He wanted to roar. He wanted to bang his fist into a wall. He wanted to run until his breath burned in his lungs. He had been waiting for this day for so long, just to see her, and now this?
“My mistake.” He disconnected the call and dialled Elodie’s number. She didn’t answer.
He swore under his breath, moving back to the sliding doors of the hospital, towards his car. He slipped into the backseat with a dark expression on his face, typing out a text:
Hi Elodie. We have an obstetrics appointment today. Did you forget about it?
Pregnant women forgot things all the time, didn’t they? Wasn’t brain fog a part of the whole thing? He breathed out, reassuring himself that would be the case, that they’d easily reschedule the appointment. For later that day, or the next day. He was just about to ask his assistant to do that, when a message from Elodie buzzed into his phone.
I didn’t forget. I moved it up here, to a local hospital. Makes more sense.
It was like being winded. The gut punch of her splitting her obstetrics care off, away from him, doing it on her own, as though he didn’t matter, was almost the worst thing he’d ever felt. He could hardly breathe. He could hardly think. And maybe, after all this time, that was what he really needed.
To stop thinking, to stop analysing, and to let himself feel.
To feel the true depths of his desperation. To feel his need for her, the pain of his life without her in it, and to accept that only one emotion could cause this god-awful torment. To knowthat it made him vulnerable, in all the ways his father had been, and trust, somehow, that he would be different. Because it took a leap of faith, an act of trust, and Raf was just hiding out in London being a coward, too traumatized to reach out and grab the one thing he really wanted in life—the perfection that had been so nearly within his grasp.
“Change of plans,” he said to his driver, though the words were strangled by his sudden inability to breathe. Yet, as the car ate up the miles towards the Cotswolds, he didn’t, for even one second, doubt the conviction of what he was doing. He couldn’t live like this anymore; he had to make a change, no matter how much it scared him.
Elodie hadto admit that if Aaron had wanted to prove that he was a changed man, he was going about it in all the right ways. He was also being a very good friend, despite what that might have cost him, personally.
Once a week, on a Friday, they had lunch at the local pub and played a game of scrabble. It was something they’d done often, in the past, and it was nice to slip back into that familiarity. But the text message from Raf, reminding her of their appointment, had completely scuttled her thinking abilities.
She’d cancelled it weeks ago, knowing it would be too hard to go and see Raf, when her heart was still in the active stage of breaking. The receptionist had said she’d inform him, but that clearly hadn’t happened. She felt a pang in her heart when she imagined him waiting for her, waiting to hear news of their babies, though.
No.
She felt a pang in her heart that stank of regret. Because she’d missed a chance to see him, to be close to him, and she would have given almost anything for that. But she had to stay strong.This was all going to get so much harder if she saw him again, as though it would reset the clock on her recovery period.
Recovery?
Hardly.
She was in purgatory, existing between the euphoria of her twins, and the sheer hell of life without Raf.
“You’re not even trying, Ellie,” Aaron complained good-naturedly, as he played three tiles on a triple word score.
She grimaced. “My hand is the worst.”
“You can always turn a bad hand into a good word.”
That was true. She was almost undefeated. “I think I’m just tired.”
Concern instantly crowded his features. “Shall we give it a rest today?”
“Only if you agree to a rematch.”
“Next week,” he promised.
She ignored the spasm of pain in her heart. The casual way he presumed—and was right—that she’d be here next week, to play scrabble. Her life had briefly opened up to be so much more, and yet here she was again, in the same pub they’d always come to.
Only, she was different.
Life, and Raf, had changed her. She didn’t know what that would mean after the babies, but it was okay to sit still in the village for a while, as she took stock and figured it all out.
They were deep into Autumn, and the weather had turned frigid. As they stepped out of the pub, she wrapped her coat around her more tightly, listening as Aaron talked about a role he was auditioning for. “Do you want help running lines?” she offered.
He glanced at her then looked away again, the skin on his neck a little pink. “Actually,” he cleared his throat. “I’ve got someone helping me.”
