‘Let me take that,’ he insisted, swooping to grasp the handle of her suitcase.
‘No, I’m fine, honest—’
He cut her off mid-sentence. ‘Please. Allow me that much.’
Libby relinquished her grip, the feel of his hand moving over hers too agonising to even contemplate doing anything else, then followed him downstairs.
‘So I guess this is it?’ he breathed, placing the suitcase down on the marble.
She nodded, the irony of standing just metres away from the spot where they’d made the most incredible love not lost on her. ‘I guess it is.’
The silence was deafening.
Rion fought the urge to offer her money, or the use of his apartment in Athens. ‘You’ll file the papers when you get back to the city?’
Libby felt her stomach lurch. He seemed so keen to have it all over with now.
She nodded. ‘I’m sure the solicitor will send you copies, along with the decree absolute once it’s finalised.’
‘It should come through pretty quickly, since we’re both in agreement.’
His voice seemed to Libby to go up at the end of his sentence, almost as if it was a question. But she told herself not to read anything into it. She’d spent six weeks reading things that weren’t really there, that had never been there.
‘I should go. The taxi’s waiting.’ She stepped forward and reclaimed her suitcase. ‘I can take it from here.’
With great effort he forced himself to take a step backwards. ‘Who knows? Maybe we might bump into each other if you run those excursions here some time.’
‘Maybe,’ she agreed. Though in her heart she’d already made up her mind to tell Kate there was no way she could carry on with the Greek tours. There was no point in pretending that her memories would do anything other than destroy her if she remained on Greek soil. Maybe even if she didn’t.
‘Well, in the meantime, I hope your tours in Athens go well.’
She wanted to look back. She wanted to give him a blithe smile and say Thank you. Good luck running Metameikos too. She wanted to be glad they understood each other now, if nothing else. But she wasn’t, and she couldn’t. It took everything she had to place her fingers around the door handle and wrench it open.
‘Goodbye, gineka—’He stopped himself and sighed deeply. ‘Goodbye, Libby.’
‘Goodbye, Rion.’
If the sound of Libby packing her things had been the worst noise in the world to Rion, then the click of the door latch as she pulled it shut behind her was Libby’s equivalent. Leaving him once had been hard enough—but then she’d been sure their marriage would have broken them both if she’d stayed, had been able to throw herself into discovering who she was and what she wanted. But now that she had, all her discoveries had led her to was the fact that she was completely and irrepressibly in love with him.
She swallowed hard, tears thick in the back of her throat. As much at the discovery that he’d spent all those years believing that in her eyes he’d never been good enough as for the end of their marriage.
But what would he believe now? she wondered. The thought made her whole body jolt forward. Did he fully understand that had never been an issue to her? She hadn’t actually explained the real reason why she hadn’t felt able to agree to have his baby, hadn’t told him that a huge part of her wanted to. And, even though she knew it would change nothing, the thought that he might be in any doubt—now or in years to come—that maybe they still didn’t fully understand one another, clawed at her heart.
She closed her eyes, contemplating whether she could bear the pain involved in putting that right. She wasn’t sure she could, but maybe that was why she should. Maybe, in the absence of any other kind of closure, just going back in and saying the words, leaving them there in the hallway, was the closest she was going to get.
‘Are you ready to go, Kyria Delikaris?’
Libby’s eyes flew open to see the taxi driver, looking at her from his vehicle with a mixture of perplexity and concern, and it suddenly occurred to her that standing outside Rion’s front door with tears rolling down her cheeks was an exceptionally thoughtless thing to be doing. Whilst he’d have to publicly confess that they were getting divorced at some point, he didn’t need speculation starting now.
‘I just—need to do one last thing,’ she replied, and without giving a second thought to the pros and cons she turned and rang the doorbell.
Rion opened the door instantly. If she hadn’t known better she would have guessed that he’d been leaning up against it, contemplating whether to come after her.