The second half of the night she spent pacing through the flat, wondering what she could expect from Matt when he eventually returned.
When there was no sign of him by nine o’clock, she switched to wondering if he’d return.
By eleven o’clock, she was convinced he wouldn’t.
She’d gone to his room many times, hesitating outside, knowing one quick peek would tell her if he’d taken his duffel bag. But she hadn’t been able to bring herself to open the door, instead hurrying to the kitchen to distract herself by making coffee—and for her to make coffee instead of tea was a true indicator that her state of mind was unsound.
By noon she’d drunk so much coffee she was totally wired—which she figured explained the sudden grip of terror that convinced her Matt was lying dead in an alley.
At one o’clock, she pulled up his number, ready to call him despite the fact that last night she’d told him he didn’t have to explain himself to her...and then made more coffee instead.
At two o’clock, she had the brilliant idea of calling Teague to find out what he knew, and when he answered on the third ring she almost collapsed with relief.
“T-Teague?” she stammered.
“Romes!” he said. “Let me guess—you’re calling to tell me all is well in the land of the lovers so I can stop worrying about you.”
“You’d know more about that than me.”
“Er...not following.”
“Is Matt—? Did Matt—? Oh!”
“Still not following.”
“Matt said he was spending the night with you, but...he didn’t. Of course he didn’t.”
“Oh. Er...”
“Don’t,” she said. “Please don’t cover for him. There’s no need. It’s none of my business where he spends his nights. I’m not his girlfriend. And that...that’s not what’s worrying me. It’s just...you know how reckless he is, and I keep expecting to hear he’s BASE jumped off The Shard and broken his neck or something, so—”
“Hang on, hang on! He’s lying to you about where he’s going, you’re checking up on him and you’re telling me you’re not his girlfriend?”
“He doesn’t have those.”
“Well, you’re not just friends if that’s how you’re both carrying on.”
“We’re not friends at all anymore, it seems.”
“Oh, Romy, you two were never friends. Look, much as it pains me to do this, let me give you some advice—stop giving him so much rope, because he’ll keep hanging himself with it.”
“Rope?”
“Stop letting him come and go in your life as he pleases, see any woman he wants, do anything he likes. He doesn’t want that freedom—not from you. Deep down, he wants you to give him boundaries.”
“I don’t...understand.”
“Matt’s problem is nobody ever reins him in. Not his friends, because we like him exactly the way he is—fast and brilliant. Not the women he attracts just by breathing, because they’d give him anything he asks for—which sucks, by the way, for guys like me who don’t get a look-in when he’s around. As for his parents—well, they don’t want to rein themselves in let alone anyone else, and I don’t think they’ll be happy until they corrupt him absolutely.”
“I don’t—? His parents? I’ve never met them.”
“Now you see, that’s interesting. Ask him why. And while you’re at it, tell him what you want from him, how you feel, lay it on the line—”
“Oh, Teague, I already told him how I feel.” She closed her eyes as the heat of humiliation flooded her. “Last night I told him I loved him.”
“Aaand it all makes sense. You told him—he ran away.”
“What am I going to do?”
“Tell him again. Keep telling him. Keep showing him, too, but you’ve been showing him forever, so I have a feeling it’s the telling that’s going to get him.”
“He doesn’t like being told. I knew that, and I told him anyway.”
“He’ll hear it, from you he’ll hear it, but you’ll have to make him hear it, and hear it, and hear it, because he won’t believe it.”
“And if I lose him for good?”
“Then at least it’ll be an outcome, won’t it? For you, if not for him. You can’t keep limping around the edges of a relationship with him, Romy. If he really won’t step up to the plate, it’s time he let you go so you can find someone else. Someone who...who wants all of you, not just the parts Matt will spare.”
“He’ll say no—he won’t step up.”
“Then let him say no, and let him go. Look, just...think about it, okay?”
“Okay, I’ll think about it...I think.”
Teague laugh/sighed. “Okay, but while you’re thinking about thinking about it, consider that every time you’ve needed him he’s come running—and when I say running, I mean sprinting. You know, the night you and I broke up and I saw him at Flick’s and told him we were through, he was out the door faster than a speeding bullet—”
“He hates being compared to superheroes.”
“Then he should stop trying to save you. The point is, I was sure he was off to get the girl that night—but here you are, ten years later, still limping along the edges.”
“Don’t you think that means it’s not supposed to be that way for us?”
“No, I think it means he’s terrified. You’re different for him, Romy.”
“That’s just it—I’m not different. I’m like everyone else who wants him but can’t have him.”
“I’m not talking about sex, except insofar as it took him ten years to get around to it with you—which is, in fact, the difference. He’s scared to death of you, scared a wrong move will lose you, scared of his...his need for you to see him the way you see him. Because I’m telling you, he may not like you supersizing his heroism but he also kind of lives for it. He wants to be a hero for you, but deep down he won’t believe he can be. He’s scared—but don’t you be scared, too, or you’ll both still be limping around those edges when you’re ninety. Anyway, enough Truth or Dare.” He took a breath. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll text him, make sure he’s alive, and then I’ll text you so you can use your brain for more productive things than worrying about the idiot.”
* * *
Romy received the “all clear” text from Teague half an hour later, but by four o’clock there was still no sign of Matt.
The time had come to make sure he hadn’t moved out. Without hesitation this time, she opened the door to his room, walked boldly in...and her jaw dropped at the sight of a silver cradle in the shape of a half-moon.
She walked over to it, not quite believing it was real even though its slightly mangled cutout stars smacked of a DIY project so it was hardly a celestial gift beamed out of nowhere.
This was what Matt had been doing all week while she was at work? Not plotting a tech takeover of the world, but making his baby a cradle?
She blinked in disbelief as she ran her fingertips over the wood. As she gave it a little rock. And then she couldn’t seem to stop blinking—not in disbelief anymore, but because tears had formed in her eyes. Everything about the wonky cradle moved her unbearably. Because she knew in that blinding, wrenching, heart-shattering moment that she’d gotten something very wrong about Matt and his motivations. He’d suggested giving her his sperm not as a favor to her, not to be a godfather, but because he wanted a baby. He’d wanted, specifically, her baby. He’d flown to London to stop her from finding a different donor because he loved their baby. He’d loved it then, when it didn’t exist, and he loved it now when it still might not exist. He loved it even though he’d probably never be able to say the words.
And she loved him—so much in that moment she would have gladly cut out her heart and given it to him on a plate made of her own soul, painted not black but silver and white, to match the priceless,
utterly wonderful gift he’d made for their child.
She put both her hands over her belly. “Please be there, my little one,” she whispered. “For your daddy, if not for me, because whether or not he knows it, he needs you.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THERE WAS NO sign of Romy when Matt opened the door at 7 p.m.—not even a wisp of aromatic steam coming out of the kitchen, which was where she’d normally be at this time of night.
He experienced a short burst of relief, followed almost immediately by a surge of panic.
But then he heard his name, “Matt?” called out like a question from her bedroom and the panic receded...and then surged right back, because he had no idea what he was going to do.
He’d had a turbulent night and a torturous day wandering the city, trying to work out why Romy’s I love you was different from every other I love you he’d ever heard even though it wasn’t different, why it made him want to stay instead of leave, why leaving therefore was exactly what he should do and why he needed to stay anyway.
Yeah, like any of that made sense.
“Matt?” she called again.
He opened his mouth to say yes, it was him, but when no sound emerged, he closed it.
And then she was there, in the room with him, smiling as though nothing had happened last night. “I’m glad you’re back. I need you,” she said, and walked over to him holding out something he accepted by reflex.
“Can you put that in for me?” she asked, and when he looked down at his hand he saw it was an earring. “The left ear is always tricky, as you know.”
Of all the openings Romy could have given him after last night, this was about as far from his imaginings as it was possible to get.
“Matt?” she prompted when he stood there like his own mummified remains, and she moved closer so that their bodies were almost touching. And God, how he wanted to touch her, even if it was only her ear. He wanted to beg her not to hate him. He needed her to put her arms around him and hold on to him. He felt so lonely for her, which didn’t make sense when she was standing in front of him.
She tilted her head as trustingly as ever, moving her hair out of the way. He started to put the spike of the earring through her lobe, but his fingers were trembling so much it took three attempts. “You need to get it repierced,” he said—an excuse for his clumsiness.
She offered him a tremulous smile. “I’ll get you a needle and you can do it for me.”
“Needles hurt.” He touched her cheek with his fingertips. “And I don’t want to hurt you, Romy.”
“So don’t hurt me.” Her smile failed. “Please don’t, Matt.”
He choked on what might have been a sob if he knew how to cry, and stepped back out of harm’s way. And that’s when he noticed she was wearing a silk dress and high heels. Her hair had been styled, her makeup carefully applied and there was a hint of Chanel in the air.
“You’re going out,” he said.
He saw her physically pull herself together. “My monthly dinner with my parents, which I completely forgot about until Mum called me this afternoon!” Pause, as she reapplied her smile. “If you want to come, I can wait a few minutes...?”
He swallowed. Shook his head. Took another step back, then stepped forward again because that was just too pathetic. What was he scared of—that she’d love him to death?
She took a gusty breath. “Okay then. I’ve left some menus on the kitchen counter—several restaurants nearby do home delivery. Or...or maybe you already have plans?” Pause, during which she very clearly braced while he said nothing. “Well, whatever. If you stay in and want to...to talk, about...about anything, I don’t expect to be out too late.”
She started to move past him but he stopped her. “Is Teague going to be there?”
“No.”
“Has he met your parents, Romy?”
“Yes, he’s been to a few of these dinners.”
“So why did I never meet them on one of my trips?”
She looked at him for a long moment. He got the feeling she was choosing and discarding words. Then she shrugged and said simply: “Because it didn’t work out that way.”
“Why didn’t it?” he pushed, because he wanted to know. Maybe it would help him to make sense of their relationship.
“Because we’ve never had the kind of...of friendship that would make such a meeting easy.”
“How can he have been enough of a friend to meet them but not me?”
“Probably the same reason you took Teague home to meet your parents but not me.”
“That’s...different.”
“Yes, and you and I are different from me and Teague or you and Teague. Or you and Veronica and Rafael and Artie and—Oh, Matt, can’t you see that we’re not friends in the same way? That we never were? We couldn’t be, because I—” She broke off. Shook her head. “Look, you don’t want to hear it and I’m late—I really have to go.”
She tried to move past him again—again he stopped her.
“Do they know about me, Romy?”
“My parents? Yes. They know we were friends in college. They know we’ve been friends ever since. They know you’re staying here. They want to meet you because they know about the sperm—in fact they half expect you to come with me tonight.”
“Have you told them how we did it? The sperm? That it wasn’t—”
“No. There didn’t seem to be much point since... Well, let’s just say I discuss almost everything with my parents, but not one-night stands.”
“Three nights.”
“Different number, same principle.”
His head felt like it might explode. “I think...” Trailing off. Clearing his throat. “Doesn’t matter. Have a nice time at—Where did you say you were going?”
“Petit Diable. I took you there last year, when I was dating the sous chef, Jules.”
“Oh, Jules—yeah, I remember.”
“That was the time you met Poppy.” She took her overcoat off the coat stand by the door and slipped it on. “And you insisted Jules and I meet up with the two of you for brunch.”
“Why are you mentioning that, Romy?”
She faced him. “Because I’ve decided there are some things I won’t do anymore. Like having brunch or lunch or dinner or drinks or anything else with you and your latest hookup. I don’t want to talk to them on the phone or see them on video calls or read their emails. I just...don’t.”
“You have to do that, Romy! I need you there.”
“Why?”
“Stops them giving me ultimatums. Them, or you. I have to...to show them—”
“That I’m not a threat? Well, that makes sense. They meet me, they can tell what I mean to you and all is well in your world and theirs.”
“I choose you. I always choose you.”
She shook her head at him sadly. “Oh, Matt, that’s not a choice. That’s called having your cake and eating it, too. And I’m tired of being the vanilla sponge you refresh your palate with between bites of chocolate gâteau. I want to be the gâteau.”
“That’s not fair, Romy. I’ve never—”
“Don’t!” She held up a hand. “It doesn’t matter, Matt. It really doesn’t.” She opened the door, but stopped on the threshold, turned back. “You said something last night about old times and new times. Well, I’ll find a way to accept that the new times are over—San Francisco, last night, done. But in return, you need to know that what we’ve had for the past ten years has to be over, too, because I’m not going back to the old times. I can’t go back, even if what we end up with is nothing.”
* * *
I can’t go back, even if what we end up with is nothing.
Matt knew what nothing felt like—it was how he’d describe those four weeks after Romy had left San Francisco. But even in the midst of the full-blown freak-ou
t that separation had brought on, he’d known that if he could have gone back and changed what had happened that night, he wouldn’t have done it.
The miracle was that he’d held himself back from her for so long. He should have known he’d wouldn’t be able to keep his hands off her forever. It was what he was like, the real him, not the hero she thought he was. Of course he was going to engineer a way to have her eventually. And the fact that she’d been the one to suggest that infamous Plan B didn’t change it. He’d leaped at Plan B! And look what had happened when her email had arrived—not pregnant, off the hook! He should have taken that as a sign that it wasn’t meant to be—instead he’d thrown the first things to come to hand in his duffel, snatched up his passport and headed for the airport to get to her and try again, and if Teague hadn’t been there, he would have beaten his chest and dragged her by her hair to the nearest flat surface like a Neanderthal.
Hell, that’s what he had done! He’d taken her on the floor like an animal. What more proof did he need that he didn’t deserve her?
Ever since that night in San Francisco, he’d been trapped in a game of up and down. Take her, save her, take her, save her. It was a miracle her head wasn’t spinning off her damn neck with how hot and cold he’d blown.
But she’d told him she loved him anyway.
Why couldn’t he just accept that she did, no matter when she said it to him? What was the problem with her feeling close enough to him when they were having sex to say it then? He felt close enough to her when they were having sex to merge with her!
So...couldn’t he try to accept it?
What if he asked Romy what he should do to be a better person? Already all she had to do was tsk-tsk him to get him rethinking shit like drinking beer in the morning. She could tsk-tsk him some more, couldn’t she?
He could stop swearing as a first step. That’d have to go for the baby’s sake anyway.
And he could take a few leaves out of Teague’s book of saints—ones that didn’t involve stealing the guy’s interior-design flair. Teague had been to therapy after his sister died, and wasn’t ashamed to admit it. So couldn’t Matt give therapy a try—deal with his demons that way instead of locking himself in the tower? Wasn’t Romy worth at least giving it a go?
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