“It’s a trap,” I repeated.
“It doesn’t have to be a trap. He’s going to sign everything electronically when I finalise details. He doesn’t need to know we’ve been in touch or that I’ve seen you. I won’t tell him, not if you don’t want me to.”
“He knows everything. He probably even knows you’re here.”
“I didn’t bring a single cellular device with me. Besides I saw him only a few days ago and he seemed determined to leave you alone. He says you’re better off without him.”
I sipped my vodka martini and groaned, “Maybe I am. I’ve only been away from him a couple of weeks and already, I feel so much lighter. I can’t explain it but since the shooting and everything, the whole business has weighed heavily on me.”
“Well it would do. It’s not stuff that happens everyday.”
“Exactly.” I sighed and asked him, “Has he always been… controlling?”
“No,” he said, “there was a time he was so carefree. I mean, he’s always had an anger issue. Always.”
“His father Dick mentioned that in Vegas.”
Teddy/Edward shot me a crooked smile. “What did you think of him?”
“In a word, repugnant.”
Edward nodded. “You’re right. Anyway,” he said, taking a deep breath, “when he disappeared after his brother died, I got a locksmith to open his flat up so I could check he wasn’t in. When he wasn’t, I saw the state of his place. It was destroyed. Like a herd of wildebeest had been through it.”
“He’d done it?”
“Yeah. There wasn’t one piece of crockery intact. He’d used knives to tear open the furniture, including the bed. He smashed mirrors. It was… horrifying, that someone could lose control like that. I think that’s why he’s become a control freak. He’s frightened he’ll turn into that again.”
I surveyed our surroundings and was pleased nobody seemed to be interested in watching us, sat in our corner together. “It doesn’t excuse him.”
“No, it doesn’t, Ciara.”
“Anyway, enough of my shit, what about you? Wasn’t your wife bothered about you jetting up here?”
He smiled, sadly. “We’re divorcing.”
“Why?” I exclaimed. “Was it about Shay?”
Shaking his head, he insisted, “No, it wasn’t about Shay. She wasn’t the catalyst. Not really. My wife has found someone else. I’m not the one for her apparently. She says I’m always either at Pernox or at work, and she’s right. I’ve been burying my head in the sand.”
“What do you mean?”
We both sipped our drinks together and he looked me straight in the eye. I saw no lie as he explained, “She’s not a bad woman, but she can be cruel.”
“How?”
His face scrunched up slightly. “Faith doesn’t really do my sort of thing, you know?”
“Kink?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Oh.”
“She could be quite nasty about it. She even laughed at me for it. She always knew, but didn’t get it.”
“When did you know you were kinky?” I asked him.
“It’s like being gay or straight. You don’t think about it, you just know. It’s like when someone orders you to bend and kiss their shoe and you don’t care, that you sort of realise other people who find it gross just aren’t into the same thing.”
I licked my lips, intrigued by what he was saying. “So you know Dante isn’t really kinky?”
“I don’t know if I knew exactly, but I did always think he treated it as a bit of a joke.”
I nodded with him, pleased he shared the same insight I’d had.
“Did you cry for Shay?” I asked him.
He looked away, then looked back at me. “Yes.”
“He didn’t. It irked me.”
“Well, he’s tried to convince himself she was evil when she was anything but.”
“As we were leaving Vegas, I said that to Dante. Thing was, she’d been kind to me. I didn’t believe her a killer, I still don’t.”
“Makes two of us then,” he said, agreeing with me.
I took a deep breath because it was so nice to be able to talk to someone who understood.
“Shall we get some dinner?” he said.
“Yes, that would be great.”
WE went to an Italian and gorged on food. It was amazing. I had a starter, main and dessert, so did he. He’d been asking me about my upbringing in Youghal and I’d got as far as telling him about stud horses when a waiter came to our table and warned, “We’re shutting in ten minutes guys. Just to let you know.”
“Sorry, we completely lost track of time!”
After dinner we’d just sat there accepting one drink after the other from the waiters.
When the bill arrived, his eyebrows raised and I snatched it out of his hands.
“Oh my god! How much! How many drinks did we have!” I giggled behind my hand, shaking my head. “I can’t let you pay this!”
“Nonsense. Give it here.” He snatched it back and carefully laid out four, crisp £50 notes.
Wow.
Okay…
Anyway after he settled up, we left and he began walking me back to my B&B.
“I feel bad for letting you pay.”
“Don’t feel bad. I’ll charge a client for lunch next week. It’s fine. Everything evens out, you know?”
“I wish I believed that but life seems so unfair sometimes.”
“It can be,” he said.
Even in July Edinburgh was cold and it being the dead of night, I pulled my jacket tight around me.
“I’m sorry I was right about him. I’m sorry for you, I’m sorry for him… and I’m even sorrier for Shay.”
“I don’t have a clue what I’m gonna do Edward,” I said, “I don’t have anything substantial to start a new life with. I don’t have references. I don’t have a bank account. I’m terrified of using my passport or renting a car. I’m terrified of everything and I’m scared! It’s like a version of me existed for six years and now I don’t recognise her as myself. I don’t know that person. Sort of like I was abducted by aliens and now I’m back. I look at what I became because of him and despise myself. I’ve wasted my life waiting for him to change and he’s never going to change, is he?”
He shook his head, walking calmly beside me. “I don’t think so, no.”
Edinburgh was eerie at night, haunting even, especially with thick fog coming in from the Forth.
Edward put his arm around me and rubbed my shoulder, trying to warm me up. He began talking in a soft voice, telling me, “The most annoying thing is that he’s decided he’s no better than his father, so that’s that. Marriage and all that isn’t going to work for him either as far as he’s concerned. Dante’s so ready to give up, even after just a whiff of trouble ahead. I tried to reason with him but his ego was bruised when you disappeared. All his life, if giving up has seemed easier, that’s what he’s done. He knows how to quit better than anybody I know.” Teddy looked at me sideways, his eyes full of sadness. I guessed some of his sadness was for Shay, some for Dante, and some for his failed marriage. “He told me that the world of celebrity is going to come under even more intense scrutiny in the weeks and months ahead following all the big reveals recently, so he’s taken himself to LA… and he plans to go back to what he was before. I assumed that’s why he wanted to sell up, so he had money to do it, all over again.”
Something I’d worried about had come true; I’d thought for so long that he would never give up his job as the fixer.
“It’s not a shock to hear that, but it’s still hard to take,” I told Teddy, who walked steadily beside me. I felt sorry for this dashing man because we’d dragged him into this.
“I wonder if…”
“What?” I said.
“Did you ever try to escape him, before recently?”
“Yes,” I said, “twice in reality, dozens of times in my head.”
He nodded, not quite ready t
o articulate his thoughts, it seemed.
“I often used to wake up in the kitchen or living room, empty wine bottles or whatever spread around me. I’d have been ranting to myself all night, questioning over and over why I had to go, why I couldn’t stay… why I had to stay, why I couldn’t go. I guess I stayed because I loved him, even though I knew there was something really broken inside him.”
I’d hung about a broken person for so long, the carefree person I once was – she’d gone. He’d broken me, just by keeping me by his side. I’d wasted the best part of my twenties waiting for him to shape up.
“I disliked you when we met,” I told him, to splice the silence.
“It’s okay. You were defending him.”
“It was that you were an outsider, reflecting what I was trying to deny.”
“I’ve known him a long time so I know about his past and present relationship with women. In the past, he didn’t care for women Ciara. He pleasured them for sure but he’s not the settling down type. Tell me if I’m wrong but I think he had you spanking him because he wanted what he feels inside to be numbed. Tell me I’m wrong.”
We stopped on an empty, cobbled street and he turned to face me.
“You’re not wrong.”
“Shay told me what he was like in the early days. She said he hated being spanked. Then all that changed, obviously. He suddenly had a job to do and needed something to get him in shape, some way of producing enough adrenalin to keep him up all night.”
“You think that’s all I was?” I stared up into his eyes. Outside of Pernox, Edward seemed sincere. Even gentle. In charge, even. Maybe Dante had been right about men becoming different creatures beneath ground because the Teddy I’d met before was rather unpalatable – but Edward, the guy facing me then, was nice. Attractive, even.
“I don’t know. Only you and he know what you were to one another. I’m just an outsider looking in.”
“And if you had me, would you give up on us, just because things got tough?”
“I’m not arrogant enough to let myself see you as one day being mine, so I couldn’t possibly answer that question.”
I laughed at him. “That was such a lawyerly response.”
“Yeah well, let’s get you indoors. It’s freezing.”
As we neared my B&B, I considered Edward’s words and realised he was right about his friend. Scarily, in fact. I could only put my blindness down to lust. Dante was still the most attractive man I had ever met. Aside from Edward of course. But they were best friends so I would never go there. Besides, finding someone else was the last thing on my mind.
“Here you go,” he said, and we prepared to say our goodbyes outside the side door of the B&B.
I looked at the ground and said, “I got to Edinburgh and it was terrifying to finally be alone. Then again, I also thought about all those dead people in his attic and I thought about his propensity to disappear at the drop of a hat. Mostly, I stayed away to keep myself safe, but also because he has this way of making you believe that he loves you… and then he just goes and does what he wants anyway. He’s fatally flawed. I just…” I paused, taking a deep breath, “…I knew he’d take it up again. I knew it. I asked him if we started a family, would he quit? Would we be safe? His answer was that he didn’t want a family, and then–”
I covered my mouth, shutting myself up.
“It’s okay, he told me about that too.”
“Great.” I sniffed, unsurprised, yet again.
Teddy was privy to all my secrets. No wonder he could hardly look me in the eye. Probably pitied me, didn’t he?
“I won’t tell a soul,” he said.
“I don’t want to go inside,” I said, just being honest, “it’s been a lovely evening, despite all the circumstances.”
“It really has, Ciara. I’m glad I made the trip. It’s been ages since I came up. I used to visit a few times a year with friends, you know?”
“Friends,” I repeated, slightly maudlin, “I wish I had some.”
“You’ve drunk a bit, you should go in and get some sleep.”
“Are you my friend?”
“Yes and, listen. The girls at Pernox would love to have you back, I know they would. We can fly together tomorrow and I’ll drop you there. It’ll be safe. Get the locks changed and job’s a good ’un as they say.”
“I could do that but he’d still find a way in, if he wanted to.”
“Probably. But something tells me you’re stronger now and something also tells me he’s not coming back. He seemed quite final about it, you know?”
I nodded.
It really did feel over and it hurt.
“There’s something you should do,” he said, grinning.
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“Live,” he said. “It’s so simple, really.”
“Live,” I said, like it was that easy. “Just live?”
“Yes.”
“I think I will.”
Teddy pulled me in for a hug and kissed my cheek. Then he walked away and I watched until he was out of sight.
Just live.
Twenty-Eight
“IS FLYING DIFFICULT FOR YOU?” I asked as we got strapped in on the budget airliner. “Because you smoke?”
He shook his head. “I only smoke after sex. Besides, this thing won’t be in the air longer than an hour, tops.”
“Oh… okay.”
“Have you ever smoked?” he asked me.
“No, but there was once or twice I did some magic stuff.”
“Oh, I see.” He grinned, eyebrows wriggling. “Magic stuff.”
He got comfy in his seat and pulled out a copy of the Sunday Times while I opened up my laptop and started typing mad stuff in an empty word document.
I was sort of trying to write a list of things I wanted to do with my life now.
1) Earn own money.
2) Go on a mad night out in London (never could afford that before).
3) Finish writing an actual book.
4) Forget him.
5) Make myself happy.
6) Revel in owning own property. An estate no less. (Has to be some catch, right?)
7) Buy car.
8) Buy stupid shoes.
9) Buy a horse (if we have room).
10) Be crazy.
It was too bad I really just wanted to get married and have kids. Because the only person I loved enough to marry was Dante.
I shut the laptop and the plane began taxiing to the runway. I couldn’t believe I was going back to London but for some reason, I was.
***
AS Edward drove me up the driveway, the girls all waited outside in a row, anxious to see who Edward had brought in his car with him. At the gate he’d told Amber over the intercom that he had a surprise for them.
When I got out of the car, they all rushed at me.
“Oh my god, you’re back!” They all corralled, throwing arms around me from left, right and centre.
“Where’s Dante?”
“It’s over.”
“Oh… put the kettle on…”
“Get the biscuits…”
“No, get the liquor,” Tara said, and as I looked behind me, over my shoulder, I saw Edward smiling. Even through my tears, I saw him. He waved and got back into his car, telling Georgiana my bags were in the back. She hefted them out and then he was gone.
Just like that.
He’d brought me home… and now he was gone.
I missed him immediately.
“TELL us everything!” Amber demanded as we sat around some tables in the breakfast room. “Why didn’t you come back after induction day? We’ve been winging it without you.”
I wiped my tears on a tissue. “He won’t give up what he does so I left him.”
“What, clothes?” Georgiana asked. They all looked at one another, confused. “He sold up, didn’t he?”
“That’s not what he really does all day,” I explained, sharing a knowing look with Amber, “I thin
k you all know that.”
They said nothing, but I sort of got the feeling they weren’t shocked.
“So what he does is dangerous?”
“Really dangerous,” I said, “and enough of a risk I ran away from him. Now all I know is that he’s gone to the states, possibly LA according to Teddy. Edward.”
“The Tedster looked mega sweet on you,” said Tara, “like mega sweet. Extra special sweet and salty sweet.”
I giggled. “Shut up.”
“So, what now?” asked Amber.
“He’s given me Pernox. It’s mine. Edward’s doing the paperwork. But yeah. I’m officially going to be your actual boss.”
“Well fuckadoodledo. Get the champers, girls!” Tara bellowed, and everyone cheered.
After they toasted me, Georgiana put her arm around me and whispered, “He wasn’t good enough for you. He made you feel second best. Let’s make this place an absolute success, the like of which we’ve never seen here. Together we can do this.”
“Throw myself into it you mean? To forget about him.”
“No, not to forget about him,” she said, “but to find you. I think it’s time.”
I nodded and smiled. “Thank you, Georgie.”
“Anytime.”
***
THE following weekend, I was ready to hold another seminar. This time I had planned a different approach, though.
As the orangery filled, I counted at least double the audience I had last time.
I had also got rid of my skirt and blouse combo in favour of a tight latex dress. No point in hiding what I was.
“Good afternoon, ladies.”
“Afternoon,” they replied collectively.
“Apologies that I missed a couple of sessions, but I had to go out of the country for something that required my immediate attention. You’ll be glad to know I’m back now and going nowhere.”
I hated talking publicly; it felt like I was talking to myself.
The Fix (Nightlong Series Book 2) Page 27