The next day Libby tried her best to put on a brave face, going about her daily routine as if nothing had happened. The news of Angus’s imminent departure at the end of the month hung over her like a black cloud. Every time she thought of him leaving she felt sheer panic. She had already lost Luca, she couldn’t bear the thought of losing him too. She tried to tell herself it was only temporary, that he would be back before she knew it, but she knew just how unlikely that was. A single, attractive, successful man in New York would be snapped up by anyone in their right mind. She had been mad to think he had feelings for her beyond friendship. It was just as she had suspected all along. He loved her in a platonic way, just as she had done. It was only her feelings that had utterly spiralled out of control. It would be better if he never found out. To think how close she had come to telling him…
As they ate their dinner that evening, Angus said ‘Are you okay, Libs? You’ve been quite quiet today. I just want to check everything is alright. If you don’t want me to leave, please tell me… I realise it might feel too much for you to cope with being here by yourself with Izzy. I’m sure I can ask for a delay. I don’t want to leave you if you aren’t ready…’
‘No, it’s fine. I’ll be fine…I don’t want you to feel trapped here, trapped by our business. You were only every meant to be here temporarily, I knew that all along.’
Suddenly, without warning she burst into tears. Noisy, gasping sobs escaped her and there was nothing she could do to stop them. She put her head in her hands, trying to calm her breathing down. This was awful. How could she explain her reaction to Angus without giving her feelings away?
‘Libby!’ Angus was out of his chair in seconds. He darted across to her and wrapped her in his arms. ‘Don’t cry! What’s the matter?’
She pulled away and looked into his eyes. They were so full of love that for a moment she was thrown. She didn’t know how she could explain herself.
‘I’m sorry. It’s silly really. I’m embarrassed… I’m fine, truly.’
He kept looking at her, those blue eyes searching hers. ‘Really?’ he said.
She nodded weakly.
There was a long pause. Angus looked as though he was about to say something. She held his gaze and smiled through her tears.
‘Look, Libby. The truth is, there is someone I have fallen for since Jules…’ he said.
Her heart skipped several beats. She felt an icy shiver run slowly down her spine. Her eyes filled involuntarily with tears once again.
He looked really nervous. He took a steadying breath as if to calm himself. ‘Libby, there’s a reason why I think I should leave… I don’t really know how to say this. Things have become rather complicated….’
She held her breath.
‘Libby, the thing is… I think I have fallen in love with you…I know you don’t feel the same way. When the offer came for a fresh start in New York I thought it would be the perfect way to get me away from you, to give me a chance to stop loving you. Being in such close proximity to you every single day is driving me mad…I am so sorry. You must think I’m crazy…I promised myself I wouldn’t say anything. The last thing I want is to make you feel awkward, to ruin our friendship, I just feel I should explain why I need to go…’
Her stomach lurched as though she had just taken a step off the edge of a cliff. She couldn’t believe her ears. ‘Angus, I…’ The words caught in her throat and she couldn’t speak. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she took in what he had just told her. He was looking so worried. Her heart melted. She hardly dared believe it could be true. She felt so full of love for him, it was as if her heart was overflowing; she had never experienced anything like it.
‘I love you too,’ she whispered, smiling through her tears. ‘I have fallen completely in love with you too. Please, don’t go… I can’t bear the thought of you being apart from me for even one day, let alone six months…’ In a flash, Angus’s expression changed from anxious worry to relief and then unbounded joy.
‘I can’t believe it,’ he said, his breath coming out in a rush. ‘I vowed to myself I wouldn’t say anything. I thought you were going to think I was completely insane, that I was going to ruin our working relationship, our friendship, and that would have just destroyed me. I thought the best thing to do was put thousands of miles between us, but when I saw you crying, your reaction to my leaving gave me a shred of hope I hardly dared to believe. I just couldn’t keep it to myself any longer.’
He leaned across and kissed her gently on the lips, holding both of her hands in his. At the brush of his lips a thousand electric impulses exploded inside her. She thought her heart might combust with love. She was crying with happiness and laughing at the same time. He gently wiped the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs.
‘Don’t go,’ she whispered.
‘If you want me to stay, I will,’ he said.
‘I want you to stay. Of course I do,’ she said. ‘We’ve been through so much together, building our business, moving to Italy… It’s just been the most incredible adventure and you have made it the happiest year of my life. I can’t lose you…’
‘You don’t have to,’ he said. The way he was looking at her made her insides melt.
Angus pulled her to her feet. He moved her towards him, dwarfing her completely as he bent down to kiss her. He pushed his hips against hers as her back pressed up against the wall. His kiss was just as she had imagined all those times in her dreams. She could have kissed him for an eternity. She was bewitched by the sensations he was causing inside her. She wrapped her arms around him, moving closer to him, losing herself in the moment completely.
‘God, I’ve wanted to do that for so long,’ Angus said, smiling at her as he pulled away, leaning closer to kiss her once more on the lips. Her spine tingled with desire and her head spun. She felt desperate for him to continue. Her lips parted as she looked at him, unable to move or speak. They fell upon each other hungrily, kissing and exploring every part of each other’s bodies, their clothes disappearing in a trail of discarded items up the stairs and towards Libby’s bedroom door. They fell on the bed and lost themselves in each other, moving together as one, completely uninhibited, abandoning themselves in the moment. Libby had never known anything quite like it. The feelings she felt for him were so strong they overwhelmed her completely.
Later, as she lay in his arms, she felt as though she had finally found where she belonged. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t realised what was there, right in front of her, for all those years.
Having finally confessed their feelings, Libby and Angus’s love for each other deepened quickly and passionately. He turned down the offer of an exhibition in New York. Now that they had found each other there was no way either of them were willing to let the other go. Like a young couple in their very first romance they kissed for hours and hours, unable to pass each other by without some kind of physical contact. Their appetite for each other knew no bounds; they delighted in exploring each other’s bodies, spending endless hours making love. The strength of their feelings for each other had taken them both by surprise. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes of their failed relationships, they had found in each other a love that was stronger than anything they had experienced before. Over the past year Angus had become such a permanent fixture in Libby and Izzy’s lives that making the transition from friend to lover had been a natural and fluid development, as unstoppable as it would have seemed unthinkable just a year before.
Libby had never known such happiness. She floated around on cloud nine, a soppy grin rarely far from her cheeks. There was something incredible about being in a relationship with your best friend. They already knew each other inside out and back to front. There were no surprises. It just felt so natural and so perfectly right.