by Amy Brent
“Do you have a reservation with us?” He asked smoothly, and I relaxed as soon as I realized that as long as Cormac had the pull to get us a table at this place, no-one would give a shit what his dinner companion was wearing.
Cormac gave him his name and the waiter raised his eyes slowly, looking between the two of us.
“Right this way, Mr and Mrs Miller,” he stepped aside and half-bowed, as though he wanted to be sure that he didn’t offend in any way. I shot a look at Cormac and tried to keep the smile off my face. Fake wife now, huh? That was a step forward.
“Seriously?” I nudged him playfully. “Telling them I’m your wife?”
“This is a family place,” he teased back, not looking at me, and I noticed that there was a tiny little flush of red on his next as though he was embarrassed at being caught out. W
e were taken to our table; it was one of those perfect little two-seaters with a spotless white tablecloth and a candle flickering softly in between us. I took my seat and smiled over at him, not quite able to believe that I was here with him.
“This is incredible,” I remarked, glancing around; I was pretty sure that I could see a few people I knew from TV or the movies, but I didn’t want to stare too hard in case I gave myself away as a commoner.
“Yeah, well, the reason I live all the way out in the woods is because then I can splurge on shit like this and look super generous,” he teased, taking my hand and squeezing again.
“Is this what you were all cagey about all day?” I wondered aloud, and he nodded.
“I just wanted to keep this a surprise,” he smiled, and I felt my heart melt. No-one had ever treated me better than this, and there was still some part of me sure that I didn’t deserve it. But as long as he believed I was worthy of it, I supposed I would have to find my way to believing it, too.
“Your menus?” A beautifully-acquitted waitress appeared next to the table to hand us our hefty leather-clad menus for the evening, and I took one and began to leaf through at once, my stomach grumbling at the thought of all that food.
“So, what are you going to get?” Cormac asked, and soon enough we were exchanging a lively conversation about what the best mix of dishes would be to share; I wanted to try everything, and insisted that we owed our baby the chance to try all this ridiculously-delicious sounding food as well. He could hardly disagree, and by the time we were finished, we had practically ordered up the entire menu. They brought it out one dish at a time, laying on the table in front of us until it was practically groaning under the weight of it all, and I clapped my hands together excitedly as soon as it was all laid out in front of me.
“Thank God, I’m starving,” I sighed, and I realized that I hadn’t thought about Richie even once since we had walked in here. That was a win. If I could come through to the city and actually relax, maybe I would never have to tell him the truth about why I left. That was all in my past, now, anyway, and this right here was my future – not just this meal, but Cormac, the baby, all of it. This was what I had to look forward to. So why would I have spent a moment looking back?
He watched me as I started to dig in to the food, and I glanced up at him and furrowed my brow. He was smiling, not at me, but as though something wonderful had just occurred to him and he couldn’t wait to tell me all about it.
“What is it?” I asked, and he looked down at his lap and took a deep breath. And then suddenly, I could feel it in the air – even without him opening his mouth I knew at once what he was going to say. I widened my eyes and stared at him, urging him onward, so keen to hear those words come out of his mouth – to know that everything I felt for him was reflected back in him, too. As though I didn’t already know that.
“Laurie, these last few months…” He shook his head and let out that breath. I was silently urging him on, wishing that I could just blurt out everything I was feeling to him, but knowing that for the time being I needed to let him speak. He was the one who had been hurt in the last relationship he had been in, and he was the one who actually had something to overcome. I bit my lip and waited for him to continue.
“They’ve been the most intense of my life,” he confessed. “I’ve never felt anything like what I feel for you right now. And I don’t know if it’s the baby or being alone together all that time or…or what it is, but I don’t want to hide it any longer.”
“Yeah?” I was chewing on my lip so hard I was surprised I wasn’t drawing blood. I was so heavily focused on everything around me – the sound of the cutlery glancing off plates, the light pitter-patter of the rain on the windows outside. I just wanted to commit every moment of this to memory, because I knew what he was going to say and I wanted to remember it for the rest of my-
And that’s when I saw him.
I had been seated facing the enormous window that looked out on to the street, and I thought my heart had actually stopped in my chest for a moment when I laid eyes on the man standing outside and looking at me.
I didn’t recognise him for a long moment. He looked a little tweaked-out, like he’d lost weight, and he’d grown his beard out so much that it seemed as though it had consumed most of the bottom half of his face. But it was him, no doubt about it. You didn’t date a guy for as long as I’d dated Richie and not recognise them when they were standing right in front of you. The noise of the restaurant dimmed, and the corners of my vision started to blur. No. This couldn’t be happening. How was he here?
Just like that, I was back in the apartment, the day before I’d run away from the city the last time. And that guy was there with his gun, and I was so sure that I wasn’t going to make it out of there with my life. The fear flooded through me once more, pinning me to my seat, my eyes glazing and my jaw clenching and every part of my brain screaming at me to run, run, run.
“Laurie?” Cormac frowned at me, pulling me back to the table and the moment that I’d just quantifiably ruined with my distraction. “What’s going on?”
“I’m sorry, but we need to get out of here,” I replied, leaning in close and whispering, as though Richie could somehow hear me through the rain-streaked window ten feet away. Cormac’s eyes widened.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” He demanded. “We barely just got here.”
“I know, and I’m sorry,” I looked past him once more, and found that Richie was still watching me out there. “I just need to leave. I’ll explain everything, I promise, as long as we can go back to the cabin right this instant.”
His face darkened, and I felt my stomach drop when I saw his expression. I knew I was going to pay for this, for keeping this from him, for all of it, and maybe that’s no more than what I deserved.
“I’ll get you out of here,” he sighed, glancing around for a waiter. “But you have to tell me everything, alright?”
“I promise I will,” I swore, and my heart picked up the pace in my chest. This was meant to be some perfect, romantic dinner, the one where I told him everything that had I been thinking and feeling these last few months, and now I had fucking ruined it.
Cormac paid what we owed and we made our way to the door, moving quickly. I kept my head down and looked around as soon as I was outside. I couldn’t see him anywhere, but I still felt as though my entire world had been tipped up a few inches, the angles wrong and impossible to work with now that this had happened. Cormac didn’t take my hand, and I could feel something coming off of him in waves – was it anger, resentment, distrust? I didn’t know yet, but all I cared about was getting the fuck out of here once and for all.
We arrived back at the car and I looked around again, my hand on my belly, wild-eyed and praying to God that Richie didn’t give enough of a shit about me to do anything about his sighting. He was an asshole, but he was a small-time one, and I didn’t think that he would be interested in wreaking revenge on me for what had happened.
Just as I was about to climb back into the car, I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. Panic pulsed in my veins for a moment
and I spun around, trying to catch sight of whatever it was, but it was gone before I could pin it down.
“What the fuck is going on?” Cormac demanded again, exasperated, and I shook my head and got into the car.
“I’ll tell you,” I groaned, leaning my head back against the seat. “Come on, let’s just get out of here.”
“Fine,” He climbed into the driver’s seat next to me and gripped the wheel, so tight I was sure his knuckles were going to shoot out the top of his hands.
“We’re leaving,” He pulled the car out of the parking lot, and I felt a wave of relief hit me as I realized we were going to get out of here without Richie catching up with us. But then, as I turned to look at the man I loved, my heart sank as I realized that I might have just lost him for good.
Chapter Fourteen
“So, are you going to tell me what the fuck just happened?” I demanded. Laurie had been sitting in silence for the first fifteen minutes of our journey, but she had promised to tell me the truth and I was sure as hell going to get it out of her.
She didn’t reply and I turned my gaze back to the road. I had no idea what the fuck had just happened, but I knew that it meant she had to have been keeping something from me all this time, and that was enough to make me want to tear the wheel straight out of the dashboard.
What the hell had I been thinking this evening, playing at a couple, booking that table as though she was my wife? I had convinced myself that there had to be nothing wrong with this woman. I had fucking told myself, over and over again, that she was just this perfect angel dropped on my doorstep out of nowhere, that there was nothing to wonder or worry about with her, as though that had ever happened before in my life. That wasn’t how life fit together, no matter how badly I wanted it to. There was always going to be something wrong with her, and now that it had reared it’s head I was sure as fuck going to find out what it was that she had deigned she could keep from me.
“Laurie,” I spoke her name, more firmly this time. Despite how angry I was, there was still some part of me that hurt seeing her so shaken up by what had just happened. I didn’t understand what it was, but I understood that it had scared the shit out of her. And to think, I had been right on the brink of telling her…well, telling her everything. About how I felt for her, about what I wanted from this. And something had happened to fuck that all up, and now I had no idea if we were going to be able to come back from it.
She finally lifted her head where it had been resting on the window, as though she had only just come back to reality. She turned to me, blinking a couple of times, and I could see that her eyes were already red-rimmed. I turned back to the road, forcing myself not to feel sorry for her. I needed the truth out of her, just like I’d asked for in the first place, and I wasn’t going to let her squirm out of it this time.
“So, you going to tell me what happened?” I asked once more, and finally, finally, Laurie told me the truth.
As soon as she started to talk, things began to fall into place in a way they never had before. Why she had been so keen to get out of the city, why she had been so reticent about telling me about her dating history. Why she seemed so jumpy sometimes. Why there was nothing she could tell me about her family. I couldn’t believe that I really thought that I’d known her before this conversation – now that she was telling me the truth, it was obvious how many holes and gaps I’d overlooked in her because I wanted to love her so badly.
I had to pry it from her, all of it, all the shit about her fuck-up of an ex and everything that had gone down between them. And I tried not to judge her for it, I really didn’t, because I knew that everyone did stupid, fucked-up shit when they were in a bad place. But with every question she answered, with every flicker of light she cast on the truth of who she was, I felt another punch to my gut. She had lied to me for so long – no, not lied, but she had hidden herself from me for months now. I would have listened to all of this when I first gave her the chance, when I spilled my secrets to her, and it would have surprised me but I would have accepted it. Knowing that she had deigned me secondary to the truth was the worst part. That, I couldn’t handle.
So it was with a sinking heart that we finally arrived back at the cabin, the two of us having long since fallen into silence. I didn’t want to have to have the conversation with her in the car, but I knew what I had to do. I had broken enough of my rules for her over these last few months, and look at where it had gotten me – feeling as though I had just been kicked in the teeth, after finding out the truth of the person she really was.
I turned the engine off and the two of us sat there in the overwhelming quiet of the woods for a few, long moments. And then, finally, I turned to her.
“Laurie-”
“Please don’t say it,” she turned to me, eyes shining, the most expressive she’d been since we’d left the restaurant. I stared at her for a moment, and there was some part of me, a not-insignificant part, that was telling me to just let this go – that we could work it out from here and make it stick, that I could set down another set of rules…
But what happened when she broke them, or I did? Where would I draw the line on what I would put up with and what I would indulge in and what I wouldn’t? If I didn’t come down one way or the other, I would just end up spending the rest of my time with her sure that she was cultivating secrets, keeping something important from me.
Her hands were on her belly, moving across it absently, as though she was reminding herself that that was still real, at least – and my heart hurt watching her do it. It could have been so perfect, between the two of us, if she’d just let it be. Us, the baby, this cabin – setting up a nursery and getting my family around to meet the newest addition, giving her a place in a family that she had never had before. It was so real I could almost feel it, could almost hear the chatter overlapping as they all talked to each other, punctuated with those occasional bursts of laughter, the baby in her arms, her in mine. It could have been so perfect. But it wasn’t. And I couldn’t forget what she had done.
I climbed out of the car and she followed me; I was putting off the inevitable. I didn’t want to do this. Every fibre in my body was begging me not to, but I had to. She had given me no choice.
We made our way back into the cabin in silence, and I took a long while before I turned around to face her, as though I could wipe what had just happened from reality if I tried hard enough. But then I did, finally facing her, and my heart sank as I realized I was ready.
“Please don’t do this,” She whispered, eyes wide – I hadn’t turned on the light but the moon was bright outside, and the cold light that flooded into the room seemed to suit how bad I felt in that moment.
“You haven’t given me a choice,” I replied, and my voice was choked with emotion that I was only just keeping down. “You know – I told you, such a long time ago, I told you I couldn’t handle you lying to me.”
“I’m not like her, I’m not like your ex,” She begged me. “You know that. I was just so scared about what you’d think of me if you knew the kind of person I was-”
“You think that would have stopped me?” I cut her off, narrowing my eyes at her. “You really think that would have put me off?”
“I didn’t know then,” She lowered her gaze. “I didn’t know what kind of guy you were. I just – I saw this life you had for yourself, and I thought that the person I was wouldn’t fit into it.”
“And when you knew me better?” I demanded, anger coursing through my veins, just enough to drown out the voice in my head that was telling me to stop while I still could. “What about then?”
“It would have been too late,” she protested. “And I just…I didn’t think any of it was relevant. I’d moved on from that life, I was with you, and I wanted this so badly-”
“You can’t pretend everything that you told me never happened,” I replied, my voice low. “You know that’s not how it works.”
“You didn’t tell me everything about you up
front,” she protested, drawing herself up to her full height and looking me dead in the eye. “You think I hold that against you?”
“I think you would have if you knew that I was still hiding it from you,” I replied. “That’s why I told you. I wanted everything to be out in the open with us. I told you that, Laurie, fuck, I don’t know how many times I told you that.”
“What did you want me to say?” She demanded, despairing. “You wanted me to tell you every little thing about the person I used to be? Because I don’t like her a hell of a lot-”
“Well, I do,” I shot back, then corrected myself. “Did. I did. And I only wanted you to tell me the kind of shit that would have gotten in the way of us, I don’t know, ever leaving this cabin again.”
“I would have told you,” she closed her eyes, as though repeating the mantra to herself. “Even if he hadn’t turned up tonight, I would have told you.”
“I don’t believe you,” I replied simply, and it was those words that confirmed everything I needed to do. I still loved her – fuck, I had no idea how I was going to live in this cabin without her now that I had to break things off – but if I didn’t believe her then there was no way in hell we could make this work. Her eyes filled with tears at the sound of those words coming out of my mouth, as though she knew at once what they meant for us. She took a deep breath and stepped forward, catching my hand between hers.
“Cormac,” She said my name, and the sound of it on her lips was almost enough to get me to buckle and forget the resolve that I’d worked so hard to put in place. I could see it gleaming in her eyes, the promise of everything that the future could have held for the two of us.
“Cormac, I’m begging you,” she looked deep into my eyes, flicking her gaze back and forth, as though she was searching for something that she was sure she would find in there. “I know I fucked up. I get that. But you’ve got to give me another chance. You can’t – I’ve never felt this way about anyone before, you have to understand that. I wish I could go back and tell you the truth, but I can’t. But I can promise that I’ll never lie to you again as long as I live, not as-”
