That was a fair consideration. If she’d seen it was Aaron just now, she might have screened the call. “I’m not sure we have anything left to talk about.”
“I want to see you.”
She opened her mouth, her heart twisting painfully. Another vision of counterfeit chocolate slid into her mind. So close to what she had once wanted, but now, not. “We’re leaving for Italy tomorrow.”
“Where are you now?”
“In London,” she said, without thinking.
“I can come to you tonight.”
She pressed a hand over her stomach, a feeling of helplessness washing over her. Exhaustion was seeping into her bones. She looked around, a little disorientated. It took her a moment to get her bearings, and then she turned, slowly walking towards Raf’s home, an ache beginning to spread from low in her back.
“That’s silly. It’s a long drive.”
“It’s worth it.”
Irritation was like a whip at her aching spine. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Face to face is better.”
“It’s really not.”
“Ellie, come on. You’re saying you won’t even give me five minutes?”
A tear slid down her cheek. “That is spectacularly unfair,” she pointed out. “You’re the one who ended things between us?—,”
“I panicked. I wasn’t ready.”
“After almost ten years together? Four of them engaged? After I’d paid tens of thousands of pounds of my savings on wedding deposits for services we never used? Youweren’t ready?”
Something panged in her stomach. A sense of hunger. She’d picked at her mother’s biscuits, that afternoon, but their day had been too busy; she hadn’t eaten enough. Even as she reassured herself, something was blaring in the back of her mind. Worry started as a whisper, but moved quickly through her veins.
“I messed up.”
“What are you saying?”
“I made a mistake. I let the best thing in my life go, like it didn’t matter. I put you through hell, and you’re still in hell. Your life is messed up, and it’s my fault. I want to fix it.”
She stopped walking then, staring straight across the street. She was just a block or so away from Raf’s huge house. She sucked in a breath that tasted of the London street. “What do you mean?”
Did he really think her life was messed up? Did her parents? Is that what they talked about? Were they feeling sorry for her, after today’s visit?
“It means I want to marry you. Right now. We still have the license, we can do it this weekend. Just our families, you, me. Just like we talked about, right in the beginning.”
She started to feel dizzy, her skin clammy. It’s just panic, she told herself. Nothing serious. But she started to walk again, gripping the phone tightly, as though holding it was a talisman against anything awful happening.
“I can’t think about that right now.”
“Let me come to you, Ellie. We can meet at that Italian restaurant you always wanted to go to.”
But never had, because Aaron didn’t like garlic.
She squeezed her eyes shut, the past rolling towards her like an inescapable wave. She needed to get back to Raf’s. When she’d left there over an hour earlier, it had been out of a desperate need to run away and clear her head. Now? His home was her sanctuary, the place she needed to reach to know everything would be okay.
“I can’t talk right now, okay? I have to go.”
“Meet me at nine o’clock, Ellie. Please.”
