Chapter Thirty

Lexie had her suitcase packed, her flight booked, and a job back in the Austrian Alps lined up by the time she'd worked up the courage to go back into the office. She'd lost track of the number of missed calls from Theo and had deleted several voicemails without listening to them. But much as she didn't want to admit it, Fran was right—she couldn't just leave without having a face-to-face conversation.

Autumn was setting in now, with that definite "back to school" feel in the air as people rushed around the city in the morning. It was slightly cooler than it had been in recent weeks, and there were the very first signs of the leaves beginning to turn. Bath would look beautiful in the autumn, Lexie thought—the light would suit the golden hues, and the russet colors would no doubt compliment the sandy buildings. As she pushed the door to the shop open, she felt a pang of sadness that she wouldn't be here to see it.

Theo was hovering over the computer Harry was working at when Lexie walked in. His expression of relief when he saw her made her insides tighten, and she straightened her spine against it. She would not let herself get drawn in.

They both walked toward each other, meeting in the middle of the shop. She tilted her chin up. "I just came to tell you that I'm leaving," she said, before he could lurch into anything.

"You're what ?"

Out of the corner of her eye she could see Harry watching them. Theo clearly noticed too, because he grabbed her hand.

"Come with me," he snapped, and pulled her through the office and into the back room, past Ange, who had appeared balancing three cups of tea in her hands. She gave them a quizzical look but said nothing.

Theo shut the door behind them, and Lexie pressed herself against it as he moved away from her, tugging both hands through his hair.

"Look," he began, and she steeled herself.

She'd been expecting this—an excuse, some kind of pleading explanation. So let him get it out, then she could go.

"Yes, the contract you saw was about trying to cut you out."

Her heart jolted. She hadn't been expecting him to come out with it like that. "You—"

"But that was from the beginning of the year, Lexie." His hands dropped to his sides as he looked at her out of those coal eyes. "Mike had the idea before you'd even agreed to come back—before France. And at the time I thought, well, why not—because I'd spent five years working for this company, and you were acting like you didn't give a shit and I wanted to keep it going, because I thought that was what Richard would have wanted, because I thought I owed it to him to protect his legacy no matter what." He took a careful step toward where she was still pressed against the door, and she eyed him warily.

"I did give a shit," she said, her voice quieter than she would have liked. But already, she was speaking in past tense. Already, she was cutting herself out of it.

"I know that now. Of course I know that now. And things changed."

She folded her arms, gave him a narrow-eyed look. "What changed, exactly?"

"I got to know you," he said simply.

"But the paperwork I saw—"

"Was old. Lexie, you saw it hadn't been signed, right? It was an old contract, I promise you—I can show you the dates to prove it. Mike was here bringing up the idea again, trying to push because he wants a cut, but I'd already said no when you walked in. It was a stupid thing to think about in the first place. But I wasn't—I'm not —thinking anything like it anymore."

She said nothing, and he strode toward Ange's desk, tapped away at the keyboard, then turned the computer monitor to face her. "Here."

She glanced at it, though she was a little too far away to see what he was showing her—some sort of email, apparently. "This is an email chain between me and the solicitor, asking about cementing you as director in the future. If you want it. I wasn't going to say anything, not until the end of the year, because I knew you might not want it. But I wanted to check the option was there."

She said nothing, though her insides twisted again. The future. He'd been thinking about the future—the future of the company, sure. But with her. She'd been ready to sign an apartment lease—and he'd been ready to commit to running the company together.

She took a steadying breath. Because that was the problem, wasn't it? She'd been ready to do that, for him, but what did that mean for the part of her that loved her life of living all over the map? It was a part she didn't want to lose. And if she put him first—if she gave up everything just for a relationship with him, if she stayed in Bath and stayed with the company—what would happen if the relationship were to break down in the end? What would be left of her, who she was, if she did that?

"Theo," she began. "I—"

"Don't." His voice was a mixture between a snap and a plea. "Please don't do this. Please don't do what I did—don't keep running away."

She tilted her chin in the air defensively. "You said it yourself. It's different for me."

"I don't think it is, this time," he said quietly—and the truth of his words hung in the air between them. "And Lexie, Mike will back me up, if you want to—"

"It's not about that," she interrupted, and he frowned. "I mean, it is. It was a dickish thing to do, no matter when you did it."

He grimaced. "I know. But I also know I wouldn't have gone through with it. I was just angry and grieving."

"Even so."

He nodded slowly, accepting that.

She heaved in a breath, and her hands dropped to her sides. "But it's not just that." She hesitated, trying to find the words to explain why this had made her see that she couldn't stay. In the end, she settled for, "The company was his. My dad's. Not mine."

"Doesn't mean you can't make it yours," he said softly. And when she said nothing, the corner of his mouth drooped down. "Please. Don't do this. Stay." She remembered his voice, his hand on hers in that room in Ireland. Stay. She felt a rush of emotion, and closed her eyes against it.

"I can't," she whispered. And when she opened her eyes, Theo's expression had hardened. Like he knew that it was about him as much—more, maybe—than the company. That this wasn't just her leaving the company, it was her leaving him.

With that thought, she found she couldn't look at him anymore. She turned, fumbling for the door handle. She could hear Fran's voice in her mind. You're not the fuckup you seem to think you are. But Fran was wrong, wasn't she?

Even as she got the door open and stepped one foot outside, there was a small part of her that was hoping Theo would grab her, stop her. That he would be able to find the right words to make her stay—even if she didn't know what those words would be. But he didn't—he said nothing. So she kept walking.

The fact that Ange came up to her the moment she stepped into the main office made Lexie think she'd been waiting for her. Her pale green eyes scanned Lexie's face searchingly, before her bright red lips twisted and she shook her head, the big gold hoop earrings she was wearing moving as she did so.

"I wish you wouldn't do this, Lexie," Ange said softly.

Lexie didn't ask how Ange knew. She found she couldn't even meet her gaze, looking down at the carpet instead.

"Your dad asked me to look after you for this year," Ange continued, in that same quiet voice. "And I hope I'll be able to look out for you long after that, too. But you're making that rather difficult if you run away."

The carpet was blurring in front of Lexie's eyes, and she blinked to try to clear her vision. She didn't bother to contradict the running away part, like she had with Theo—she knew Ange wouldn't buy it.

Ange sighed. "If you walk away, if you don't fulfill your end—the company will all go to Theo, Lexie."

"It doesn't matter," Lexie said thickly. "He deserves it more than me anyway—this was never mine. And I can help, from afar. I can…" She swallowed. "If you need me, I can still help."

When Lexie glanced up, Ange was watching her, her expression thoughtful. "Your dad guessed it might come to this, you know."

Lexie frowned, but before she could ask Ange to elaborate, Ange held up two envelopes—envelopes she must have been holding the whole time, without Lexie noticing. Her name was written on both. Her name—in her dad's handwriting.

"I don't know what's in them," Ange said, and now she weighed an envelope in each hand. "But I was under strict instructions to give you a letter, if it looked like you might quit."

Lexie glanced between Ange's hands, and Ange gave her another small, slightly sad, smile.

"But there's a choice. One letter is for if you really do decide to quit, the other is for if you choose to stay." She held out the letter in her left hand, and Lexie knew—this was the letter Ange wanted her to take.

She felt a lump clogging her throat and it wouldn't go away when she swallowed. Her dad had known she might want to quit. And, if these letters were anything to go by, he'd hoped that she might change her mind, and stay anyway.

"I suppose it's up to you, which letter you take." Ange said, and now she held both out to Lexie. The staying letter in her left hand, the quitting letter in her right. Lexie took a shuddering breath. She didn't want to take either letter. She didn't want to read her dad's writing, didn't want to open up the floodgates. But she couldn't leave without taking one. She couldn't turn her back on this final thing her dad had wanted to say to her.

The I'm sorry she wanted to utter didn't get as far as her lips, and instead echoed inside her head as she took the letter in Ange's right hand. So maybe she was more like her dad than she'd thought. Because she was leaving his company, just like he'd left her all those years ago. The thought made her eyes blur again, and she turned on her heel, away from the disappointment in Ange's eyes, gripping the letter in her hand.

She didn't know if she'd work up the courage to read the letter. Not right now, that was for sure. Maybe in a while from now, when she'd managed to move on, put the past nine months behind her. Because that's what she had to do—put it behind her, remember her own identity. No matter how much it hurt, no matter how much she was shaking as she stepped onto the street outside, she had to leave it, in order to keep herself safe.

So when the door shut, Lexie didn't look back.