‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ She challenged him.
‘Because I hated myself and couldn’t bring myself to have you hate me, too. Which is selfish. And I didn’t want you to feel I’d let you down and have the hurt of your mum dying come back to you. I decided it was better to pretend I couldn’t handle long distance and the rest. I mean, I was struggling with the distance, anyway.’
‘Jesus, Niall.’
‘I thought over the years about telling you, but the longer time went on, it seemed almost cruel to dig up the past when you’d moved on from me.’
She wasn’t about to tell him she had never quite moved on from him. He wasn’t getting that information from her.
‘So you decided how I’d react and lost me rather than giving me a chance to make up my own mind?’
‘It’s completely illogical, Cass. It is. I was driven by something that wasn’t rational, but you’ve every right to be mad.’
‘It’s a bit late to be mad at you for drink driving. You made a stupid choice. But the thing that’s getting me here is the deluded one you made afterwards. The one that let you ruin us. Sure, you were going through shit back then, but we told each other everything. Why did that stop?’
‘All I can say is that my head was in the bin. I…’ Niall rubbed at his hairline. ‘I hated myself. Everything was such a mess after the party, and then I got excluded from school.’
‘You got excluded from school? Why?’ A small part ofCarli ached that she hadn’t been there for him, even though that was Niall’s own fault.
‘Like I said, I was a bit of a disaster zone afterwards. And it was common knowledge. Mr McInally couldn’t resist having a bit of a dig, so I…um…I keyed his car.’
‘Wow! Smart move, Butler.’
‘Aye, and it wasn’t a wee score across the side either. It was a giant fuck you. Literally.’
Carli’s mind was a fog with all this information. On one hand, she didn’t blame Niall for keying Mr McInally’s car, but the boy she’d known wasn’t off-the-rails messy. Excluded from school type material. Had things got that bad?
‘So there was that. My dad, already raging at me, was furious that I was tearing down his reputation like I was peeling off wallpaper. And what made it worse was Shona was the niece of one of Dad’s associates. So when the school suggested I maybe take a step back and move to a different school, which would have meant a lot of travel, my folks pulled me out and I had to learn at home with a tutor for some of my subjects to keep me right. I sat my exams at the school but that was me done with the place.’
‘I see.’
‘I’m not telling you for pity. I’m telling because you deserve the truth, and you also deserve not to get involved with me.’
‘What I deserved was to not sit and wonder if there was something wrong with me and if our whole relationship was a lie. I could have been there for you. Didn’t you want that?’
‘Aye, of course I did. I was torn open without you, but I didn’t want to put my problems on you. You sounded like your life was going well back home.’
‘I was trying my best to make it sound good; that was myway of coping, Niall. And I hope you recognise now that you did put your problems on me, but in a different, even more painful, way.’
Silently, Niall nodded.
It shouldn’t have mattered anymore. It should have been so long ago that it failed to affect her. Carli should be able to walk away from this and tell him he’d lost her and it was too late now. But that was simply not the case. Because Niall’s omission of the truth had affected her massively: her self-image, caused stress that had affected her health, her relationships. This was someone she had trusted with her grief, who had both heard and seen her rawest feelings, who knew her emotional coordinates. How could he have wandered off course like that?
‘Tell me something,’ she said. ‘And be honest.’
‘Okay. I promise.’
‘Did you ever love me? Because I don’t understand how you could have if you did that to me.’
Niall’s chin tilted up in defiance. ‘Jesus, Cass. Of course I fucking loved you. I’ve…’
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Tell me. Don’t hide anything else. Please.’
His gaze bore into her, the fire lighting his expression amber with urgency. She recognised the intensity in his eyes, the Adam’s apple tight in his throat. He meant every word he was about to say.
