Chapter 23

Chapter Twenty-Three

LILY

T he warm water laps around my shoulders and I look up into the night. There seem to be more stars than sky. I take a sip of my red wine and sigh. I can’t remember the last time I felt this relaxed. It might have something to do with all the exercise I’ve done today, supporting Tate. God, the man is superhuman. I had a hard job keeping my hands off his hot, sweaty body as he worked out in his boxer shorts.

‘Come here,’ says Tate now, from the other side of the hot tub. ‘You’re too far away.’

I smile because they’re words he’s used before, beside a campfire on a beach when we were in college. I move over and before I can sit beside him, he catches my hips and positions me between his legs. His arms come around my waist and I lean back against his chest as he kisses the top of my head.

‘This is nice,’ he murmurs.

‘Mmm,’ I say, relishing his warm skin against my back and the feeling of being cocooned in his embrace. It’s quiet and comfortable. Safe. It’s home, and my heart turns over in my chest, grief, sadness intermingled with contentment. I mourn what we lost, summoning the dull ache that has always been there and examining it. It dawns on me, too many years too late, that I ran away because I expected him to bail on me at some point. I’d been so conditioned by my upbringing, that at the first sign of history repeating itself, I fell into line, into the narrative my dad had taught me. Why the hell hadn’t I confronted Tate after I heard him talking to his dad? Why aren’t I demanding an explanation now? Is it because I know I was as much to blame as he was?

Enjoy it while you can, I tell myself, not wanting to delve too deeply into the past. There’s no turning the clock back or seeing into the future, but I can savour every second of the now. I can draw every bit of pleasure from it, because this time these feelings might have to last me a lifetime.

Tate’s hands very gently slide up to cup my breasts. I relax against him, my head on his shoulder and enjoy the sensation of the water lapping at my skin and his barely-there touch. It’s hypnotising, this closeness and ease. He kisses my neck and he sighs and I feel his warm breath against my ear. I’m loose and sated from our earlier pre-dinner encounter, fast and furious on the sofa with not one or two, but three orgasms. Tate is nothing if not diligent.

His hands splay across my stomach holding me against him, anchoring me to him.

We sit in easy silence, my limbs loose and lethargic.

‘Lily?’ The single word quivers with question.

‘Mmm.’

‘Why did you leave when you did?’

It’s like he fired an arrow and the point pierces. I close my eyes, trying to keep the truth out. I want to tell him, but how can I without revealing the damage he did to my heart and the fallout afterwards.

‘Lily?’ he prompts.

‘I had to. My Dad had a heart attack.’

‘I know that. But you didn’t have to cut me off like that. I wanted to be there for you, but I never heard from you again. You didn’t answer my calls, texts and then you blocked me.’ I can hear the hurt in his voice. ‘It was like being cut off at the knees. And not knowing why. It killed me.’

His words settle on me, the sadness in them permeating and wrapping around like a blanket of sorrow, and I ache for him, because there’s pain in every one of them.

Suddenly I’m sick of the bullshit. The hurt that has never really gone away. I want to fight back. To challenge him, even though I’m completely mixed up inside.

‘Tate. Don’t do this. Don’t lie to me. You might have been upset I’d gone, but I know you were planning to dump me anyway.’ My own pain makes me sound a little hard and resentful. ‘I walked away before you got the chance and I guess that hurt your ego.’

He lifts me over his leg so that we’re side by side and he can see my face.

‘What? I was never going to dump you. You walked away because you never really cared that much.’

‘I didn’t care? What the hell, Tate. I heard you.’

‘Heard me what? Phoning you over and over, when you never once picked up or called me back. That’s cold.’

‘It was self-preservation,’ I snap, hurt by the accusation. It had been so hard to ignore those calls, most of which came while my phone was switched off because I was in the hospital in ICU with my dad. I hadn’t dared reply to any of them because I would have begged him to come. I needed him so much at that time, it hurt to breathe as I sat by the hospital bed listening to the beeps of the monitors, Dad’s breaths on the ventilator, wishing that Tate was there to hold me. Afterwards, I promised myself I’d never be that weak, needy girl ever again, because Dad was right. Caring about someone makes you weaker. Makes you vulnerable. I changed my phone number, deleted all my social media and became invisible. I finished my degree and, as soon as Dad was better, I trained as hard as I could to find a place in life where I could stand alone. Self-reliance became my mantra.

‘Then why did you leave?’

‘Because I found out that… I honestly believed that you loved me, but then I heard you say to your dad that you were just filling time with me before the draft. And don’t deny it. I heard you.’

He stares at me, shock in his eyes, and then he puts his head in his hands and huffs out a mirthless laugh. ‘I don’t fucking believe it.’

He looks up at me. ‘I told my dad what he wanted to hear. To get him off my back. If you heard, why the fuck didn’t you ask me about it? The Lily Heath I knew would have burst in and given me shit. Why didn’t you?’

‘I’d just heard my dad had had a heart attack. I needed to go back to England. As quickly as possible. I didn’t have the energy to fight.’ Even as I say the words, I know I’m lying.

‘Did you really not know that I loved you?’

I’m shocked to see the pain tightening his face. Guilt twists me up. I hadn’t answered those calls because I was trying to prove to myself that I could go on without him. That I could cure the pain by cutting myself off, like my dad did when I was a kid. It was much easier not to speak to him.

I was a coward.

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

Why did you tell him what he wanted to hear?’

‘Because I was a fucking coward. I knew that he’d give me grief if I told him that I was planning to ask you to marry me. I wanted to show it could work, that once I was drafted he’d see that it could work. That we were a team.’

‘Marry me?’

‘Yes, of course.’

I’m really knocked for six by this admission. It’s like a punch to the gut and all I can do is stare at him as my stomach churns. I think I might be sick. I got it so wrong.

‘Shit,’ I murmur and start to rise to my feet. It’s like I’m having an out-of-body experience. I need to escape, I can’t face all this emotion. And then I realise that’s exactly what I did then, and what I’ve done ever since. I ran away because I was scared he didn’t want me and that I wasn’t as self-reliant and independent as I’d been brought up to be. The realisation makes me sick to my stomach. All these years I’ve been lying to myself. Living a lie, priding myself on my self-sufficiency. I needed Tate that day, needed him so much it had scared me. So, I’d run as far away as I could. And now I’m still as much of a coward as ever. What if he hurts me again? I can’t let him in again, and that’s what I’ll do if I tell him that I ran because I was scared.

I owe him an apology, but it’s too late. Far too late. So where does that leave us now?

I let go of the breath I’ve been holding. I’m not going to run this time.

‘So where does that leave us now?’ I ask, not sure I want the answer. Everything is a little raw inside. Maybe too much time has passed. We’re not teenagers, anymore. We’re both older and wiser. The sexual chemistry might be as potent, but we aren’t the same people we were.

Tate looks at me, a touch of defiance in his eyes. ‘All I know is that nearly dying gives you a new perspective on life. I don’t hate you anymore.’

‘Good to know.’ I sound flippant, but I’m hiding the fact that I hated him for what he’d made me feel. For making me feel back then that I wasn’t enough for him. If I’m honest, hate and bitterness carried me through a lot of years.

‘I’m not sure I ever did. When I saw you at that dinner, a few weeks ago it all went out the window, and I was so pissed with myself. I’ve rehearsed for years how it would go if I ever ran into you, and there you were the same beautiful girl that fell at my feet the night we met, all indignant and furious and…’ He trails off.

‘What were you going to say?’ I’m intrigued.

He laughs. ‘I wasn’t going to say anything, I was going to pretend I had no idea who you were. Make out that I barely remembered you, let you know that you’d had no impact on my life, that you definitely hadn’t once smashed my heart to pieces.

‘We really fucked up something good, didn’t we?’ Tate says. ‘Where does it leave us now?’

‘I… I don’t know,’ I reply. ‘This –’ I wave a hand between us ‘– this could just be some post-traumatic reaction. An innate need to prove we’re still alive.’

‘It could. Or it could be feelings that have been in hibernation and are finally allowed to surface.’

Tate stands up, takes my hand and leads me out of the hot tub across the deck, through the French windows and into the bedroom.

‘Why don’t we take each day as it comes until we figure it out,’ he suggests as he takes my mouth in one of those delicious, long, drawn-out kisses.