He looked up at the sky. “Think that we're moving too quickly. It's been more than six months; we spend pretty much all day at work together, and most of the evenings too. If we'd only seen each other a couple of times a week, then yeah, I don't think we'd be at this point that we are now. But I know you better than I've ever known anyone else apart from my family. I'm not going to force you into something though, that you're not ready for.”
He was upset, I could tell. Disappointed. My heart ached, because I never wanted this man to be upset or disappointed.
“I don't want us to split up. I just think we should slow things down a little. Have some space.”
He nodded, and said nothing, walking away from me towards Rose and holding on to her hips so she could swing from monkey bar to monkey bar, reaching the end that had been her goal. She wouldn't have done it without him, and I wasn't quite tall enough to be able to help her.
There was a little laugh from her, and she flung her arms around him when she reached the ground. I watched as he bent down to whisper something to her and he pressed a kiss to her forehead then waved her goodbye as he walked off in the direction of his own home and away from us.
Rose ran over to me, looking happy enough. “Why does Seph have more work to do, Mummy? Why can't he come and do it at our house with us?”
I sighed deeply, wishing he was telepathic, and he could mind read the thank you I was giving him now. I knew he would never upset my daughter, even if I’d just upset him.
“I think he needs to concentrate, and he can't do that with me and you chattering so much. Why don't we go home, and watch Cinderella curled up on the sofa?”
She giggled and grabbed hold of my arm, perfectly happy with the idea.
I just wished I was.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Seph
“Who ordered the chilli beef?”
Nobody answered. Not one person looked up from their cards to respond to Killian as he stood at the doorway with the tray in hand and puzzled expression on his face.
“I thought it was the deep fried crispy beef that we ordered. Can anyone remember?”
It was as if he was talking to tumbleweeds.
“Is anyone actually bothered if we get the right order?”
“I'm out.” Jackson put his cards down on the table.
Maxwell briefly looked up. “Seph, you still in?”
I nodded. Tonight wasn't the night for folding. I could lose badly in the end, but I wasn't going to give up.
It wasn't just a strategy I was using for cards.
“Jackson, if you're out, can you give me a lift with the Chinese?” Killian seemed to be clueless in terms of sorting out food, something I knew my sister would agree with in general.
Jackson sighed and got up from his chair, leaving the rest of us to it.
Eli hadn't wanted to go out for his stag night. We'd had several stags or bachelor parties in recent years, ranging from the straight-forward getting mindlessly drunk and collapsing in random places, to a joint one with the bride-to-be that involved a cringe-worthy strip show that unfortunately none of us would ever forget. Max and Victoria had both ended up on the same minibreak in Iceland with Max having purposely booked the same destination as Vic. Somehow she'd ended up not murdering him for doing so.
Tonight was simple. Takeaway, poker and whiskey at Eli’s house, with Ava having cleared out for the night to stay with one of her friends where she could bridezilla to her heart’s content, and those of us without children could just find somewhere to sleep off the whiskey and a potentially expensive loss.
And in my case, sleep off the shitty feeling I’d had since Georgia had told me in the park that she wouldn't be going to the wedding.
Ava knew. I'd had to tell her, but I hadn't made a big deal over it; I didn't want her sympathy or any of them worrying, and it wasn't like we'd split up. We'd still seen each other a couple of times during the week outside of work. I'd gone with her to pick up Rose from Elspeth's, and we'd taken her for dinner at the Italian restaurant where we'd gone for our second date. But we hadn't really talked to each other. The conversation had been through Rose; it was about her day, what she'd done in school, the book she was reading. Georgia seemed to avoid talking to me, and I hadn't gone back to Georgia’s after dinner, which Rose’d picked up on and moaned about.
In work, it almost felt like normal. We bounced ideas off each other, checked through each other’s work, both tackled the problem that was one of the trainee solicitors who really wasn't doing a very good job, and things felt pretty much like they had done the previous week or the week before. I held her hand when we went out for coffee, and she didn't stop me from kissing her one evening when she had been standing next to her desk, studying some document, and looking so incredibly beautiful that any words I'd had, I’d not been able to say.
But things didn't feel right. I didn't want anything to slow down between us, in fact, I wanted the opposite. I wished I'd had the courage to tell her those three words that I'd never actually found the right moment to say.
“Seph, it's you. Are you sure you're with us here?” Callum elbowed me a little too hard.
