by Emma Quinn
“Hmmm...” he uttered. “I believe you I suppose. But thousands wouldn't.”
The car moved away from the apartment and down the road.
“Where would you like to be driven?” asked the driver politely.
“Just take me home please.”
“Are you sure?” asked Jules. “Wouldn't you like to come have your own little celebration with me? Or am I not good looking enough?”
“You know full well you're not good looking enough. Besides, I have a date tonight I need to scrub up for.”
“I thought it wasn't a date.”
“It's not. It's just... Shut up, Jules.”
As we pulled up in my driveway I felt as though I was floating six inches off the ground. For the first time in months I didn't have to worry about Vincent and his case, and tonight I was heading out with Sophia. Could life get any better?
“You kids be good now,” said Jules as I climbed out the car. “Are you sure I can't persuade you into coming for drinks?”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow it is.”
He gave me a mock salute as I closed the door and the car turned out the drive.
“What a fucking day,” I thought out loud as I fished in my pocket for my keys.
But as I approached my front door, I saw I didn't need them because the door was slightly ajar.
“What the fuck?”
I approached warily, looking up at the house to see if there was anyone visible through the windows. My heart began to race as I reached the first step.
This isn't right. Who the fuck is in my house and what do they want?
I bet it's Vincent! Bet he's here to get revenge for me kicking his ass in court.
My hands curled themselves into fists at my sides. I may not have had a gun, but I could defend myself if I needed to. I'd been training in the gym for years and thanks to Gary I knew my way around a boxing ring. I could defend myself if I needed to. Especially against some old fart like Vincent.
Slowly, I pushed the door open and entered the hallway. I listened out for the sound of footsteps, and detected them upstairs toward the bedroom.
“Vincent, you old fuck. Come down now and I won't call the cops.”
Adrenaline was coursing through me. I could feel myself get angrier and angrier as I climbed the stairs. From the bedroom came the sound of things being thrown about. Of drawers and cupboard doors being opened then shut.
“Vincent you son of a bitch!”
I ran up the last few stairs and rushed into the bedroom ready to beat the ever living shit out of him. But as I burst through the door, I found myself not face to face with the old goon that was Vincent, but with a familiar face.
“Mila, what the fuck are you doing here? And what are you doing with all my stuff!”
“I'm taking what's mine,” she said, tossing things at random into a suitcase.
“Hey! That's one of my watches. Put it back.”
She ignored me and carried on hurling things into her Luis Vuitton bag.
“How the fuck did you get in here?”
She smirked and walked over to the dresser where she picked up a set of keys.
“You really think I didn't have a spare pair cut?”
“You're nuts. You know that? And not in a good way. In a fucking dangerous way. I mean what the hell do you think you're doing? I've heard all the things you've been telling people. About how I threw you out like you're some kinda victim. Hey put that back!”
She was now picking up an ornamental vase from the window ledge and attempting to squash it on top of everything else she was taking. I slapped a hand over her bag and looked her dead in the eye.
“Stop now or I'm calling the cops.”
She hesitated for a second, as though she was considering coming to her senses. Then she shook her head and pouted.
“No. I deserve these things. For the emotional damage you caused me.”
“Emotional damage? You've got to be kidding me! You're the one who's giving me nothing but a hard time. Jules told me all about how you turned up at the studio. You know that's stalking right? You know you're a freakin' fruit loop?”
She ignored me and continued picking things up at random like she was possessed by the urge to hoard everything in the room.
“Stop!”
Grabbing her by the arms, I held her in place. Only now did she stand still. She looked up into my face and I saw her eyes were like ice. There wasn't a shred of warmth or decency behind her chilled gaze.
“You've got to stop this,” I told her. “You're acting crazy.”
“I am crazy. Crazy in love with you.”
“Oh, stop. Please.”
“I mean it.”
But as she spoke, I saw that her eyes were still dead.
“I love you, Ethan.”
“No, you don't.”
“I do!”
“But I don't love you.”
She froze, the look in her eyes growing harsher. For a second, hurt flashed across her face wrinkling up her brow, then it faded fast.
“Why don't you want me anymore?” she asked. “Do you not find me attractive?”
“It's nothing to do with you being attractive,” I told her. “It's what's inside that counts. And your insides are fucking rotten.”
She took a step back, shocked.
“It's that girl, isn't it?” she said. “The girl from the other night. You want to be with her, don't you?”
I looked into her face for a second and gathered my thoughts.
“I do...” I admitted, to myself as well as Mila.
Now, for the first time, she looked as though she was going to cry for real. Her eyes wrinkled up at the sides. I wondered if she was upset because she was losing me, or because she had come second best. Something told me it was her ego that was taking a battering and not her heart.
“Do you love her?” she asked.
“Yes... I love her. I've loved her for years.”
Mila stood still for a second as though she couldn't believe what she was hearing. Then she exploded, hurling everything she could reach around the room.
“You asshole!” she screamed.
The vase found its way to her hand before it made its way to the wall as she threw it with so much force it shattered into hundreds of pieces.
“Right, that's it! Get out!” I yelled. “I swear to God you've got ten seconds or I'm calling the police.”
“Fuck you! I'm leaving and you're never seeing me again.”
“Good! The last thing I'd ever want to do is see you again!”
She stormed out, slamming the door with so much force it almost shook the walls. I listened to the sound of her footsteps as they descended the stairs. A few seconds later, the front door slammed shut and she was finally gone.
Looking around my bedroom, I saw it looked as though a tornado had whirled its way around the furniture.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I said, sitting on the bed in despair. “What's she going to do next?”
21
Sophia
“ S
on't do it,” said Emily's voice down the phone. “You promised yourself you wouldn't get close to him!”
“I know but... Shit. I know I should get as far away as possible from him but... We've been getting on so well recently. And we had this picnic the other weekend where we got on so well. And then at the trial we were both so happy that, I dunno, I just got swept up in the moment.”
“Take my advice, Sophia. Turn around, get in a cab, and come home right now before you do something you regret.”
“I can't. I'm already outside the restaurant.”
“It's not too late. You can still do the right thing and leave.”
But as I listened to her, a red Lamborghini pulled up beside the restaurant and out hopped Ethan. Dressed in a black suit with a slight beard peppering his strong jaw, he made my insides melt.
“I've... gotta go,” I said to Emily, and hung up before she could protest any more.
Ethan approached, his eyes moving from between my eyes to the red dress I had squeezed myself into it. It was so tight I could barely breathe, but it was well worth it to look this good.
“Woah...” breathed Ethan as he approached me. “You look beautiful.”
He lay a hand on my waist to hug me, and I felt the heat of his skin burn through my dress. I wished his hand could move elsewhere on my body.
As I leaned up to give him a quick hug, I breathed in his scent. It was warm and familiar and instantly took me back to those years we spent together.
For a split second, we weren't Ethan and Sophia standing on a sidewalk in LA. We were the young lovers cuddled up beneath the covers in my bed at my Mom's house. We were the kids sneaking kisses between classes. The love struck twenty-somethings who spent the days exploring the world and the nights making love.
The moment was snapped when he let go of me. And I was Sophia, the thirty-one year old mother and lawyer again.
“Shall we head inside?” he asked.
I nodded, and without thinking slipped my hand into his.
This feels like the old days, I thought, leaning into him. This feels like we were the couple we used to be.
But there was an extra element of excitement sizzling between us. A sense that we were being drawn together by something much bigger than ourselves. Maybe the fate Ethan talked about was real after all.
Inside the restaurant, we were led to a darkened table at the back of the room with a single candle between us.
“Hope you don't mind the setting,” he said. “The paparazzi can never get a decent shot in candle light.”
“It's perfect,” I said. “But you must get so tired of the paparazzi. Don't you wish you had your privacy?”
“Of course I do. But at the same time, it's the price you pay for being successful I guess.”
“But it can't be fun. Don't you wish you had a regular life?”
He thought for a second and stared down into the table.
“Yeah, I guess I do. I mean I can't stand the chaos and drama of it all. It feels as though I can't go a single day without something happening. For once I'd love to kick back and watch TV, eat a tub of ice cream and hang out with the family, you know?”
“The family?”
He shifted awkwardly in his seat and smiled.
“Yeah, a family. A wife, kids, a dog. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought about what life would be like with all of that.”
Something twinged deep inside my gut. A sensation of guilt mixed with regret.
But you do have a family. You just don't know it yet.
“What about you?” he asked.
“I have Luca. He's all I need.”
“Not want to get married?”
Thankfully, before I could answer, the waiter arrived, and Ethan was soon distracted by the wine list.
I watched as the candle light flickered off his golden skin, and how his eyes shone like they were on fire.
You love him. You always did. Those feelings for him never left. They just grew stronger.
As the waiter left, Ethan turned to me, moving in closer to the candle so his eyes glittered auburn.
“I can't tell you how happy I am to see you again,” he said, reaching across the table to take my hand. “I thought I'd never get a chance to talk to you. To explain myself.”
“What do you mean? What is there to explain?”
“I made a mistake,” he said. “A huge one. And I've been regretting it ever since.”
“I suppose you're talking about breaking up with me,” I said, pulling my hand away. “Because as far as I'm concerned, there's nothing to talk about. You dumped me. End of.”
“No...” he asserted. “It wasn't like that. I didn't just dump you because... Because I wanted to. Believe me, I've been struggling with it ever since. Always thinking about what could have been between us if I'd come with you to Harvard.”
“So why didn't you?” I asked. “You could have. I wanted you to! But you chose to stay behind. To just... break up with me.”
The tension rose between us. Now the candle light didn't appear romantic, but bitter. A small, angry fire raging between us.
“You know if there was someone else you could have just told me,” I said. “You didn't have to just break my heart like that.”
“There was nobody else,” he replied without skipping a beat as he leaned across the table to grab both my hands. “I promise you there was nobody else.”
“So why did you do it?”
I could feel the emotion well up inside me as though I was reliving the moment from all those years ago. Suddenly I was twenty-two again and sitting on my bed as he walked out.
My throat closed up at the memory. At the backs of my eyes, tears stung and threatened to spill out. I swallowed hard to stop them but they insisted on coming, running down my cheeks and splashing onto my dress.
“You broke my heart,” I cried.
But I wasn't just crying for me. I was shedding tears for Luca too. He'd grown up without a father who should have been there. But Ethan could never know that's what I was thinking.
Squeezing my hand so tight it almost hurt, he reached up and wiped the tears from my cheeks.
“I let you go because you were too good for me,” he said. “Because on that morning I got the news that my mom was dying. Because I knew she needed me. But you... You didn't need me. You didn't need anyone. You were going to law school. Had your life on track. The last thing you needed was me holding you back with my miserable life. All I wanted was for you to be free. And for that... I had to say goodbye.”
I looked deep into his face and saw the truth shining out through his watery eyes.
“You believe me, don't you?” he asked.
I nodded as I swallowed down my tears.
“I do...”
22
Ethan
W
ell done you idiot. You brought her out to dinner to have a good time, and all you've done is made her cry.
But as I watched her dab her eyes with a napkin, I saw there was a slight glint of happiness on her face. Like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. It all made sense to her now. She knew the truth.
“I always loved you,” I told her. “If anything I loved you too much.”
“It didn't feel that way.”
“I know. You must have thought I was a bastard just dumping you like that, but you know now, don't you? You know I never meant to hurt you.”
She sniffed and ran her napkin over the top of her cheekbones.
“You hurt me so much,” she said.
Dropping the napkin onto the table, she composed herself and looked around the room to make sure no one had noticed us.
“I've been thinking about you for all these years,” I said. “Almost eight years of living with the guilt. Don't think a night passed when I didn't go to bed thinking about what you were up to. I knew you'd be successful of course. Knew you'd have gone on to do amazing things. But my God I never realized you would have become even more beautiful. Didn't even know that was possible.”
She smiled, her eyes shining with a mixture of tears and candlelight.
“You're still such a charmer,” she laughed. “How long were you thinking up that one?”
Now it was her turn to reach out toward me. She lay her hand on mine and I relished the softness and warmth of her skin.
“I'm so sorry,” I said. “I feel like I've turned this night into a real tearjerker. It was supposed to be a celebration.”
“It's not too late to turn it around,” she said. “You wanna get outta here?”
“Sure,” I smiled. “Let's go have some fun.”
“Holy shit, I've never seen a car so fancy,” she said, running her hand over the hood of my car.
“You should see the inside. Come on. Get in.”
She walked toward the passenger seat and I stopped her.
“No, get in the driver's side,” I said,
tossing her the keys.
She caught them and squealed, “I can't drive this thing!”
“Of course you can.”
She giggled as she lowered herself into the driver's seat.
“I suggested we have some fun and what's more fun than speeding in a Lambo?”
Twisting the key in the ignition, she gasped as the engine roared to life.
“Oh, my God this sounds like a monster. What if I flip the thing?”
“You won't. Come on, hit the gas.”
She lowered her foot onto the peddle and the car took off with a jolt then glided seamlessly onto the road at top speed. It sounded more like a plane jetting off than a car.
“Aaaah! Listen to it!” she screamed, grabbing the wheel. “This thing is crrrraaaazy!”
“Head down to the beach,” I said, pointing to the next turnoff at the last minute. “I have an idea.”
She had no choice but to take a sharp right, the tires screeching along the asphalt as we turned.
“Aargh. That was fun!” she screamed. “Feels like we're in one of your movies.”
“I learned a thing or two from The Rampage,” I said. “Did you know I did all my stunts during the driving scenes?”
“No freakin' way. How did you not die?”
“This way,” I said, pointing to the sign for the beach.
She took another sharp right and sped away until we could see the sea in front of us.
“Okay, we could get into real trouble for his,” I said, looking around to make sure there were no police cars on the prowl. “But have you ever spun a doughnut on the beach?”
“Er, no. How am I supposed to that?”
“I'll show you. Just glide over the sidewalk there and onto the sand.”
“No way! Isn't that illegal? In fact I'm pretty sure it is.”
“There's no one about,” I assured her. “Come on. It'll just take a second.”
“We could get into total shit loads of trouble.”
“It'll be worth it,” I promise.
She looked doubtful. But she did as I suggested and drove over the sidewalk and down the path until we felt the sand beneath the tires.