“Rarely. We did hook up a few times after we split because it was easy and convenient to scratch an itch that way. That’s me being honest with you, Payts, but that hasn’t happened for about eighteen months. And the only person I want to hook up with is you,” I said, my eyes fixed, trying to read her expression. “More than hook up and you can’t understand how much I’m kicking myself right now for not having told you about Amber.”
There was a knock at the door before it opened and Amber stood there, looking panicked and worried.
“I saw you leave—one of the staff told me where you were and let me through. Shit, I’m so sorry.” She looked at Payton. “I’m guessing this idiot hadn’t told you we were married for all of about three minutes?”
Payton nodded, regarding Amber with complete confusion. “I knew you’d been together for a while, but he didn’t say you were married.”
Amber nodded. “I’ll have to be quick because I promised it was just a quick break. We got married, I went away, came back and we had it annulled. Not because Owen would’ve been a bad husband or father or anything like that. He’s amazing and I was probably stupid, but we were friends with benefits. There wasn’t any chemistry and we were never in love. It was just convenient. I had a fling in America and I realised that friends with benefits wasn’t enough for forever.” She paused, pointing at me. “He’s told me so much about you and it’s clear he’s head over heels in love. Please don’t judge him by one instance of being a dick. I have to go. I’m sorry I said what I did. I didn’t mean to cause any trouble.”
“Are you dating Vinny?” Payton said just as Amber opened the door.
Amber’s expression softened. “Yeah. I think it might be a bit more than dating.”
“Good luck. I really hope it works out if that’s what you want,” Payton said. “And thanks for coming back to explain.”
“No problem. Everything’s fine out there although I haven’t seen your mum for a while,” Amber said, closing the door and leaving us alone again.
“Is there anything else you haven’t told me?” Payton said, her arms crossed over her chest.
“No,” I said. “You know everything else except I haven’t told you I love you yet but I wanted to say it when it would be memorable in a good way and I knew that you were ready to hear it. Please don’t let this one thing stop us from having something really good.”
Her eyes were bursting with tears and she looked away from me. “I need to go. I need to think. Can you let me out without having to go through the crowds?”
I nodded and followed her out of the room, disappointment and anger at myself filling my chest. “What do you need, Payton? What can I do?”
She turned around when she reached the door that led onto the side street. “I need to think. There’s nothing you can do. I believe you about your marriage and I get why you didn’t tell me. But I need to think because I know no one’s perfect but I thought you were close and this makes me worry.”
I nodded, wishing I could touch her but knowing it was the worst thing I could do. “I understand. I can keep explaining and telling you how I feel but I know that’s just going to make me sound like an idiot.”
She moved towards me and pressed her lips to mine, surprising me. “Let me think,” she said. “I need to think and not overreact.”
I watched her leave, heading down the side street towards the main road and itched to follow her, but sense somehow kept my feet from moving.
“What’s happened?” My mum stood a few feet away, watching, Dave behind her.
“I might’ve just blown it with Payton,” I said. “I never told her I was married. Amber mentioned it during the set.”
“Oh,” my mother said. “I can kind of see both sides. What are you going to do?”
“Give her some space,” I said. “Then show her how I feel.”
* * *
Her brothers, at least, didn’t try to kill me during rugby practice on Saturday. She’d headed to Claire and Killian’s after leaving Cases the day before and had told them factually what had happened. There were a few piss-taking jokes made at my expense and reassurance mainly from Seph that Payton would be rational and realise that this didn’t mean we had to be over.
During the course of the ten days or so since it happened, we exchanged a few messages, general day-to-day comments about the weather, which had been torrentially wet, and books, plus a couple of things that had made me think of her. She responded every time but didn’t take the call I made on Wednesday, instead sending me a message that said she wasn’t ready to talk to me right now. I didn’t try to persuade her otherwise. She was stubborn and argumentative and I needed, to a certain extent, her to come back to me so she’d made the decision. That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to show her in other ways how I felt.
My apartment felt empty without her. In the nights leading up to Friday, we’d spent very little time apart and she’d left a collection of her stuff at mine. My bathroom had been taken over with make-up and toiletries and my sheets still smelt of her perfume and the body stuff that she used. I should’ve changed them already but I couldn’t bring myself to lose the smell, something I didn’t admit to anyone other than myself.
I didn’t need anyone to tell me what I was feeling; I understood it too well. This was completely different from what I’d had with Amber: we’d been friends who were really good at tolerating each other and compatible in bed. Payton made me want to wake up in the mornings just because she was there. I wanted to read her body with my fingers, my mouth and my cock so I had every word of her committed to memory and then I wanted revision sessions. I wanted to be the one who made her smile, who helped fix her problems, who she could lean on, and I wanted her to be the same for me.
Luckily, my father’s offer to the gallery he was interested in was accepted, so I had something to throw myself into. I was busy looking at development plans and attending a couple of meetings with London-based artists, as well as starting to interview for a couple of positions on my management team. I’d made the decision to step back from Cases on a day-to-day basis and concentrate on expanding into other areas. Only every thought led back to Payton. I wanted to call her and tell her about the gallery and get her thoughts on its focus; I wanted to have her look through the applications I’d received; I wanted her with me.
It was a week and half since I’d seen her when Ava and Claire strode into Cases with Eliza. I had seen plenty of Payton’s brothers, but Ava and Claire, as I’d have expected, had been absent. They didn’t play rugby so it was unlikely that our paths would cross unless they wanted to seek me out for something. Like now, it seemed.
“Owen!” Ava called, waving from the bar at the café in her usual exuberant manner. “Come join us. We need to talk.”
I wondered what my chances were of escaping without them grabbing hold of me first but then Claire made eye contact and I understood why Killian was half way to being scared of her.
