by Jewel, Bella
“No, Will. I’m not comfortable with that. I’m not making any promises about anything. Please, don’t not see other people, don’t change things between us.”
I felt a little panicked at the prospect of losing him as a friend because of all of this.
“Things have already changed. For me anyway, and there’s nothing either of us can do about that.”
He leaned back in the door and kissed me on the forehead before turning and leaving. I stepped out onto the front step and stopped in my tracks. My heart rattled off my ribcage the instant I realised Liam was standing at his car, one hand leaning against the roof as if he were struggling to stay upright. His eyes were wide, and his mouth was slightly open.
He’d witnessed mine and Will’s little interaction. What did he think was going on between us? He closed his eyes for a few long moments before turning his face up to the sky. He looked like he mumbled something to himself, but then he looked at me, slowly shook his head, climbed into his car, and drove away.
I was left standing there alone. Staring across at the spot Liam’s car had been parked and wondered what on earth I’d been thinking. I couldn’t go out with Will, not when just a glimpse of Liam had the ability to set my heart dancing the tango in my chest and sent my stomach free falling to my ankles. It wasn’t fair.
Will had asked me to be honest and let him know if there was ever anyone else, well there was. Liam would always be there. He owned a piece of my heart, I just had to accept that. I’d known it the very first time I’d laid eyes on him just over a month ago.
Everything that had gone on over the previous few days, previous month, in fact, had left me feeling off balance. I was tense, anxious, and teary. I felt full of nervous energy so I went back inside the house, put on a music channel, and danced around the living room by myself till I could barely catch my breath. When “Seaside Heart” by Carnage came on, I curled up on the sofa and cried at the unfairness of the world.
Chapter 21
Olivia went back to Australia and did precisely what she said she would do, except the part about terminating the pregnancy. There was no way she’d tell her family or the press that she was pregnant and being forced into having an abortion. Nobody forced Olivia Romanelli to do anything. She was an independently wealthy woman, and raising a child on her own would be no financial burden. Instead, what she did was try to sell a sob story of her as the abandoned wife, me the cheating husband who had fled to the other side of the world to start a new life with his English mistress. My sister had made a lot of headway in shutting down the story, but there was always the there’s-no-smoke-without-fire brigade who were left wondering.
My dad took things better than I’d hoped. He was aware that Liv had been having an affair with Markham and that he’d left her and gone back to his wife and children. He told me he would support me in denying the accusations about the baby being mine and encouraged me to push for a paternity test. When I told him what had happened in my Sydney office with Liv before I left for England, he nearly ripped me a new one over the phone. I was worried then that that news would bring on a heart attack more than the lies about the pregnancy.
All in all, it had been a spectacularly shitty few weeks with regard to my personal life.
On Monday, Sarah ditched me for not being honest with her. On Tuesday I saw Will the biscuit-smashing, tea-drinking, English prick kiss her at her front door. I wanted to march across the road and smash his fucking head in when I saw him put his hands on her. Instead, I composed a text, which was more like a novel of War and Peace proportions and sent it to her later that night for some bedtime reading.
Me: That hurt, Sarah. That fucking hurt. Do you think so little of me that you’ve moved on already? Do have any idea how seeing that made me feel? What seeing Will put his hands on you did to me? I don’t know what I can say or do to make you understand that my intentions came from a good place. I didn’t tell you I was married because, in my head and my heart, I’m not. Olivia and I are separated. We’ve not been together for two years. She’s been served with divorce papers. I wasn’t expecting things to get serious between us so quickly. What I feel for you has knocked me sideways, Sarah. It’s not something I’ve ever experienced before, and I know now that I’ve handled everything wrong. My first and biggest mistake was having sex with my ex-wife. I did it out of spite and revenge. I did it because she bruised my ego by bringing a man back to our marital bed and fucking him in it. I don’t claim to have behaved like an angel during my marriage, far from it, but I respected her enough to go to a hotel with anyone else I slept with.
I didn’t tell you I was married, that was my second mistake. One I have absolutely no excuse for. I didn’t tell you what happened between myself and Olivia before I left Sydney because I didn’t want you to think badly of me. I know that it’s a piss poor excuse, but it is the truth and my third mistake.
You’re probably hating me more with every line you read of this, which is exactly why I kept quiet. I sound like a complete arsehole, even to myself. How bad must all this sound to you? Don’t answer that BTW, I’m not ready to hear it even though I deserve to. Our marriage should never have happened. Neither of us ever stood by our vows. I know none of this excuses my behaviour, but I just want you to be aware of the facts. I don’t know how we move forward from here. If you won’t even talk to me, how do I get through to you how sorry I am? I don’t wanna just keep saying I’m sorry. After a while it just starts to sound hollow and meaningless, but I am sorry, for all of it. I miss you, and I hate that you’re lying over there in your bed, and I’m here alone in ours. The pillows smell like you, like me, and like us. I’d really like to say something profoundly romantic right now, but instead I’m going to tell you that I’ve got a hard-on thinking about everything we did in this bed and in the shower last weekend. The way your skin flushes and your entire body reacts to my touch blows me away, but you and me, pretty girl, we’re about so much more than sex. So much more. Like I’ve said over and over, I love you. I hated seeing how upset you were on Monday night. I especially hated knowing I was the cause of your tears. So, because I love you, I’m gonna leave the ball in your court now. I know you’re hurt and you’re angry so I’ll stop bothering you, I’ll stop being a pest and I’ll leave you to decide how we sort this mess out and move past these shitty few days. But before I go, there’s something I need you to know, remember that Saturday night a few weeks back when we ended up in that karaoke bar, drunk off our arses and had to get a taxi home? That song we sang? I know you know all the words, but I decided that night that you need to come up with some dance moves too. When we get married—because we will, mark my words, Sarah, we will sort this shit out, and we will get married—we are gonna sing and dance the shit out of the most unweddingy song ever in front of all of our guests. Get practising, baby!
I love you, pretty girl, just keep on remembering that.
Liam.
X
I laid awake and waited for her reply, it never came.
* * *
I snapped the pen I was holding in half, threw it across the room to the bin, and called out, “Shaquille!” All heads turned to watch the pen land perfectly in the stainless steel receptacle and then turned to me. I shrugged. At least there was one thing in life I was winning at.
“Boom,” I shouted, stood from the desk I’d been working at, ran around the room, and high-fived everyone. By everyone, I meant the four other staff who made up the workforce of DC International Recruitment and Relocations or DCIRR.
Liz, Mel, Luke, and Shain, were all in the office today. Shain had worked for us for a couple of years now and had come over to the UK to help with the setup and to implement the best practices we were already using at our Australian office, that way, despite the distance, there would be worldwide uniformity in the way things were run. We wanted our staff to be able to work out of Sydney, with as much ease as they worked out of our London office.
“I was thinking,” Liz stated, d
rawing everyone’s eyes away from me.
“Easy there, Lizzie, that could be dangerous,” Luke told her with a wink. Then he ducked as she threw her pen at him.
“Jordan!” Shain called out. Liz’s aim had nothing on mine, though, and she missed by a mile. Rolling her eyes at the rest of us, she continued, “Can I get a Christmas tree and some decorations? It’s not very Christmassy around here.”
Christmas. It was just a few weeks away. I looked around the space we were sitting in, it was bare.
Our offices consisted of a reception area, three good-sized individual offices, and a large meeting room, which was where we all worked most days. As we were still in the set-up stages, it was easier to bounce ideas off each other if we were all in the same room.
“Sure, take the company card and go and get some stuff before you come in here in the morning. Get tasteful shit, though, nothing tacky like tinsel and definitely no singing Santas or reindeer,” I told her.
“Cheers, boss.” She fist pumped the air and walked back to her desk out front. I was such a good boss.
“You going home for Chrissy, Del?” Shain asked me.
“Nah, mate, too much work to do here. You?”
“Nah, won’t be worth it. I’ll just get over the jet lag and have to fly back again.”
“What are the pair of you doing for Christmas dinner then?” Luke asked.
Shain and I looked at each other and shrugged.
“Come to my place if you wanna. Everyone’s coming over either Sunday or on Christmas Eve for drinks. You’re both welcome to stay the whole weekend if you wanna, but you’ll be expected to muck in and help cook dinner on the day.”
“Everyone?” I asked. Luke knew who I really meant.
“Everyone. We usually go to our grandparents, but they’re going on a pensioner cruise this year, leaving us to fend for ourselves.”
“So, she’ll be there?”
He nodded.
“Him?”
“I told you, they’re just friends.”
Friends my arse. Will’s car has been at her place four times this week. Luke might be oblivious, but I wasn’t.
I ground my back teeth together so hard that pain shot through my left ear.
“I can cook, I’ll come baste your turkey.” Mel wiggled her eyebrows then winked at Luke.
“You, my sister, and Sasha Collins all sitting around the dinner table together? I don’t think so, Mel.”
“Please, I’ll let you fill my stocking.”
Shain made a sound like he’d just come in his jocks. I glared at him and then looked across at Luke, either he shut her up or I would. I wasn’t a miserable bastard of a boss, I’d just proved that by agreeing to a Christmas tree, but I wouldn’t sit around and wait for harassment charges to come our way if something like that were one day said to, or around, the wrong person.
“Been there, done that, Mel. Like I’ve told you before, it won’t be happening again,” Luke told her.
“Mel, do you not remember the little chat we had in London last Monday?” I asked.
She folded her arms over her chest and sat back in her chair.
“You two are no fun.”
“This is a place of work. We are your bosses. You don’t come here to have fun, especially not with either of us. Last verbal warning, Mel, next time will be formal and recorded.”
Everyone remained silent as I walked into my office.
“Word, Luke, now please,” I called out.
“What the fuck has crawled up your arse?” he asked, slamming my office door behind him.
I sat down behind my desk. “Are you fucking her again?”
“No. Not that it’s any of your business, but no, I’m not.”
“I’m an equal partner in this company, I’d say that does make it my business. You can’t flirt with her like that. Not in private and definitely not in front of everyone.”
He leaned his long frame back against my office door, folded his arms, and crossed his legs at the ankles, all the while studying me.
“Have you spoken to her lately?”
I shook my head. He knew what was really wrong with me without either of us saying it. “You?”
“A few times, yeah. We went to see our grandparents over the weekend, so I had a bit of time with her. We talked.” He raked his hand through his hair. “Look, I’m doing my best to deal with all of this. She’s my little sister, I’ve spent my entire life looking after her. Protecting her. I’ve never even known her to have a boyfriend, and suddenly she’s got two blokes making a play for her, both knocking thirty and both of them best mates of mine.”
He pulled up a chair, and I retrieved a bottle of Drambuie and two glasses from my drawer before pouring us each a double measure.
Other than our fight and him continuously threatening to fuck me with my own dick, we hadn’t really sat and had a real talk about what had gone on between Sarah and me, or him and me for that matter. Our bruises and battle wounds had faded along with Luke’s aggression towards me, though.
“I won’t betray her trust and tell you all what she told me, but what I will say is that she’s not ready to see anyone else. You hurt her, Del. If it were anyone but you, I’d break their fucking face.”
“Yeah, you tried that . . . And lost.”
“Fuck you.” He flicked his drink at me. Naturally, I dodged.
“You should have told her you were married a lot sooner than you did, and you should have told her what went on before you left Sydney.”
“It seemed so irrelevant at the time,” I admit.
“Well, you made it worse by saying you’d had nothing to do with your wife for two years. You telling her that and then Olivia turning up and claiming she fell pregnant when you shagged her just a week before meeting my sister, landed you right in the shit.”
I knocked back my drink.
“I didn’t expect Olivia to turn up here.”
“That makes you sound like you’re just sorry you got caught, not that you’re sorry for lying.”
“I didn’t lie.” My voice rose in frustration. Luke looked like he was about to swing a punch in my direction, so I lowered my tone. Purple wasn’t my colour. “I didn’t lie. I just hadn’t gotten around to telling her. I sent her a long text last week, explaining all of this. She told me all about your mum and dad, about their affair. I panicked, thinking she wouldn’t wanna get involved with a married man. If I hadn’t been such a coward, none of this shit would’ve mattered, I should’ve just been up front and honest with her from the start. Then she wouldn’t be running around with a tea-drinking wanker called Will.”
My words spilt out, my frustration evident in my tone and what did he do, my so-called mate? He grinned. The cheeky fucker grinned at me.
“She’s not running around with anyone.”
“Nah, so why’s his car been outside her house four times over the past ten days?”
Fuck me I sounded like a stalker.
“They’re mates. They’ve been out for dinner and to see a film, but she told him she wants nothing more than friendship.”
“Yet.”
“What?”
“She doesn’t want anything more than friendship just yet, but she will eventually, and he’ll be there to help her move on. She won’t even acknowledge my existence.”
“You lied to her. You fucking lied. What d’you expect?”
“A second chance?”
He drained his drink.
“Sarah doesn’t trust easily. She trusted you. You lied. Twice. You’re just gonna have to work harder and play dirtier than he does to win her back, and you need to start by regaining her trust.”
“How. I can’t get fucking near her.”
“I don’t fucking know, Del. I’m not getting involved. Like she told me, she’s twenty-two and a big girl that can look after herself. What I will tell you is the same as I told Will—you hurt her, and I’ll come for you.”
I didn’t know what to do. I’d no clu
e how to find a way back to her, and that left me feeling as frustrated as fuck.
“How can I hurt her when I can’t even get fucking near her? All I can do right now is sit at home while Will goes sniffing round there every night.”
I sounded desperate. My new roll in life was that of a sad, lonely, desperate stalker. I might as well buy myself a cat, or ten.
“Watch your fucking mouth. That’s my little sister you’re talking about. No one will be sniffing round her.”
“Yes, I know. Your little sister just happens to be the girl I love. Do you have any idea how it makes me feel seeing her coming and going every night with him? Seeing his car parked outside her house, wondering what they’re getting up to inside.”
Yep, definitely a stalker.
I stood up and paced behind my desk.
“You need to calm the fuck down and listen to what I’m saying. They’re getting up to nothing. They’ve both told me that she just wants to be friends.”
He topped up both our drinks.
“Come to mine for Christmas. Be nice to her. Let her know that you’re a good bloke, not a lying, cheating, devious arsehole.”
“Why have I got to prove all that to her when Will can just rock up and take her to the cinema and for dinner?”
“Because Will didn’t fucking lie to her. You did. Fuck me, Del, what part of this are you not getting? You lied. You got caught. You’ve got to earn her trust again.”
“How? How do I even do that?” I was shouting again. Luke just glared. I felt like a child, fuck, I was behaving like one too, but I didn’t care. I hated how I felt. I hated this whole situation.
“That’s for you to work out.”
He sipped his drink and looked over his glass at me.
“Look, I’ve said more than I should, so I’ll add this then shut up. She’s miserable. She says she’s doing fine, but I know my sister better than anyone, and I know she’s sad. She changes the subject or leaves the room every time your name is even mentioned.”
“Great. That makes me feel a million times better.”