CHAPTER FOURTEEN
‘I LOVE YOU.’
The words drop over me as he thrusts into me, his possession complete. I reject the words at the same time as I welcome him. I am fevered and frantic, afraid and so aware of every pulsing need inside my body.
He grabs my hands, lacing his fingers through mine and pinning them wide on either side of my head. His eyes stare down at me.
He thrusts again, harder, deeper, and he says it again.
‘I love you.’
He drops his mouth and kisses the words into me, swirling them into me, pushing them through me as he moves, each three-word bomb detonating in time with his body’s possession, so that I am being stirred to the height of desire even as I want to scream and push him away. Even as I am terrified and innately rejecting his sentiment.
‘Don’t!’ I say, sobbing, and he pauses, his body still, as if I’m rejecting the sex.
I’m not. The sex is what I want.
‘Don’t say that.’
‘I love you,’ he challenges, his eyes locked to mine. Something inside me flutters. Hope? Pleasure? Relief?
But I shake my head. ‘This isn’t love.’
He thrusts into me again. ‘It is for me.’
I shouldn’t be able to function in the midst of this, and yet I’m climbing higher and higher. My body is so sensitive that even the air around me is making me shiver with awareness. I can feel it waving over my body. I arch my back, tilting my hips, and he moves inside me again.
‘I love you.’
I don’t fight it. I don’t reject the words. I let them fill me up. I let them curl around my heart and for a moment I pretend they’re what I want. Just for a moment.
It is a coming together ruled by animalistic passion, and yet there is a raw emotionalism to it as well. His fingers squeeze mine as we come together, and he kisses me, and I know what he’s thinking without him saying it.
He loves me.
Words that so many people find joyous and welcome fill me with dread. They are tainted by past misuse and all its negative associations. Ethan tells me he loves me but I hear Jeremy, and I instantly recall the disaster that followed.
I lie beneath Ethan, his weight on me, his body beautiful and warm, strong and hard. I feel his warmth and strength and I wish it would bleed into me. I am going to need to be strong.
‘Excuse me.’
The words come out cold and crisp. He’s still inside me and suddenly I need space and I need it now.
All I can think, as his words hover in the air like deceptive little bullets, is what an asshole he is. Why would he do this? Love is not why I’m here! Love is not what I want!
I pull my hands; he doesn’t argue. I push at his chest and roll him away from me, out of me, and then I stand up in one movement. I am shaking with desire and with anger. My negligee is ripped so I grab one of his shirts. It smells like him and my chest groans under the weight of certainty that soon it will be all I have of him.
‘What are you doing?’ he asks, watching me as I step into my jeans without bothering to put my undies back on. I tuck them into the back pocket and then run my hands through my hair.
‘What do you think?’ I respond with the same arctic chill.
‘Listen.’ He stands, the word soothing and gentle. ‘Don’t run off.’
I glare at him. ‘Does it look like I’m running off?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m not,’ I snap back, storming into the lounge area and scooping up my bag.
I’m struck by the similarities to that first morning when I said goodbye to him—when I thought it would be the last goodbye.
I push my clutch under my arm and am instantly steadied by its presence. ‘I’m walking away.’
‘Alicia...’ he groans, and when I spin back to him I see he’s pulled a pair of low-slung jeans on. They sit on his hips, so I can see the protrusion of where his bones meet the sinew and strength of his shape.
It dries my mouth.
I have kissed every part of him. And I’ll never touch him again.
‘Don’t.’ It’s a shaky, hollow plea. ‘Don’t say it again. If it’s really how you feel, then please respect that I don’t want to hear it.’
‘You love me too,’ he says, prowling towards me.
‘No!’ I deny it on every level except one. Deep in my heart I wearily admit the truth of what he’s said.
He kisses me gently. ‘Yes.’
And, infuriatingly, I feel him smile against my mouth.
I stamp my foot down on his. ‘No.’
He rips his mouth away in surprise, his eyes laughing when they meet mine. ‘What the hell...?’
But then he’s back, kissing me again, holding me to him, holding me tight.
‘You love me. And I know that you’re not ready to see that, or to say it. But I think you feel it. I’m not going to walk away from this.’
I make a shuddering noise, as though I’m hyperventilating.
‘I’m not going to crowd you either. I’m just going to be in your life until you’re ready.’
That same little kernel in my heart is jumping up and down. I ignore it.
‘Why?’ It’s a question loaded with suspicion.
‘Because this is special. I know that you’ve been hurt and that you’re shit-scared to trust someone again. But I’m not Jeremy. And I love you.’
‘He—’
‘Didn’t love you,’ Ethan murmurs. ‘No guy who really loved someone could do what he did.’
He shrugs, and the simple truth is sitting between us like a diamond I never noticed before.
It makes so much sense.
Jeremy never loved me.
It is so simple and so immediately freeing.
Except there’s nothing simple about the tangle of what I’m feeling now.
I’m still so angry. I’m angry at Jeremy and at Ethan, and I’m angry at myself for letting it get this far.
‘I need to go,’ I say.
‘Alicia,’ he says grimly. ‘Don’t walk away from this.’
I storm towards the door and wrench it inwards. I have no concept of what I feel, nor of what I want. I know only that I need to get away from Ethan before I start actual ugly crying.
‘I have to go.’ I force myself to meet his eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’
* * *
I don’t sleep. I brood. Ally has left me after I put everything on the line. Ally has left me after I did everything I could to help her see why she should stay.
She is everywhere I look in the hotel room. The bed smells of her, of me, of us. It is rumpled from where we lay. My towels have been used by her. We have made love on just about every surface of this damned hotel room.
I pace through it as the minutes of the night groan heavily, sombrely past. I am at the funeral of our relationship and I don’t know if I should rip my hair out or... I don’t know. I press my hands into my eyes, hard, and then I blink, staring out at the city as dawn slowly spreads like the yolk of an egg being cracked into a pan.
I stare at New York and I imagine I’m not here. That I’m back in London.
I try to picture my life BA—Before Ally—and I can’t.
I know I have a heap on in the next year, but suddenly it’s all so pointless.
Is she thinking of me? Is she missing me?
A little before six o’clock there is a knock at my door, and every part of me responds with a surge of relief. I wrench it inwards, a smile on my face as I prepare to pull Ally into my arms and do whatever it takes to keep her in my life.
My smile drops.
It’s not Ally.
* * *
I am in agony.
I am in pain.
I am alone.
I stare up at the ceiling, the incessant ticking of my clock like a sombre marching band. It is a noise that I used to find hypnotic and reassuring but that now makes me want to stab my ears.
Or is that just my general mood?
Everything seemed so easy two weeks ago. It all made so much sense.
We were fucking.
And having fun.
We both knew what was at stake if we fell in love. We both knew why we couldn’t.
And yet we did it anyway.
But love terrifies me. Loving Ethan even more so.
He’s not just a normal guy—someone I can trust to look after my heart and keep it safe with his. He is a rock star. A celebrity. He has the adoration of the world.
I would worry all the time that some other woman was going to usurp me.
It would be so much worse even than with Jeremy.
I give up on sleep. I’m exhausted, but the relief of dreams will not come. I am still wearing what I came home in yesterday. His shirt is soft against my skin. I breathe it in and I cry more tears. I sob into the darkness of my room. I pull my blinds aside a little and stare out at New York. A lamp from overhead casts a perfect cone of light into the street.
I rip the shirt off impatiently and pull one of my own from the drawer, not bothering with a bra. It’s a simple floaty black blouse with dark grey beading stitched across the front. I rake my hair over one shoulder.
He will leave in two days and then my city will be my own. I won’t have to wonder if I’ll run into him. He’ll be gone. In London.
Until he’s not.
Until he’s back in New York and I know about it from Twitter or the newspapers.
I close my eyes, anguish heavy upon me. I can hardly breathe.
I can’t lose him.
I can’t.
Maybe that’s just inviting pain. Maybe I’ll be hurt one day and it will be ten thousand times worse than what I went through with Jeremy because these feelings I have for Ethan are so different, so raw and powerful and pure. But I can’t walk away from what we share just because one day it might end. It would be like never going to school because one day you might lose your dream job.
What’s that expression about loving and losing? It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? Something like that.
I tiptoe out of my room and lift my keys silently from the nightstand. My clutch purse is there too. I remove my bank card and his key card and check my reflection—and thank Christ I had the foresight to do so when I see that yesterday’s mascara is now two sludgy racetracks along my cheeks.
I slip into the bathroom and lather my cheeks, washing away all of yesterday except the pieces I want to keep.
His kisses.
His touch.
His words.
I love you.
I smile at my reflection. I clean my teeth, brush my hair, and then I sneak out of the apartment, making sure the door clicks softly behind me so as not to wake Cassie or Eliza.
I catch a cab but get it to pull over a block from the Gramercy. I stop for breakfast burritos and coffee. His love for fried food was a constant in our brief, blinding relationship. Besides, once I see him again I have no plans to leave his bed for the foreseeable future—arming myself with sustenance seems wise.
The waiting is soul-destroying. I glare at the burger flipper until finally he places the food into a brown paper bag and hands me the coffee cups in a recycled card tray.
‘Thanks,’ I mumble, pressing my card to the machine and then moving towards the Gramercy with my head bent.
The whole time I imagine what I’ll say to him.
How can I convey to him that I’m willing to risk everything—even my heart, even knowing what heartache feels like? How can I apologise for letting him down last night? For not being brave when he was so far out on a limb?
I keep my head down as I glide into the Gramercy, wincing as a flash goes off in my face. I’ll get better at that. I’ll learn to live with the paparazzi and the other women who want Ethan I-love-you Ash.
Because he does love me.
Believing that takes a leap of faith, but I’ve already leapt. For him. And for myself.
For us.
Because it’s what my own heart demands of me.
I jam my finger against the button for the lift impatiently, turning my back on the curious stares of a couple of women across the lobby. But heat spreads through my cheeks. They obviously know who I am, and can probably guess where I’m on my way to.
So what?
The lift whooshes open and I step inside, waving Ethan’s key over the panel and pressing the number for his floor. It climbs up quickly and smoothly—and, oh, my heart.
How it pounds and races and flips and flops.
I stare straight ahead, trying to look outwardly calm when I am an absolute mess.
What if he’s angry?
What if I hurt him too much?
Well, then, I’ll fix it. I’ll make him see that I was just scared.
And he’ll understand. Because he loves me.
I hold that thought to my chest like a talisman as I reach his door. I think about knocking. I lift my hand but something stops me. I smile slowly, imagining him asleep in bed, naked. I think of the best way to wake him up. The most meaningful apology.
I slip the key card from my back pocket and slide it in the door, then push the door inwards, juggling the coffee cups in one hand with the bag of burritos dangling from the same fingertips. I’m purposely slow because I don’t want to wake him prematurely.
But I needn’t have worried.
He’s awake.
Sitting at the table we first made love on the night we met.
And he’s not alone.
I recognise her instantly. Dark hair like glossy black opal, shimmering over impossibly slender shoulders. A face without even a hint of make-up still looking Vogue-cover worthy. Skimpy singlet top barely concealing her tiny breasts. And she’s clearly not wearing a bra—and pulling it off without a hint of cleavage sweat.
It isn’t just Sienna Di Giorgio. It’s all my fears—everything I’ve worried about—staring right back at me.
I don’t know who’s more shocked.
Me. Ethan. Or Sienna.
Memories of Jeremy and Fiona barrel towards me—it is just the same, but so much worse. I am the outsider again. The interloper. The home-wrecker. I look at them together and they make so much sense. They are perfect together. Two gloriously perfect celebrities.
‘Ally—’ He stands so abruptly he knocks over a glass of water. It seems to fall in slow motion, cascading through the air and landing with a thump, spreading liquid over the tabletop.
He’s fully dressed. He looks good. And he looks bad. Like he hasn’t done a heap of sleeping.
Jealousy unfurls inside me. No, it doesn’t unfurl. That sounds too gentle and progressive. It explodes like a nuclear detonation, singeing every single nerve ending in my body.
‘Wait a second.’
He surprises us all with the firmness of his command. I stare at him, and then at her, and finally, after long seconds which feel like minutes, I shake my head as if to wake myself up.
‘I...’
I stare at him. He’s moving around the table, and if I don’t act fast he’s going to come up to me. He’s going to touch me.
I swallow and shake my head again, my eyes locked on his pleadingly. It is a silent plea, but he hears it loud and clear. He stops moving and I place the key card I’m still holding in my fingertips onto the side table.
‘I just wanted to bring this back,’ I say.
I can’t look at him any more. I turn around and walk quickly out through the door, bumping my elbow on the way out so that coffee spills down my front. I swear between my teeth but don’t stop. I pick up speed as I get closer to the lift, dumping the coffee and the bag of food in an aluminium rubbish bin. I press the lift button.
But it doesn’t open straight away, and Ethan is behind me. I feel him before I see his wobbly reflection in the scrubbed metal surface of the lift doors.
‘Don’t touch me,’ I say urgently.
‘Ally, that looked bad. The timing was fucking awful. But it’s not what you think.’
I shut my eyes and drop my head forward, pressing my heated forehead against the lift.
‘What do I think?’ I whisper.
The lift doors whoosh open and I step in gratefully. He follows.
‘Get out,’ I say mutinously, staring straight ahead.
‘No.’ He presses the button for the ground floor.
‘Ethan...’ It’s a whispered plea. ‘Leave me the hell alone.’
‘Why did you come back?’
Tears sting my eyes. The hopes I’d cherished only minutes earlier are lined up in my head, pointing at me and laughing, mocking me. The lift begins to suck us downwards. It can’t move fast enough for me. Soon I’ll be out. Soon I’ll be able to breathe.
He moves quickly, reaching across and slamming his hand onto the emergency stop button, his body caging mine. His hands are on either side of me, trapping me in the frame of his beautiful body.
My eyes jerk to his. ‘Restart the elevator.’
‘Not until you hear me out,’ he says with raw emotion in his words. ‘Sienna arrived thirty minutes before you did. She came to talk. That’s all.’
I shake my head, emotions, feelings, thoughts, doubts and fears bubbling through me. I don’t know what to say, and I certainly don’t know how to say it. But I have to say something. He’s staring at me and the silence pounds between us expectantly, angrily, needily.
‘Does she want to get back with you?’ It’s a whisper.
He doesn’t answer immediately and my heart cracks, my blood freezes. It’s Jeremy all over again. The lying. The uncertainty.
‘That’s not what I want,’ he says.
I shake my eyes. It’s all the confirmation I need.
Is this my fault? Do I have some gene that leads me to seek out unavailable bastards?
‘But that’s why she’s here?’
I lift a hand to his chest and then instantly regret it when I feel his heart beating beneath my palm as though it’s talking to me. It’s racing.
‘Don’t lie to me.’
His eyes lock to mine. ‘Yes.’
I suck in a breath. It gets nowhere near my lungs.
‘Do you know how often I’ve thought of Sienna since meeting you?’
I glare at him.
‘Barely at all. Even when I’ve spoken to her I’ve been thinking of you.’
‘You’ve spoken to her?’ I flush hot and cold all over. It’s history repeating itself and I cannot bear it.
He has the decency to look somewhat apologetic. ‘She’s called me a couple of times.’
‘Of course she has!’ I say, with an angry shake of my head. ‘I told you from the beginning—I’m not going to get in the middle of this. I’m not! I won’t.’
‘I told her it’s over. It is over between her and me.’
He presses a kiss against my hair and I shake my head in instant visceral rejection of the intimacy.
‘You have to believe me.’
‘I can’t.’
I want to. I want to so badly.
‘I’m your Sienna Band-Aid, remember?’
For a second he looks vague, as if he doesn’t even remember that he said that. Then, ‘Jesus. That was a stupid throwaway comment.’
‘Like when you told me you loved me?’ I retort, my heart boxing itself away with every moment that passes.
A disembodied voice comes into the lift. ‘This carriage will be restarted in fifteen seconds. Safety checks confirm operation.’
‘Christ.’
He moves his hands to my cheeks, holding me still as he does so often, trying to forge a line of trust and reliance between us.
‘This changes nothing.’
My heart is wrapping itself up, determined not to crack any further.
‘Don’t you get what a big deal this was for me?’ I stare at him, honesty in my face. ‘I am terrified of what I feel for you and yet I came here anyway. I decided to trust you, and that was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made.’
‘I’m not Jeremy,’ he says softly. ‘Most guys aren’t. In six years I never once thought about cheating on Sienna—and, believe me, I had plenty of opportunities. That’s not who I am.’
I squeeze my eyes shut at the sense of his words, and at the temptation to believe him. Because deep down I do, and pushing him away makes not a skerrick of sense.
‘The problem is, Jeremy didn’t just cheat on his wife and on me. He made me question everything. He made me question what I think and feel so that I can’t say if I’m misreading you or myself right now.’
‘I know. I get it. I begged you to trust me and you did—and then you found my ex in my hotel room. Any woman would find that hard, let alone after what you’ve been through.’
His understanding should mollify me, but it doesn’t. ‘I don’t remember how to trust. I thought I could... I came here... I don’t know what I was expecting when I came here. It was wrong.’
‘But you did want us to give this a shot?’
I shake my head and then nod, and then the elevator moves and I suck in another breath, trying to equalise.
‘Then let’s try. Please.’
‘No.’ A short, emphatic word. ‘No.’ Louder. I lift my hands and push at his chest. ‘You can burn me once, Ethan. But not again. Not again.’
The lift doors open. There’s a team of technicians there. I step out and, sensing that he might follow me, spin around.
‘Don’t.’
I lift a hand, staring at him, and I walk away backwards for a few steps, pinning him with my eyes, making sure he doesn’t step off the lift.
He doesn’t. But he watches me the whole way across the foyer.
I feel his eyes on me and I know it’s for the last time.