by Karina Halle
“But you want to, I can tell. I’m just saying, forget it. She wants nothing to do with you. You should be with someone who doesn’t come with a whole pile of baggage.” She bites her lip and studies me with sly eyes. “You know what she was doing in France? Having a nervous breakdown. You should have seen her after…well, you know. She couldn’t eat, sleep, couldn’t even talk. She was a fucking mute for a month. She dropped out of school, dropped out of life. Finally, her father brought her to France where he took care of her.”
My stomach churns and I resist the urge to double over.
My Natasha.
Reduced to that.
All because of me.
Melissa continues to look at me, examining my face. I try to keep it as expressionless as possible, but I know she sees the pain there. She likes it.
She traces her finger along the edge of the desk. “You know, Natasha was always a bit unstable anyway. That was part of her charm, wasn’t it? Not exactly the type for a professor like you to be involved with.”
I breathe in slowly and give her a steady look. “Is that all you wanted to discuss?”
“Yup,” she says, straightening up and flashing me a big smile. She might just make it to the movies after all—she’s conniving enough. “See you on Monday.”
She leaves the room looking awfully proud of herself, sending me an odd smile over her shoulder. I should probably pull out my teacher card and remind her about grading papers or what’s ahead for next week, or when she plans to guest lecture, but I don’t have the strength.
All of it is being used as I try and process what she said, what happened to my poor Natasha.
I thought I recognized the sadness in Natasha’s eyes, that change that happens when you lose yourself. I don’t think you ever get every part of you back. She’s still missing something.
But so am I.
Closure.
And peace.
I’m not sure I can have one without the other. But I do know there’s only one way to get it. I have to get it through Natasha. No matter what Melissa said, no matter how much of it makes sense or doesn’t make sense, I can’t stay away from her. I can’t ignore her. She’s a ghost that roams these halls. She’s a ghost who roams my heart.
But it doesn’t have to stay that way.
I’ve never really believed that things happen for a reason, and that became even more apparent the night I lost Miranda and Hamish. But this, having her here now, when we’ve both crawled out of the hole and are teetering on the edge, that can’t be for nothing.
We’re either here to save each other.
Or one of us is going over.
With that thought, I open my computer and log into the university system. I do a search for Natasha through the student database and come up with her phone number and email address.
I open up my email account, absently noting that my cousin Keir emailed me back, then start to compose a message to Natasha.
I pause, my fingers on the keyboard, but the words refuse to appear.
What do I say? Last time she physically ran away. This time she could see my name and refuse to even open the email.
So then you should write what’s true, I tell myself. If she might not even see it anyway.
I hate it when I’m right.
In the subject I just put “Please.”
Then I type:
Natasha,
I can’t explain what it was like to see you again the other day. The only way to describe it is that you gave me hope I hadn’t felt in a long time. I have many things I need to say to you, a million ways to apologize, and I can only hope that you’ll hear me out. I just want a chance to say these things in person, like you deserve, and then I’ll leave you alone.
You know this goes against everything I used to believe, but time can change a man and I believe you’re in my life again for a reason.
I don’t want to disappoint fate.
Brigs.
Natasha was once thrilled to discover my rather poetic side hidden beneath all the scholarly film talk. I can only hope she still feels the same way.
I take a deep breath and press send.
Then I become obsessed. I try to work, but it’s impossible for me to do anything other than check my email. An hour goes by. She hasn’t responded and I’m losing my mind.
I decide to check Keir’s email and see that he arrived in London yesterday, wanting to meet up. I immediately put his number into my phone and send him a text, seeing if he wants to get a drink today. I need something to get out of this tailspin, anything to distract me.
I’m not all too close with Keir, nor his brother Mal or sister Maisie, just as I’m not close with my other cousins Bram and Linden. I blame the distance. Bram and Linden have been living in the US for a long time, while Keir has been serving the army in Afghanistan. I guess his duty is over and he’s in London for a few days for whatever reason. Mal travels all over the world for his job as a photographer, and Maisie has been living in Africa somewhere doing charity work.
Unlike Natasha, it doesn’t take Keir long to get back to me. I agree to meet him at the Cask and Glass pub near the barracks and Buckingham Palace for a quick drink, with the potential to turn into an outright bender.
By the time I get to the pub, Keir is already there.
He’s sitting alone at a high-top table along the window, peering intently at the people walking past, palming a pint of beer. With his brawny build, grizzled features, and steely gaze, he looks every inch the soldier, even though his beard betrays him otherwise, as does his uniform of jeans, a green t-shirt, and a cargo jacket.
“Hey, Keir,” I say to him as I walk over.
Keir grins at me and gets off his seat, pulling me into a hug. “Nice to see you, Brigs,” he says in his distinctively low voice. He does an amazing Darth Vader impression. “Thanks for coming to meet me.”
“I’m glad you’re in town,” I tell him, patting the table. “Want another pint?”
He nods, and I quickly head to the bar to get us both one. I sit down at the table and raise my glass. “Cheers.”
I nearly down my beer in one go.
Keir raises a brow. “Been needing that one, have you?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Well, I’ve been having a pretty shit time myself if it makes you feel better,” he says, running his hand over his mouth and jaw.
“It doesn’t,” I tell him. I don’t want to pry or intrude on his business, so I don’t add anything else. Keir used to be pretty talkative and forthcoming before he joined the army, though that was a long time ago. I don’t expect him to say anything now.
He finishes off what was left of his other beer, and I’m about to ask him about how the army is when he says, “I left the army.”
I frown, mid-sip. “You mean you’re off-duty.”
He shakes his head. “No. I left. No one knows.” His eyes flit to mine, and now I can see how tired they are. Weary and war-torn, they’ve obviously seen a lot. “You’re the first person I’ve told. I…I just needed to get it out, you know? Tell someone. It isn’t easy living a lie.”
Don’t I fucking know it.
“Your parents?” I ask. “Maisie or Mal don’t know either?”
He laughs sourly. “I don’t even know where Maisie is, to be honest. Mal seems to disappear off the earth from time to time. Every time he meets a new woman in a new country, anyway. And this isn’t the sort of thing you’d write in an email.” He gives me an apologetic smile. “Sorry to burden you with this, Brigs. I know we’ve lost touch.”
“It’s okay. Your secret is safe with me.” I pause. “What happened? Why did you leave?”
“Because of what happened to my best friend,” he says carefully. He swallows. “You know the shooting last month?”
I slowly nod, afraid of where this could be going. Last month we had a terrorist shooting in downtown London, right in the middle of Oxford Circus. Two people died and a few more were bad
ly injured. It made major headlines for a few days and later disappeared—probably because the terrorist wasn’t part of an organization. He was Lewis Smith, a Caucasian and a member of the British Army. He’d recently been dishonorably discharged and went mad, gunning people down on the street. The police shot and killed him when he wouldn’t surrender.
“Well,” he says, suddenly looking a lot older than a man in his late thirties. His face seems to grow pale before my eyes. “That was my best friend. Lewis Smith.”
Bloody hell.
He exhales loudly. “The worst part is, I knew how unwell he was. I saw him disintegrate. Some of the stuff we saw out there in the villages…I don’t even know how I dealt with it, and Lewis took it hard. But you can’t talk about that stuff. We’re taught to keep it inside. I should have said something. I should have spoken up. I tried, you know, I did, but…I could have done more.”
Well, his week is certainly putting my week to shame.
“I don’t know what to say other than you can’t blame yourself,” I tell him gently.
He raises his brows, his forehead wrinkling. “Oh yeah? And how often do you take your own advice?”
I give him a wry look. “Never.”
“Look, I know I haven’t seen you much since the funeral,” he says. “I heard through my mum that you’re teaching now at King’s College. I just wanted to say that I’m glad you’re pulling through. I don’t know how you managed to put one foot in front of the other. I know I couldn’t if I were in your shoes. I’m barely dealing with this. Wondering if the guilt, this weight, is ever going to go away.”
I’m starting to see why Keir had contacted and confided in me. I might be the only person who knows what it is to be shackled to all the things you should have done. But he doesn’t know the whole truth. And even though he opened up to me, I can’t bring up Natasha. Not with him or Lachlan or my parents. The moment I tell them is the moment I’m tarnished in their lives forever. I guess I still have some pride left, as foolish as it is.
“I think we can get over the guilt, even if we can’t get over the loss,” I tell him, my eyes roaming to the window, absently watching the rush of people, suited businessmen heading to the pubs for a pint after work, tourists making their way to the Palace. “Unfortunately, I think it starts and ends with us.”
He sighs. “You’re probably right. Even so…the reason I’m here is because I’m going to stop by the hospital. One of the victims that Lewis shot was in intensive care there. I’m not sure if she still is or not, but…I need to know if she’s all right. I don’t even know her, but…I need to do this. I feel I owe her something, I just don’t know what.”
“You know it wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have known that Lewis would do this,” I tell him, but Keir’s eyes seem to darken, caught in a bad, bad place.
He doesn’t say anything for a moment then excuses himself to get us another round of beers.
“So, what’s weighing you down?” he asks me when he comes back, obviously wanting a subject change.
I thank him for the beer and try to figure out how much I should tell him. “I, uh, made some mistakes in the past,” I say carefully. “Some things I haven’t been able to get over. I hurt someone who was once very dear to me, and now that person is back in my life, whether I want them to be or not. Karma has come to bite me on the arse.”
“You gave me some advice, so I’m going to give you some,” Keir says after a gulp of beer. He wipes his lips with the back of his hand. “You ready?” I nod. “There’s no such thing as karma. That only exists in a fair world, and we both know the world is anything but fair.”
“That’s not really advice, Keir.”
He shrugs. “It just means you aren’t being punished. Try and make it right, and if you can’t, that’s on them, not you. Forgiveness shouldn’t be stockpiled by anyone. It should be given freely.”
I stew on that for a moment. If Natasha never responds to my email, or if she does and wants nothing to do with me, I’m going to have to let her go.
Again.
Without closure.
I clear my throat.
“What a bunch of sad sacks we are,” Keir says with a disapproving scoff. “Friday night and we’re sobbing into our drinks. I’m going to get us a round of shots before we turn into women.”
“Just one round,” I tell him, raising my finger in warning. “I’ve got to get back to my dog. He’s probably torn my place to shreds and shit in my shoes.”
Keir gives me his trademark smirk. That’s more like the cousin I remember. “He’s shit in your shoes, aye?”
“More than once,” I say with a sigh. “And pissed on my pillow.”
That one was a nasty surprise.
“Seems Lachlan is rubbing off on you,” Keir says when he comes back with the shots of Jameson. “I didn’t know you had a dog.”
“Just in the last year.”
I explain to him how Winter came about, which then turns our conversation to Lachlan and Kayla, my parents, to Moneypenny, my vintage Aston Martin I never get to drive anymore since the tube is so convenient. With all the heavy stuff out of the way, it feels good to just drink and shoot the shit.
Sounds sad for a grown man to say, but I really ought to make some friends in this city.
Unfortunately, Keir says he’s going back up to Edinburgh when he’s done here to figure out what his next steps in life are. With the army behind him and his service done, he’s starting over.
I wish I could tell him it will be easy.
But I could never lie about that.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Natasha
Edinburgh
Four Years Ago
August in Edinburgh is sublime.
The sun is warm, and even hot some days, sitting high in the sky in the evenings.
People are smiling, biking around the city in droves. Kilted buskers play on street corners. Sometimes there are fire eaters and contortionists just for the hell of it. The ongoing Fringe Festival seems to bring out the free spirits, the wild cards, the crazies.
I feel like I’m one of them.
Because I too have turned into the wild card.
Doing something I never thought I would do.
I’ve fallen in love.
And I’ve fallen in love with someone that I can’t have.
It’s both the most exhilarating and destructive feeling to have ever possessed my body.
And I do mean possessed.
Brigs is all I can think about, all I can see. It’s like every part of him, from the crinkles at the corners of his eyes when he smiles, to the suits he wears, to the way he makes me laugh, makes every cell in my body pull toward his. When he looks at me or talks to me, he makes me feel like at that moment I’m the most important woman in the world to him.
And that’s the other thing. He makes me feel like a woman. Not a girl, not a student. Like I’m something greater than I’ve figured out. Like I’m a light that’s been waiting her whole life to be switched on and now I’m blinding him and everything around me.
Including my morals.
Including the rules.
Well no, I shouldn’t say that.
I may be in love with Professor Blue Eyes, but I’m not going to do anything about it. We’ve been working together for months, and though I know he’s terribly unhappy with Miranda, it’s not my style to intrude on a marriage, or any relationship for that matter. I don’t ever want to be the other woman. While I feel guilty for my feelings, I won’t bend my morals to indulge them.
Love isn’t a choice. I can’t control how I feel about him any more than I can control the sun in the sky. But what I can do is control what I do with those feelings.
Around Brigs I bottle it up.
It’s not so hard.
Okay, that’s a lie.
It’s terribly hard.
But he’s not one to give me an opportunity.
God help me if he ever does.
I’m also l
ucky that I don’t really know anyone in Edinburgh. There’s my Vietnamese flatmate, Hang, that I’m rooming with short term, and though we’re cordial with each other, we’re not exactly chummy.
There’s no one to spill my secrets to. I haven’t even told my friend Melissa back in London the truth: that I’m in love with not only the professor, who is paying me to be his research assistant, but a married man at that.
Some days when I wake up and my heart gets that warm fluttery feeling, I try and talk myself out of it. Convince myself that it’s just a harmless crush, not love, and that when all this is over I’ll go back to London, back to school, meet a nice available boy and get on with my merry life.
Other days I sink into that feeling. I drown in it. Because love shouldn’t be ignored. Or shunned. Or buried. If you’re lucky enough to feel it, you need to indulge it. Give it wings. Let it course through your heart and soul, unfiltered.
And I fucking feel it.
It’s Friday afternoon, and the last I talked to Brigs was through an email sent this morning. I wondered if he needed me to come to the office today to work.
He said no, the first time he ever turned down the offer. No explanation why either.
I hate to admit that it stung a bit and got me thinking. Too much, as usual. I started overanalyzing every last interaction. Wondering if my feelings for him were obvious, if I’m starting to scare him off. The last thing I want is to ruin the thing we have now, this easy, fun, light-hearted working relationship.
Well, I guess it’s not so light-hearted all the time. I do catch his eyes on me. Not always, but often enough.
The thing about Brigs, that I don’t even think he knows, is that his gaze just screams sex.
It shouts it from the rooftops, stamps its feet, and makes you feel it deep in your core.
One moment he’ll be talking about the virtues of Kim Novak’s performance in Vertigo, the next he’s staring at me with those blue eyes of his with a look that can only be described as carnal.
And every time I catch him looking at me that way, I feel every bone in my body light on fire. I can’t even imagine the look I’m giving him back because I’m stripped bare in his gaze, no inhibitions left.