by Lucy King
‘Then you can watch me eat.’
‘Not sure I want to do that either.’
‘Too bad,’ said Zoe, taking her arm in a surprisingly firm grip and marching her out of the shop, ‘because I’m hungry and we need to have a little chat.’
*
Five minutes later, Zoe, with a determination Lily would never have expected from her previously non-confrontational sister, had found a pub, ordered two plates of fish and chips and two glasses of white wine and had plonked her down at a table in the corner.
‘Right,’ said Zoe, effectively blocking her escape by sitting down opposite her and then giving her an oddly fierce glare. ‘This has gone on long enough.’
‘What has?’
‘You. The long face. The wallowing.’
Lily stared at her sister. What the hell? ‘I’m allowed to wallow,’ she said as her heart gave a great squeeze. ‘Kit and I broke up. I’m devastated.’
‘Well, get over it, because I’m not having you lose any more weight. This is the second time your dress has had to be taken in in a week. Carry on at this rate and there’ll be nothing left of you.’
‘Thanks for the sympathy, bridezilla. And come to think of it, where is that anyway?’
‘Where’s what?’
‘The sympathy. You’re supposed to be mopping me up the way I mopped you up when Dan ended things with you.’
‘This situation is entirely different.’
‘Different how?’
‘You’re being an idiot.’
Lily gaped, the tears receding as indignation took over. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Well, you are.’
‘I can’t trust the man I love. I’m heartbroken.’
‘That’s just it.’
‘That’s just what?’
‘All this nonsense about you not being able to trust Kit is rubbish.’
Rubbish? Rubbish? ‘It isn’t rubbish,’ said Lily mutinously. ‘It’s the crux of the matter. The defining feature of our relationship. Ex-relationship.’
Zoe eyed her shrewdly. ‘So go on, then, tell me, what has he done to make you not trust him?’
‘You know what he did.’
‘I mean recently. Since you got back together again.’
Lily thought about it for a moment, racked her brains and riffled through her memory. And then frowned. ‘Well, nothing, I guess.’ The opposite, in fact. He’d gone so far out of his way to show her that she could trust him that he was practically in another country.
‘Right. I see. So basically Kit made one lousy, brief mistake five years ago and you’re still punishing him for it?’
‘I’m not.’
‘Then what are you doing?’
‘The only thing I can,’ said Lily, reiterating the mantra that had kept her more or less upright this last fortnight. ‘Being sensible. Protecting myself. Surviving.’
‘And how’s that working out?’
‘Not brilliantly,’ she had to admit. ‘But what else do you suggest?’
‘A good long look in the mirror.’
Lily shuddered. ‘I did that earlier. Got quite a fright.’
‘Look deeper.’
Lily took a sip of wine and sighed. ‘What are you getting at, Zoe? And no more cryptic stuff because my brain really can’t take it at the moment.’
‘What I mean is that you weren’t exactly fault free in what happened all those years ago, were you?’
‘I know that.’
‘Yet when he suggested trying again Kit trusted that you’d have changed, didn’t he? So why can’t you trust that he has? Seems to me that’s not very fair.’
Lily opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again because for one thing here was the waiter with their fish and chips and for another she didn’t know what to say to that. Still hadn’t figured out an answer by the time the waiter had brought cutlery and condiments and had then retreated.
‘And actually,’ continued Zoe, picking up the ketchup and squeezing a dollop on the side of her plate, ‘if anyone’s had their trust broken it seems to me that it’s Kit, because from your description of the way things were going before you broke up it sounds like, unlike him, you haven’t changed at all.’
Zoe dipped a chip in the ketchup and popped it in her mouth while all Lily could do was stare at her. ‘What?’
‘You’ve been doing that tortoise thing again, haven’t you?’
‘What tortoise thing?’
‘The pulling yourself into your shell and hiding while life and its problems go on around you.’
At her sister’s bluntness Lily bristled. ‘If that was what I was doing, and I’m not saying it was, don’t you think it would be understandable? Don’t you think some kind of self-defence would be normal?’
‘There’s no “if” about it,’ said Zoe. ‘You have been doing that, and, self-defence or not, it’s a mistake. One you’re consciously making.’
Lily looked at her sister in frustration, because Zoe might be all loved-up at the moment, but did she really think it was that simple? Could she really not see how hard it had been for her to end their relationship? How heartbroken she was by what she’d had to do? Did Zoe really think she’d made a mistake by wanting to protect herself from the kind of pain that had torn her apart once before?
Had she really not changed at all?
‘I can’t just tell myself to trust him and, hey, that’s that,’ she said, beginning to feel a bit confused because she’d been so convinced she had changed.
‘Why not?’
‘Because it doesn’t work like that.’
‘Yes, it does.’
‘How?’ Because she’d dearly love to know.
‘Some things, like love, can’t be switched on and off,’ said Zoe, picking up her knife and fork and levelling her a look, ‘but trust isn’t one of them. Trust is a choice you can make, Lily, and I think you should think very carefully about the one you’ve made because Kit’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you and if you don’t sort out what you want and fix things you could blow it for good.’
As Zoe turned her attention to her fish Lily took a sip of wine and tried to unravel all the thoughts that were now churning round in her head.
Was her sister right? Was she still punishing Kit for what he’d done all those years ago? Had she been hiding from everything again? Was she making a mistake? Could she trust him?
As the answers she’d never have expected filtered into her head the foundations of everything she’d been convinced of recently began to crack.
Maybe she was still punishing him, she thought, her throat tightening as her heart thumped. Apart from that one brief moment, that complete aberration, Kit was the most reliable man she’d ever known. The most sincere. The most loyal. Yes, he’d had a one-night stand but he’d come clean immediately afterwards. Regretted it ever since, he’d said. He might have cheated but he hadn’t lied. He’d always been totally honest with her. Been so open he was practically transparent.
But she hadn’t been, had she? She’d asked for openness from him but she hadn’t reciprocated. Instead she’d gone into denial. Unable to cope with what she was feeling, she’d shied away from it instead of confronting it. And then she’d run away like a coward in case she got hurt again.
Right now, though, the only person hurting her was herself and that was something she could fix because Zoe was right. Trust was a choice she could make and there was no one more deserving of it than Kit.
She’d been such a fool. She’d had no reason not to trust him, a billion reasons why she should and why she could, and instead she’d allowed herself to take the easy way out and run away, while he’d abandoned his pride and almost begged her to reconsider.
‘What if I already have blown it, Zoe?’ she said, shame and regret making her voice hoarse.
In the process of stabbing a piece of her fish with her fork Zoe stilled, glanced up and said, ‘Then I suggest you make your way PDQ to the Fitness Rules gym next t
o Kit’s hotel, where I happen to know he and Dan are playing squash, and unblow it.’
FIFTEEN
‘Well, that was quite a game,’ said Dan, rubbing his neck and wincing as he rolled his shoulders. ‘I’m not sure I’m ever going to recover.’
Feeling a stab of guilt, Kit wiped the sweat off his forehead and then threw the towel round his neck. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered, gloomily reflecting that if he’d known he was going to take his mood out on his squash partner he’d have cancelled this afternoon’s game. Probably should have cancelled it anyway because maintaining a friendship with a man who was soon to be Lily’s brother-in-law was hardly conducive to his intention to move on, however much he liked him.
‘Not a problem,’ said Dan easily. ‘I can take losing once in a while. You look like hell by the way.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Anything you want to talk about?’
‘Not particularly,’ said Kit, stuffing his racket into its case and then slinging his bag over his shoulder.
‘Right. Good.’ Dan picked up his own bag and together they walked from the court in the direction of the changing rooms. ‘So I heard that you and Lily had split up,’ he said conversationally and the pain that shot through Kit made his breath catch.
‘Yeah,’ he said casually, as if it didn’t rip his heart to shreds just to think about it.
‘Want to know how she is?’
Desperately. ‘I couldn’t care less.’
‘No. Right. Well, I guess that’s understandable seeing as how she dumped you.’
Kit flinched and ruthlessly obliterated the sudden memory of that night in the garden when he hadn’t been able to fix things.
‘But if you did,’ Dan continued, ‘I’d have to tell you that she’s a heartbroken wreck. Zoe’s words, not mine. I’d also have to tell you that she looks like death warmed up. But you don’t care, so I won’t.’
At the knowledge that Lily sounded as miserable as he was, Kit felt something inside him collapse. All that drivel about wiping her from his life and his heart, probably, because who had he been kidding? There was absolutely zero chance of that happening.
Grinding his teeth against his pathetically weak willpower when it came to Lily, Kit gave in to the need to talk to someone and maybe get a different take on the situation because he hadn’t exactly been doing brilliantly on his own. ‘Did you know she doesn’t think she can trust me?’ he said, dumping his things on a bench and sitting down in case his limbs gave out.
‘I had heard.’
‘Any thoughts as to what I can do about that?’
‘No idea. Can she trust you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you tried telling her?’ Dan asked, opening his locker and taking out a towel before stashing his bag and racket.
‘Many times and at length. It didn’t make any difference.’
‘Do you want her?’
‘More than I want my next breath,’ said Kit. ‘But five years ago I did something stupid. Something I’ve regretted ever since.’
‘I heard about that too.’
‘And it’s turned out to be too great an obstacle to overcome.’
‘So we all make mistakes,’ said Dan, now armed with a bottle of shower gel as well as a towel.
‘This was some mistake.’
‘Yeah, but it was a while ago, wasn’t it?’
‘Five years.’
‘And has Lily never made a mistake?’
Kit frowned as all the mistakes she’d made filtered into his head. ‘Plenty.’
‘So stop beating yourself up and do something about it. Marry her or something. Bind her to you so she can’t escape and prove it over and over again until she has no choice but to trust you. Bit drastic, I know, but what else are you going to do?’
As Dan strode off and shut himself in one shower cubicle Kit stashed his things in his locker, grabbed a towel and headed for another, his mind beginning to race.
Was Dan right? he wondered, turning on the tap and feeling hot needles of water pummelling his skin. Was he beating himself up unnecessarily about the mistake he’d made? Had he let Lily dictate the way things had gone out of some kind of sense of inadequacy? Had that been totally the wrong thing to do?
Maybe it had, because Lily wasn’t perfect, was she? For the last few weeks he’d been tearing himself apart with remorse and guilt over what he’d done, but what about Lily? Hadn’t she reverted to type when the going had got tough? She had. And while he’d made huge changes and sacrifices for them she’d hardly done a thing.
So maybe he wasn’t blame free in their break-up this time round, but neither was she. Just like before. They were equals. They always had been. Which meant that he was worthy of her, dammit. He did deserve her. They deserved each other.
He shouldn’t have let her get away with ending things between them, he thought, turning off the water and grabbing his towel. That had been a mistake. One he wouldn’t be making again because he loved her and she loved him and he was, well, he was wasting time.
*
Having abandoned Zoe in the pub after her sister had told her to go and then heading straight to the gym, Lily didn’t have a plan. She hadn’t had the time to formulate one. Nor had she had the mental space because her head was so full to the brim with the realisation of what a foolish idiot she’d been and her heart was pounding with so much love and hope and regret at the way she’d behaved that there wasn’t room for anything else.
So when she pushed through the door of the gym and saw Kit striding purposefully across the lobby for a split second she didn’t know what to do. For a moment she just watched him, her heart swelling because he looked so gorgeous, so familiar, and she loved him so damn much.
He also looked like she felt. Drawn. Haggard. Unkempt. As though basic self-maintenance was simply too great a challenge to face these days. Which was something of a boost to her pretty shaky confidence because if he’d looked clean-shaven and crisp, as if he hadn’t been pining for her the way she had for him and was totally over her, she’d have been straight out of the door.
As it was, when he saw her he stopped dead, stared at her, his face totally unreadable, and she didn’t know whether he was glad to see her or surprised or appalled. All she knew was that her heart was thundering so loudly it was a miracle no one else seemed to be able to hear it and her body was straining to throw itself at him and she wasn’t going anywhere.
Literally. However hard it was she was staying right where she was because there’d be no throwing of anything anywhere until she’d said what she had to say, whatever that was.
‘Hello, Kit,’ she said, aiming for breezy nonchalance but, she suspected, failing.
His brows snapping together in a frown, Kit stalked over to her and stopped about a metre away. ‘You’re here,’ he said.
‘So it would seem,’ she said, a bit breathless as her lungs were having trouble functioning in his presence.
‘Why?’
‘I wanted to talk.’
‘Seems to be the fashion at the moment.’
‘What?’
‘Never mind,’ he muttered.
‘I thought we could go to your hotel. Maybe a meeting room or something.’ Not his apartment though. No. Way too many disturbing and distracting memories there.
‘Good idea,’ he said, taking her arm and wheeling her round. ‘You’d better come with me.’
He marched her out of the gym at such a rate that she had to jog to keep up. He held her tight as he led her into his hotel and across the lobby and she tried not to respond to the feel of him that she’d so badly missed. When he bypassed the ground-floor meeting rooms and took her to the lift she protested but her protest went unnoticed.
By the time they reached his apartment Lily was out of breath and her stomach was fluttering because Kit had a kind of energy about him, a sizzling sort of tension and a sense of purpose that she’d never seen before and it was doing crazy things to her heart.
&n
bsp; He dropped his things on a chair, then thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans and turned to face her. At the fire in his eyes and the intensity of his expression, Lily’s knees nearly gave way and a flicker of hope at the thought that she might not have screwed things up for good began to burn deep inside her.
Kit raked his gaze over her. ‘Dan was right,’ he said flatly. ‘You do look awful.’
‘So do you.’
‘Yes, well, I feel it.’
‘Me too.’
‘But I’m glad you’re here,’ he said, flashing her a quick, lethal smile.
Oh, thank goodness for that, she thought, letting out a breath of relief because he was acting so oddly she hadn’t been sure. ‘You are?’
Kit nodded. ‘Saves me a journey.’
‘Where were you going?’
‘To come and find you.’
Lily felt her heart turn over and that little flame of hope began to burn a little more fiercely. ‘Oh.’
‘So my carbon footprint thanks you.’
‘It’s welcome. But now can I tell you what I came to say?’ she said, feeling so encouraged by the fact that he hadn’t ignored her or turned her away that she was now practically exploding with the need to fix what she’d done.
‘In a moment,’ he said. ‘Sit down.’
‘I don’t want to sit down.’
‘Sit.’
She sat, even more bemused and now quite a bit more turned on by his dark, edgy demeanour. ‘Are you all right, Kit?’ she asked, leaning forwards and looking at him closely. ‘You seem, I don’t know, a bit weird.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Sure,’ she murmured, and then couldn’t quite remember what she’d been thinking because Kit was fixing her with a look that had her heart thumping and her mouth going dry and her head swimming.
‘OK, so here’s the thing, Lily,’ he said, and for some reason she shivered. ‘Despite what happened a fortnight ago, we are not over.’
As his words hit her poor, battered brain her heart tripped and then swelled to bursting. ‘You have no idea how glad I am to hear you say that, because—’
But he held up his hand and cut her off. ‘Let me finish. I love you, Lily, but you are as far from perfect as I am.’
