‘I said that. How was I to know that fate can sometimes have a nasty habit of laughing at all your good intentions?’
‘Forget it, Gabriel. Forget all the fancy words.’ Restlessness invaded her body like a sudden burning itch that needed to be scratched. ‘Have you run through a few of your pocket-sized dates and decided that you weren’t quite through with me just yet?’
‘I’ve missed you. Have you missed me? Tell me that you haven’t and I’ll walk out of this house and you will never see me again.’
As ultimatums went, that one went beyond the barrier. She didn’t want him here, did she, invading her life all over again? Smooth talking his way back into sex because of unfinished business...did she? But she hesitated because the finality of what he was offering terrified her. She might not really have expected to see him ever again, but now she could see that she had stupidly hoped, because her love was so strong that it seemed incredible that she could be left with nothing overnight.
Now she knew that if she turned away this time she really would never see him again. Fragile hope would be killed dead.
‘Well?’ Gabriel prompted shakily.
‘So I missed you! Big deal. Does that change anything?’
‘You’re the first woman I’ve ever missed.’
‘Am I supposed to be flattered by that?’ But she was. And she didn’t want to be any more than she wanted to feel the racing of her heart; any more than she wanted to be moved—stupidly, idiotically moved— by the way he was looking at her with eyes that were somehow naked.
She didn’t want any of that because none of that changed the man that he was, a man who was incapable of giving.
‘You can’t give anything, Gabriel,’ she said, reconfirming that simple fact to herself just by voicing it out loud; reminding herself that she had been sucked in not once but twice and that she was not going to be sucked in again. ‘And you have no right to barge into my house, to sweet-talk my friend into letting you in so that you can sit there and start spinning stupid stories just because I didn’t give you what you wanted!’
‘I’m not here to spin stupid stories.’
But Alice was in full flow. Memories rained down on her, memories of how much she had given and how little had been returned. ‘You’re empty inside, Gabriel! One stupid three-second conversation with someone you met in the village and you took off in a hurry. The merest shadow of a hint that you might have been expected to provide more than just inventive sex and you couldn’t escape fast enough! And now you have the nerve to come here and talk about missing me...’
‘I get it, Alice. I should have got it sooner, but I get it now.’
‘Don’t you dare try and make nice with me for your own benefit!’ And stop looking at me like that... ‘Repeat: you can’t commit! You can’t even plan a month ahead with any woman because you might need to run away long before then! You don’t just want to make sure that you don’t put down roots, you want to make sure that you don’t even leave footprints!’ She was shaking like a leaf, all the hurt and anger bubbling up inside her.
‘Oh God, Alice. Do you think that I don’t know that every single word you’re saying is true?’ He sat forward, angling the chair so that he could lean his forearms on his thighs. Still hunched, he raised his eyes to look at her. ‘You were right when you once accused me of being emotionally lazy. I am. Was. Always have been.’
Was...? Hope flared, as persistent as a weed and as tenacious as ivy. Drained by her outburst and by the desperate range of emotion surging wildly through her, she remained silent, her breathing heavy and laboured, as though she had run a marathon. She wanted to drag her eyes away from him but found that she couldn’t, any more than she could stop her heart from opening up like a wound that had only been scabbed over, bleeding all over again. ‘I want you to leave,’ she whispered. ‘You need to leave.’
‘Please. Let me just... It’s hard for me; just hear me out. There’s something you probably don’t know about me.... No, there’s something you definitely don’t know about me...’ That standing-on-the-edge-of-a-precipice feeling was back, but he didn’t care whether he fell or not, or whether there would be a safety net to catch him or not. Nothing could have been worse than the past few weeks without her.
‘I was dragged up in foster homes. You told me your story, and maybe I should have repaid the confidence, but confiding is something I’ve never done. I’ve never known how. It’s something that’s sucked out of you when you’re a kid in care. You learn to get tough fast. So, I’ve never told anyone my story.’ He smiled crookedly at her. ‘Until now.’