him slowly slipping from her grasp, like the cruellest case of history repeating itself, and she felt powerless to do anything about it. Was this just the way things were always meant to be between her and Jim Allen? Together for such short periods, each of them filled with emotions so intense it was draining, only for it to end in heartbreak all over again?

  ‘I wanted too much,’ she whispered, keeping her eyes closed, placing a hand on her stomach and clenching it into a tight fist. ‘When all I really wanted was you.’

  ‘Amber… Baby, don’t do this. Please. Don’t do this.’

  ‘I love you, Jim. I love you so much.’

  ‘And I love you, too. Believe me, I love you, too…’

  ‘Then why are you doing this? Why? I don’t understand…’

  ‘I have to, Amber. I just… I have to. It isn’t fair on either of us to carry on the way we have been doing. It’s too destructive, too tiring.’

  She finally opened her eyes, wiping away tears that were still falling in a steady stream down her damp cheeks.

  ‘You survived without me before, baby.’ His voice was quieter now, more gentle, the coldness replaced by a warmth that only made Amber cry even more. ‘You can do it again. Your life will be so much better without me in it, believe me.’

  What if she didn’t want to believe him? What if she was quite willing to take her chances? She could cope with anything now, she was sure of it, given what they’d already been through.

  ‘Shouldn’t what’s happened have made us stronger, Jim?’ She was trying desperately to stop the emotion she was feeling from spilling over into her voice, but it was hard. It was so hard.

  ‘Amber, honey, please don’t cry. Please. Don’t cry. Baby, I know this is hard, I know it is. And I didn’t take this decision lightly, I really need you to know that. But we can’t keep doing this to ourselves. Years and years of wanting each other, loving each other, hurting each other… I can’t do it anymore. I can’t. I can’t do it anymore.’

  She threw her head back, staring at the ceiling, those tears she’d been crying falling back into her eyes, stinging them, but she didn’t care. Nothing could be more painful than what was happening now.

  ‘Amber?’

  Taking one last deep breath she tried to compose herself, tried to claw
some clarity back. But still nothing felt right. None of it felt right. ‘I… I’ll need to come back to the house. There are still some things I need to collect.’

  ‘You don’t have to ask my permission, Amber. You can come round any time to pick up your stuff. I’m at work most days, so… You’ve got your key, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Her voice was almost a whisper now, the enormity of what this whole conversation meant overwhelming her. ‘I’ve got my key.’

  There was a pause for a few, heart-breaking seconds, nothing between them but a painful silence and an air of finality that was almost gut-wrenching.

  ‘You’re gonna be okay, Amber.’

  She closed her eyes again as he spoke those same words to her that he’d spoken twice before – each time heralding the end of their relationship. The end of her dream. And this was no different.

  ‘Yeah.’ She kept her eyes closed, gripping the phone tight as she felt her stomach lurch so heavily she felt physically sick. ‘Yeah. I know I will.’

  She had no other choice.

  Jim slowly replaced the phone in its cradle and sat forward, his head falling into his hands as hot, uninvited tears began to trickle slowly down his face. Nobody had said it would be easy, saying goodbye to her a third time, especially given the line of work they were both in – it was obvious they were going to constantly be around each other more than either of them needed to be. But he knew it was the right thing to do. Their relationship was too intense, too destructive to survive. There was so much they wanted, and most of it was out of reach, so how could they ever have made this marriage work?

  Sighing heavily, he sat up, slamming his head back against the cushions of the sofa, pushing both hands through his hair. He was never going to stop loving her – that was a given. Amber was a part of him, a permanent fixture; she was the love of his life. But now it was time to move on. Time to break those ties and forge ahead with everything he hoped would take his mind off what his life had become.

  Jim Allen was alone again – and that was the way it had to be.

  The doorbell ringing saved Amber from sinking into a well of self-pity and she almost ran out into the hall, knowing it would be Ronnie, and for once she was glad of his almost psychic tendencies to know just when she needed him.