One Last Gift, page 30
“So,” she said, perhaps a touch too brightly. “How was your day?” She poured hot water into the teapot, then carried it to the small kitchen table, where they both sat, waiting for the tea to brew.
Sam grunted and shrugged noncommittally. He was back working as a solicitor. He’d caved in the end, mainly because he’d had no idea what else to do. He was no longer at Jessica’s firm, but her dad had not, apparently, wanted to ruin his reputation completely, so he’d taken a job at another firm right in the middle of central London. He’d only been at it two months, and the grind was already getting to him.
“You?” he asked, feeling the weight of the brief silence. The awkwardness hung between them—and really, what had he expected? Actually, he’d expected a lot worse. He’d expected her to shout at him or something, given it was the first time they were meeting up since he’d left her. It was why he’d invited her to his house, rather than meeting up somewhere public—both so she could rage at him, if she wanted to, without worrying about what other people were thinking, and so that he didn’t have to deal with other people knowing just what a dick he’d been. But she’d been polite, calm. She’d always been in control, Jess—probably why she was so good at her job—but she seemed settled now, too, in a way he wasn’t sure he’d ever noticed before.
“Oh, you know, the same.” She waved a hand in the air.
But she loved it, Sam knew. She’d always loved what she did, and he had no doubt that she’d take over from her dad one day as head of the firm.
“So,” Jessica said, the word loaded.
“So.”
She laughed a little. “Oh God. I didn’t expect this to be so awkward.”
Sam smiled wryly, but said nothing. Because he had expected it to be awkward—but then, he’d walked out on her, not the other way around. Sam’s phone vibrated in his pocket, and he slipped it out, grateful for the distraction as Jessica poured the tea. His heart did an automatic little lurch, like it seemed to do nearly constantly when he got messages these days.
Stupid, to think it might be Cassie. Why would she randomly be texting him? She never had before. But it still felt as if a part of him was waiting for her to get in touch. Then again, maybe it was better that she didn’t. Maybe it was better that the whole thing, whatever that was, stayed closed.
He opened up the message from Sheila, frowning because they’d had barely any contact since he’d left New York.
Hey honey. Someone sent me this, just passing it on in case of interest. X
Along with the message there was a link, which, when Sam clicked on it, turned out to be an advert for a job. A job, working as a climbing instructor. It was a short-term thing, for two months this autumn. Teaching, running workshops, that kind of thing. The pay was terrible. And it was in Wales, in the middle of fucking nowhere. He couldn’t do it. It would be irresponsible of him, when he’d only just gotten his shit together again.
Jessica glanced down at his phone. “What’s that?”
“It’s…” He looked up at her as he put the phone to one side. “It’s a climbing job—someone in New York sent it to me in case I was interested. But I’m not,” he said quickly, feeling the need to explain, for some reason.
She met his gaze head on, in that very direct way of hers. “Why not?”
He ran a hand across the back of his neck. “I don’t know. Because it’s silly. A job for a twenty-year-old, not someone who should be halfway up the career ladder by now.”
“But you are halfway up the career ladder. And you hate it.”
He grimaced. “It’d be like my dad,” he said quietly. “Taking a short-term job, jumping around all over the place. It’s flighty.”
“It doesn’t have to be. Not if it’s something you love, something that means something to you. Did you enjoy it?”
“Yeah. I guess I did.” It had certainly been better than being stuck in an office, at any rate.
“Well then.” She gave him a small smile and he knew it meant this was the end of the small talk.
“I’m so sorry, Jessica.”
“So you’ve said,” she said wryly. And he had, over message, but still…
“I mean it,” he said. “I shouldn’t have hurt you like that. If I could take it back, I would.”
She nodded slowly. “Would you go through with it, if you could do it again? The wedding,” she clarified, when he stared at her.
“I…” He swallowed. “I would do things differently.” It wasn’t the whole truth. He knew now, as he’d known then, that marrying Jessica was not the right thing to do. But it felt callous to say it out loud, and he didn’t want to hurt her any more than he already had.
She nodded again, processing. Then she picked up her tea, took a sip. “I was so mad,” she said. And for a moment, the calm expression dropped and her eyes flashed. “God, if you could’ve seen. I smashed up the wedding cake.” She laughed a little, even though there was nothing remotely funny about it.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, wishing that he could come up with something more adequate. But there was nothing, really. Nothing that could take away what he’d put her through.
She set down her tea. “I know you are.” She ran a hand through her waves, then shook her hair out, the auburn shimmering. “And I know I kept pushing. After Tom, when you fell apart like that, I didn’t know what else to do but pretend it was fine and push ahead with it.” Fell apart like that. He supposed that was what had happened. She drew her shoulders up. “And so, I have things I’m sorry about too. I’m not saying it’s my fault,” she said. “At all. But it wasn’t right, to have the wedding then, and I should’ve acknowledged that sooner, should’ve tried to be there for you in the way you needed, rather than just thinking about what I wanted.”
God, she really was something. How many people would be able to deal with being left at the altar and stay so calm, so rational?
“For a while, afterward,” she continued, staring at her tea, “I thought that we should get back together.” His stomach lurched a little, though he said nothing, let her continue. Closure, she’d said, when she asked to meet. She wanted closure. So the least he could do was listen to what she had to say. “After I got over the mad part, I mean.” Her eyebrows pulled together. “Well, mostly over it, in any case.” She looked up from her tea. “But I’ve had some time to think and I…” She blew out a breath. “I don’t think we were right together, not really. I don’t think I was the one for you.” It was what he’d said to Cassie—or a version of it, anyway, when she’d accused him of not sorting things out with Jessica.
Jessica cocked her head at him, all beautiful angles and sculpted cheekbones. “I think…I think I was trying to make you fit with what I wanted.”
“And I wasn’t? What you wanted?”
She laughed, and it sounded so genuine. “The problem is, I think you were trying to make yourself fit too. Even now…” She leveled a look at him. “I love my job. I love what I do, and I want to stay in London, stay with my dad’s firm. What about you?”
“I don’t…” He couldn’t finish the sentence. Couldn’t say that the vision she’d just conjured up in his mind made him feel all itchy and sticky, like he needed to get outside for some air. She nodded, and he knew he didn’t have to finish. She got it.
“I was hoping I’d be enough, in the long run, to make you stay, but I’ve realized, with a bit of time—and maybe, OK, a bit of therapy…” she shot him a grin that he did his best to return, “that it wasn’t fair, on either of us. You didn’t love me, not in the way that I need.”
“You deserve better,” he said. “I was never good enough for you.”
She reached out across the table, laid her hand over his. “It wasn’t just you. I don’t think I loved you in the way you deserve, either. Because if I had, I wouldn’t have pushed ahead. I would have seen what you needed. I thought…I thought I understood about Tom, but really, I just wanted to make it better the way I thought it should be, the way I wanted it to be, and I…” She shook her head as she broke off. “You’re a good person, whether you believe that or not, and you do deserve to be happy. And me…I wasn’t going to make you happy.” She paused, then said, “This life, it’s not going to make you happy, either.”
He let it settle. Wondered briefly what would have happened if Tom were still here. Would he have gone through with it? Would Tom have convinced him to walk down the aisle, to keep walking this path, as he’d once thought he would? Or would he have made him see, before the wedding day, that it wasn’t right? Tom was never one to push, so maybe he wouldn’t have said anything, unless it became clear that Sam wasn’t happy. But he had a flash, then, of telling Tom that he and Jessica were engaged. Remembered Tom’s face, considering.
If you’re happy, I’m happy.
That’s all he’d ended up saying, but Sam wondered now if there was something more. If Tom had known, back then, that it wasn’t right.
He slid his hand out from under Jessica’s, reached out to tuck her hair behind her ear in a friendly gesture. “I’m sorry. I wish it was different. I wish I could’ve been the one to give you what you need. I wish…” He broke off. I wish I could love you sounded just a tiny bit harsh, didn’t it? Even if, on some level, he knew that he’d never loved Jessica deeply enough, never loved her in that way that made you hurt. Never loved her in the way he loved Cassie.
“You know what my dad says,” she said wryly. “Wishes won’t get you riches.”
He let out a huffing laugh. “Right. Though it’s not really that great a saying, I have to admit.” He sighed. “I don’t know how you can even consider forgiving me.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Who said I’ve forgiven you completely?” She laughed when he grimaced. “I think fifty percent forgiveness is about all you can hope for.”
“I’ll take it,” Sam said immediately, and Jessica grinned.
Then her expression grew more serious. “I’ve told you,” she said. “I had my own visions of that day, and I didn’t take into account that you’d just lost your best friend, that you were grieving, that you had your own demons. We were both being selfish, I suppose.” She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t recommend that you do it to anyone else, though—being left at the altar sucks.” She gave him a little punch on the arm, and he laughed, though the sound was weary.
“Noted.” He got to his feet, feeling odd now, sitting there. “Will you be OK?”
“Yeah. I think I will.” She stood too and they both walked automatically to the front door. “Will you?”
“Yeah,” he said. And one way or another, he would be. He’d figure something out.
“Think about what I said, OK?” He frowned. “About the climbing job. Because, well, following a dream, an ambition…Going after something you enjoy, it’s not flighty, Sam. Running toward, well, that’s different to running away, now, isn’t it?”
“Since when did you get so wise?”
She rolled her eyes. “I have always been wise.” She opened the front door, started to step outside, then looked back at him. “Sam?”
“Yeah?”
“It was Cassie, at the door earlier.” His heart jolted. Literally jolted, sending his body into mini spasm, just at the sound of her name. Jessica’s lips curved into a soft, understanding smile. Like she knew, somehow, even though he’d never said anything to her. “I just thought you should know.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Sam sent his dad a quick message, explaining that he might be a bit late to meet him, figuring that, all things considered, his dad could wait thirty minutes, if need be. He shoved his phone away in his pocket, then rolled his shoulders a few times to relieve the tension. He looked up at the block of flats, toward the window he knew was Cassie and Hazel’s living room.
He reached out, pressed the buzzer, and was let in. He tried not to think as he climbed the stairs. Thinking about what he should say would just fuck up his mind. It had taken him five days after Jessica had told him it had been Cassie at the front door to work up the courage to come here, and he wasn’t backing out now.
It was Hazel who opened the door. She frowned. “You’re not my takeaway.”
“Err, no.”
She looked at him for a moment more with those very direct green eyes, then stepped aside. “Well, come on in, Malone.” She closed the door behind him, gave him a hug. There was something so simple, so easy about Hazel.
“So,” she said. “Coming over for a girls’ night in? I’ve got some face masks stored away for emergencies if you fancy it?”
“Ah…” He glanced around the flat, down to where he knew Cassie’s room was. He’d never been in there, but he’d seen her come out of it while he and Tom waited for her.
Hazel walked to the little kitchen/living space. He followed automatically. “Cassie’s not here.” She picked up a bottle of red wine off the counter, poured two glasses and handed one to him without asking. “It’s from Bordeaux,” she added.
He took the wine automatically. “When will she be back?” And would it be weird, to wait for her indefinitely? Why hadn’t he thought about that beforehand?
“She’s in Wales,” Hazel said bluntly. “She left yesterday.”
“She’s in…” It hit him then, straight in the gut. “The house.” He remembered Tom talking a bit about it, at the end of last year. He hadn’t gotten the ins and outs of it, but he remembered—that was what the treasure hunt was leading to. A house, in Wales, for Cassie to start her own business.
So that must mean…“She finished it? She finished the treasure hunt?”
Hazel smiled, nodded. “She did.”
Was that what she’d come round to tell him? Had she wanted to make the point that she’d done it, after he’d accused her of being too scared to get to the end? It hadn’t been fair of him, to snap that in her face. And he hadn’t been thinking of that, not really. He’d just wanted her to own up to her feelings for him, because he knew that, unlike the twenty-year-old girl she’d once been, the one who’d held such certainty about him, this Cassie was too afraid to go there.
“And she’s gone? Already?” Hazel nodded. So much for her not being brave, Jesus.
“So she quit her job and everything?” For a moment, he wanted Hazel to say no, that she’d just gone to Wales to scope out the landscape. Then he felt immediately guilty for it. He wanted this for Cassie. Regardless of the fact that it meant she wouldn’t be here, near him, he still wanted it for her.
“Yep.”
“Wow.”
“I know. Our girl’s got guts.” Our girl. Did she mean anything by that? he wondered. Either way, it sent another punch to his stomach.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “Yeah, she does.” So, she’d left. She’d actually left. Maybe, then, she’d just come to his door to say goodbye.
“How long is she there for?”
“I don’t know. For good, I think, if it works out.” For good. She was gone, for good.
He took another sip of his wine, suddenly feeling like he needed it. “How is she?” he asked, and Hazel smiled.
“Good, I think. I’m going to visit her—and the house—next week.” She hesitated. “You could come too, you know.”
Could he? Just show up, with Hazel, like that? “I…” He cleared his throat. “Thanks. I’ll think about it,” he lied. It now felt ridiculous to have come here in the first place. She’d left him after all. She’d made it perfectly clear she didn’t feel the same—or didn’t want to feel the same. She’d walked away from him in Cornwall—and then she’d done the same when she came to his house. He was stupid, to cling on to hope. She was doing what was right for her, and he was proud of her for that. And maybe, now, he needed to do what was right for him, too.
“Thanks, Hazel.” He put the remainder of his wine down on the countertop. “I, err, best be going.”
“All right.” She gave him a quick, hard hug then stepped back. “I’m still rooting for you, don’t you worry.”
“Huh?”
She smiled. “You know what I mean.” His stomach did that little squirm thing. Maybe at the thought that she was implying that she knew everything—and, let’s be honest, Cassie probably had told her everything. “You know, you can be a bit of an idiot sometimes, but I always liked you.”
Sam snorted quietly at the half-compliment, then sighed.
“Not like her, then,” he said, before he could stop himself.
But that only made her grin. “Now you know that’s not true.”
But he didn’t, did he? That was the problem. He couldn’t separate what he’d felt from her, and what she’d said.
He walked down the two flights of stairs, stepped back out into the autumn chill. Watched a bus pass him, jammed full of people. Then he got out his phone. Opened the message from Sheila, stared at it. And, with something he couldn’t quite identify in his gut, he clicked on the link.
Three Months Later
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Sam’s breath misted out in front of him as he crossed the church graveyard, merging into the gray around him, brought on by the overcast sky threatening rain—or snow, if the hopefuls on the radio were to be believed. He passed the old crumbling gravestones, ones which had long since been forgotten, and headed across to the newer part of the graveyard, the dampness of the grass seeping through his shoes.
There was a nod to it being the week of Christmas at the church, with a Christmas tree outside, modestly decorated with white fairy lights, and there were wreaths on some of the gravestones from where loved ones had come to visit. He saw, from a few steps away, that there was no wreath on Tom’s, though. Should he have brought one? No, he thought, Tom wouldn’t have cared. He doubted he would have cared about the flowers, either, but he couldn’t show up empty-handed.
