Fractured(17)

This really grabbed his attention from the road, and he turned to stare at me in disbelief.

‘Are you still blaming yourself about Jimmy? Dear God, tell me that isn’t true. Not after all these years.’

‘How long it’s been is immaterial,’ I began, wondering how many more people in my life I would have to keep justifying this to. ‘If he hadn’t been trying to rescue me, then he’d still be here now.’

‘And you wouldn’t be.’

I shrugged.

‘So this is how you intend to repay that debt? By shutting yourself away like some dried-up old spinster all your life? Christ, Rachel, you’re only twenty-three years old!’

I noticed the speed of our car had increased exponentially with his anger.

‘And do you think this is what Jimmy would have wanted, for you to commit yourself to living a life all alone?’

‘I’m not alone,’ I refuted, sounding all at once a little too much like a sullen teenager.

‘Well, have there been boyfriends?’

His attack stung, and I mindlessly sought to sting him right back.

‘Hardly.’ I swept back my hair to reveal the scar by the light of the street lamps. ‘Not exactly a turn-on, now is it?’

He swore then, several times, my words seeming to have made him angrier than anything I had said before.

‘Don’t you do that to yourself. Don’t bring it all down to that.’

The car jerked sharply into a narrow gravelled forecourt and I noticed with surprise that we had already reached my hotel. He braked sharply in a little flurry of gravel chippings. His rage seemed to fade away with the thrum of the engine and he swivelled towards me, reaching across to lift my chin and tilt my face towards him.

‘This scar…’ his finger traced down its raised white-lightning path, almost reverently, ‘it’s nothing. It’s not who you are.’

I pulled back from his touch, scared by the intimacy. I was tired, I told myself, and in pain, otherwise I would never have allowed him to have got that close. Desperately I sought to bring him back to reality.

‘Your girlfriend doesn’t think it’s nothing. She thinks I should get it fixed.’

‘Cathy can be… a little thoughtless. She only said that because she’s afraid of you. And jealous.’

That really made me sit up in my seat.

‘She’s what? But why?’

His next words were so unexpected, I was literally rendered speechless.

‘Because she knows I’ve never really got over you. That whatever she and I might have, it’ll never be enough. There’s no future in it for us.’

Things had gone much too far. I pushed him back so he was more squarely in his own seat.

‘And there’s none for us either, Matt,’ I answered firmly. ‘Please don’t say this stuff to me, not again. I don’t want to hurt you, and whatever she might think, I don’t want to hurt Cathy either. If you’re not happy with her… then leave. Don’t use me as the excuse. I’m not the solution to your problems.’

‘It’s not that—’

But I wouldn’t let him finish.

‘Look, Matt, I don’t know where this has all come from, but whatever you think was going to happen between us, well, it isn’t.’ I tried to temper the rejection so the remains of the weekend would be at least bearable. ‘Part of me will always…’ I hesitated, anxious not to use the word ‘love’, ‘have feelings for you. You were an important part of my past. But that’s it. An awful thing happened, not just to Jimmy, but to all of us. And this, this feeling that I can’t be with anyone… for now, at least… well, this is how I deal with it.’

‘It’s hiding. Not dealing!’

I stayed silent. That one had been used on me before. But his next words could not be so easily ignored.

‘And do you really think this is what Jimmy would have wanted for you? To see you by yourself? For Christ’s sake, Rachel, he was so in love with you he even sacrificed his own life to save yours!’

I gasped, struck by a pain that dwarfed my headache to the merest of irritations. He saw my reaction and looked stunned by it.

‘What? You didn’t know? You couldn’t see it written all over his face whenever he looked at you?’

This was too much. To hear this again, for the second time in one day, was more than I could bear. I shook my head in denial, my eyes blurring with tears.

‘You're wrong. So wrong. We were friends… just friends,’ I whispered softly.

‘For you, maybe. But not for him. Everyone else could see it. It was so obvious.’

I was so confused that my pained brain could hardly function.