Seven Nights with Her Ex

by Louisa Heaton

He smiled back. ‘But not this time?’

  Now she felt awkward. She didn’t know how she should reply. She wanted to keep the good mood. Keep the good feeling they had. She’d missed it. The ease of being with him. And she didn’t want to let it go. She wished they were sitting closer. Not separated by the flames.

  ‘Well.’ She shrugged and grinned, feeling her cheeks flush with an inner heat. ‘It’s kind of awkward. Don’t you think? If we were still together, we’d take full advantage of this moment… The stars, the campfire beneath the moon, just the two of us…’

  He nodded, agreeing. ‘But let’s not forget that I promised to keep my hands to myself.’

  She matched his nod. ‘Yes, there’s that, too.’

  They stared at each other across the fire. Smiling. Breathing. Keeping eye contact.

  Beau felt a strange awareness inside her. She could feel the weight of her clothes against her body. The tightness of the tops of her socks, her waistband digging into her stomach. She felt uncomfortable. Keen to move.

  She stood up and nodded some more. ‘I think I ought to go to bed.’

  Gray stood, too. ‘If that’s what you think is best.’

  ‘I do.’

  There was a tense silence. The air was charged with a heat that did not come from the flames below.

  Beau kept remembering the way he’d kissed her the other day. How it had felt to be back in his arms. That ease of being with him that she’d never felt with anyone else. He was so close now! So available. But was she brave enough to start something?

  ‘Right, I’m going, then.’

  ‘All right. Goodnight.’ He slipped his hands into the pockets of his jacket, his jaw clenching and unclenching in the moonlight.

  ‘Goodnight.’ She stared at him, unwilling to walk away. Not really wanting to go to bed. Not alone. Anyway. ‘Gray, I—’

  She didn’t get to finish her sentence.

  Gray stepped forward, and for a brief moment she thought he was going to take her in his arms—but, disappointingly, he didn’t. Instead he began to speak.

  ‘We need to talk.’

  Beau sucked in a breath. Okay. This was going to be one of those moments, wasn’t it? One of those life-changing moments when your path in life forked and you could choose to go left or right.

  ‘All right.’

  He reached out and took her hand, enveloping it in both of his, gazing down at them as he stroked her skin, inhaling deeply, searching for the right words to begin.

  ‘I need to be honest with you. If anything is to…happen…between us, then we need to be honest with each other. That’s what destroyed us in the past. Secrets. I did want to marry you, Beau. I need to say that. Right at the start. Because you must believe it. I did. I wanted you to be mine for ever. I wanted to know that you’d be there for me every single day of the rest of my life. I loved you. Deeply. Do you believe me when I say that?’

  She searched his face, saw the intensity in his eyes, felt the way he squeezed her hand whilst he waited for her answer. Yes. She believed him.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Good. That’s good. The wedding…the actual day itself…that would have been easy for me. That wasn’t why I left—the pressure of the day. That wasn’t the bit that worried me. It was the next part I was worried about.’

  ‘The honeymoon?’

  She didn’t understand. How could he have been worried about that part? She’d spent many a night with Gray McGregor and he certainly knew what he was doing. This man had made her body sing. He had made her cry out in ecstasy and shiver with delight. She’d used to lie in his arms and fall asleep, feeling secure, loved and cherished. He had been her other half. The part that had made her whole. She’d never found that since. With anyone. Connections she had made had seemed…wanting. Unreal. There’d always been something missing.

  ‘No, not that. The marriage part.’

  Oh. Beau frowned. She didn’t understand. ‘Why?’

  ‘You were right when you said that there was something about my family you didn’t know. There was something…is something. Even now.’

  She remained silent, waiting for him to explain, but she stroked the back of his hand absentmindedly, being supportive, as much as she could be, whilst he told her his story. She was apprehensive, too. For years she’d wanted to hear his explanation, and now that it was here, well…she wasn’t sure if she could bear to hear it. What if it was terrible? What if it was something sad? What if all these years he’d been hurting, too?

  ‘When my parents first met, they were madly in love. They were like us. Young. Hopelessly enchanted with each other. All they could see was a bright future ahead of them. They thought that no matter what happened they would face it together and they would be strong. That’s what they believed.’

  She smiled at the mental image, picturing it perfectly. But her smile faltered when she remembered that something had then changed.

  ‘But…?’

  ‘But that didn’t happen. They got married, yes, but they were poor. Jobs were scarce. My mother got a job in a factory, part-time, just as she learnt she was pregnant with me. My father was working as a mechanic in a garage, fixing and tending buses for the council. He worked incredibly long hours. She hardly saw him. But he had to work to bring in the money. Especially when she stopped working to have me.’

  She nodded, understanding their financial struggle. Even though it wasn’t anything she’d experienced herself, she had seen it in others. ‘It must have been difficult for them.’

  This was all new information for Beau. She’d known almost nothing about Gray’s family. Just that his father was in a wheelchair, paralysed from the waist down, and that his mother hardly spoke, her face for ever shut in a pinched, tight-lipped, sour way. Their early years together sounded like a tough time.

  ‘It was. And I was a difficult bairn. Mum found it hard to cope. Dad couldn’t help—he was always at work. When he got home late each evening, he was exhausted, barely having enough energy to eat before collapsing into bed each night.’

  She squeezed his hand.

  ‘Mum begged him to help more at home, but he had no time. He was afraid that if he took time off work he’d lose his job, and they couldn’t afford that. She started taking in sewing and ironing to earn a few extra pennies, and they simply began living separate lives. I had colic. I barely slept, apparently. Crying all the time and nothing would soothe me. My mother felt like a single parent. They became true ships that passed only in the night.’

  She felt his pain but wondered what this had to do with their relationship. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know… My mum would bad-mouth him to me all the time. Say that he was useless, that he was a waste of space. He wound her up. The way he was never there. The way he irritated her when he was. The way he never lifted a finger to help her at the weekends. She even suspected there might be something with another woman. The receptionist at the garage. I didn’t know if he was having an affair, but my dad would go on at me the same way. Say that my mother was a harridan, a nag, that she couldn’t leave a hard-working man in peace.’

  Beau felt uncomfortable. How awful that must have been—to be stuck between two warring parents. The two people you relied on and loved most in the whole world.

  ‘Their verbal battles sometimes got physical. He didn’t hit her or anything, but they both threw things. The soundtrack to my childhood was yelling and hearing ceramics hitting the walls. I even ended up at the doctors once, after accidentally treading on something sharp that had been missed in the clear-up afterwards.’

  He let out a deep breath and his face brightened just slightly.

  ‘That was where I began to love medicine. It was the only place where I’d been tended with real care and compassion.’

  His eyes darkened again.

  ‘My parents hated each other. Despised each other. The slightest thing would set them off. A look. The way the other one chewed their food. Whether they snored. Anything.
And I was left as a go-between. Used like some pawn in a battle that I didn’t understand. Then one day my mum decided she’d had enough. She packed her bags and waited for him to come home so she could tell him she was leaving.’

  Beau was shocked. ‘Without you?’

  He nodded. ‘The time he should have been home came and went. She got furious because she thought he’d gone to the pub with the other woman, spending money we couldn’t spare on booze, and said that he was preventing her from giving him the performance of a lifetime. She’d planned on telling him once and for all how he was a good-for-nothing husband and she was leaving, But then the phone rang. He’d had an accident. A bad one.’

  Beau felt sick. ‘The one that paralysed him?’

  He nodded again. ‘A bus had come off a raised ramp and rolled over him, crushing his spine and pelvis. I’ll never forget the look on my mother’s face as she heard the news. Shock…disbelief…and then a deep sadness. Resignation. We went to the hospital, but he was in surgery. The nurses were very good to me—loving, caring. It was there I decided I wanted to be like them. Nothing like my parents. I wanted to become a doctor. We learnt later that Dad was paralysed.’

  Beau could picture it all. The shock of the accident. The complete one-eighty that Gray’s mother must have had to do…

  ‘And then your mother felt she couldn’t leave?’

  ‘That’s right. She unpacked her things whilst he was in the hospital and I’ve never seen a sadder woman since. They just get on with things now. She helps him. Cares for him. But they barely talk. They just exist in the same house. Despite what had happened, what they’d gone through together, they’ve become more separate. Their marriage has become a prison. Each is saddled with the other for eternity. And to think they once loved each other so much…’

  He couldn’t look at her, his eyes downcast, lost in the painful past.

  She was silent for a moment. Taking it all in. What had happened to his parents was awful. The way their relationship had crumbled under tough times. The accident… The paralysis… The way his mother must have felt obligated to stay… The way his father must have felt, stuck with a nursemaid wife he could barely tolerate speaking to…

  ‘That’s horrible, Gray. And I can’t believe I’m only hearing about it now. Why didn’t you tell me before?’

  He looked at her then, sadness in his eyes. ‘I’ve never known them to be happy, Beau! Not once can I see, in any part of my memory, either one of them smiling, or laughing, or being happy! I grew up in a dark, stormy world, full of crazed arguments, broken china and tense silences you’d need a machete to cut through! I loved being at school because I was away from them. I stayed away from home as much as I could because it was the only way I could be happy—without them dragging me down, dragging me into their battles. And when I met you…my sweet, beautiful Beau…I couldn’t believe that a man and a woman could be so happy together! You were a breath of fresh air to me—the first hint of spring after a lifetime of bitter, endless winter…’

  She could hear that he was trying to explain how he’d felt when he’d met her…but he’d left her. Surely it couldn’t be true that their perfect future had been ruined because of what had happened to his parents?

  ‘But, Gray, how could you have left me because of them…?’

  Beau stared up at him, tears burning her eyes. Her hurt, her humiliation from all those years ago came flooding back again. The pain was fresh once more. All those years she’d thought there’d been something wrong with her. Something she’d been lacking. Something missing that had made him walk away. Maybe into the arms of another woman? And she’d racked her brains, trying to think of how she could have been more so that he would have stayed. Had pushed herself ever since, trying to prove that he’d been wrong to walk away and give her up.

  ‘Gray, I’m sorry your parents had an awful time, but it hurts to see that you let that impact us. So your parents gave you a bad example…? Mine gave me a great example of what marriage could be.’ She smiled through her tears. ‘They still do. After all this time. Are you saying that my experience of my parents’ marriage is wrong? Why couldn’t you believe in a happy marriage? With their example?’

  He shook his head. ‘Because your family was the exception to the rule. Everywhere I looked I saw married couples barely getting along. Couples who had nothing to say to each other after many years. Couples who could only talk about their children. Couples who did things separately. Who took time apart, holidayed on their own. Couples who looked like all joy of life had left them.’

  ‘You thought that would happen to us?’

  She almost couldn’t believe it. His parents’ story was tragic, and she felt for him that he had been trapped in it. But that had been his parents’ pain. Not theirs. She and Gray had been happy. Strong.

  ‘I feared things would end up that way. Because I couldn’t be honest with you about this before we got married, so what you saw in me was a lie. I was a lie. We were a lie. We wouldn’t have survived! I accept the fact that leaving you at the church like that was a cowardly thing to do, and I should have turned up to tell you to your face that I was leaving. But at the time I was so racked with guilt, so broken in two at knowing that I had to walk away from you—away from the woman I truly loved so that I didn’t take her into a tortured future—that I wasn’t thinking clearly. So I’m sorry I left you at the altar, Beau, but if I hadn’t, then you would have left me. At some point.’

  ‘I would never have left you.’

  Tears flowed freely down her cheeks now. His pain was so raw. His suffering so real she couldn’t imagine how he had managed to keep it so contained. And how had she not known? How had she not noticed?

  ‘I should have pushed for more. I should have made you tell me back then. We could have avoided this.’

  ‘We couldn’t. Because we were based on a fantasy. You thought we were perfect.’ A pained look crossed his face. He didn’t want to hurt her. ‘We weren’t. I couldn’t tell you because you didn’t want to hear it. You didn’t ask about me. All you could see was the romance and the fun and the laughter.’ He stared hard at her. ‘You didn’t want the reality of me. You were so caught up in the wedding preparations you couldn’t see what was right in front of your eyes.’

  Her cheeks were wet. She could feel the drips of her tears falling from her jawline. ‘What? Are you saying that I…I failed you somehow? That I didn’t listen? That I didn’t give you the chance to tell me what you needed to say?’

  It hurt to think he might believe that. Had she been at fault?

  ‘I wasn’t ready, Beau. I had doubts. A real fear as to what awaited us in the future.’ He sighed heavily, as if worn down by the argument. ‘I wanted to love you for ever, Beau. I really did. But I knew it couldn’t happen. Unless we were honest. You weren’t ready to hear that, so I walked away.’

  She looked out across the plateau at the mountains in the distance, now dark with greying shadow as the sun set. The sky was filled with glorious tones of orange and pink. It all looked so pretty. So wonderful. But how could this sunset be so beautiful? So warm? There were blooming flowers in the distance. The crackle and pop of burning wood and the scent of woodsmoke drifting past them. The last of the day’s bird chorus slowly fading to nothing.

  Was she also to blame for their relationship failing in the way that it had? And if that was the case, didn’t she need to take some of the responsibility for everything that had gone wrong? For the fact that what they’d had in the past had all been fake?

  She pulled her fleece jacket around her. ‘I loved you. That part was real…’

  She looked away, her bottom lip trembling. She feared that maybe he’d never loved her. That their relationship had never been what she’d thought it was. She tried to pull her hands free of his, tried to separate herself from him, acknowledging that she had somehow always imagined things wrongly. That their past relationship had been some sort of dreamworld she’d been living in. Had she been delud
ing herself that he loved her?

  But Gray wouldn’t let her get away. He held on tight, pulling her back and making her look him in the eyes.

  ‘I loved you, too. More than life! And I refused to put you through that. I refused to let us go blindly into the future with you thinking that everything was fine when I knew that it wasn’t.’

  ‘Our love was real?’ Her bottom lip trembled.

  He nodded and pressed his lips to her forehead before looking down at her. ‘It was. I couldn’t lie about that.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Beau, look at me.’

  She looked up at him with eyes glistening from salty tears, with her heart almost torn in two by the heartbreak of knowing that she’d caused him pain and that she’d kept him silent. Unable to tell her what he needed. She so badly wanted to put that right. So she would listen to him now. Hear what he had to say.

  ‘Yes?’

  He stared deeply into her eyes, as if searching for something. ‘We had something special, but it wasn’t our time then.’

  ‘Is it our time now?’ she asked, with hope in her heart.

  Gray swallowed, cupping her face, his hands so tender, warm and soft, and then he took another step towards her, breathing heavily, lowering his head until their hungry lips met.

  She sank into his embrace. Against his hard, solid body. Tasting him, enjoying him, her hands up in his hair, grasping him, pulling him towards her, desperate for his touch. Remembering, recalling this—how good it had always felt to be with him. How special.

  Their past was forgotten in that instant.

  She needed Gray. Had missed him so much it was painful. But now he was back in her arms and it felt so good. She didn’t want to let him go. She wanted to enjoy the moment, and to hell with the consequences, because right now she needed this. Him. It didn’t matter what he’d said. All that pain he’d shared. Because this—this was what was important. Being with him. Reconnecting.

  Her fingers fell to the hemline of his top and she began to lift it, to pull it over his head, so that her hands could feel the touch of his skin, his broad shoulders, his taut chest, that flat stomach she remembered so well. His sleeve caught on his chunky wristwatch and she had to give it a yank, but then it was gone, discarded.