‘On a ridiculous fairy tale that couldn’t and shouldn’t come true.’
Josh dropped down to the floor in front of my chair, and for one dreadful moment I thought he was going to pull out a ring and propose, which would have pushed our situation into one no wedding etiquette book had ever covered.
Thankfully, all he did was reach for my hand.
‘All I ask is that you think about what I’ve said, Lily. There are still two days until the wedding. It’s not too late to change your mind. If Adam loves you as much as I do, he’d want you to be happy.’
Tears were now rolling down my cheeks, and I didn’t think I’d ever loved and hated Josh Metcalf quite as much as I did at that very moment.
‘Please,’ Josh implored, his voice cracking with emotion. ‘Please think about it. Don’t marry the wrong man, even if it is for all the right reasons.’
He left shortly after that with a promise he’d return the following evening. I followed him to the door, on legs that had never felt less capable of supporting me.
He paused for a moment at the threshold. ‘You have no idea how much I want to kiss you right now. But I won’t cross that line because it’s not fair to you.’
‘But asking me to call off the wedding is?’ I said on a bitter laugh.
‘Goodnight, Lily,’ Josh said softly as he slipped out into the inky darkness. ‘Sleep on this and we’ll talk again tomorrow.’
But of course, I didn’t sleep that night. How could I when I was facing the worst decision I would ever have to make. I was holding a grenade in my hands, and lives were going to be destroyed whichever choice I made.
Chapter Twenty Six
Six Years Earlier
The whole purpose of visiting a spa was that it was supposed to leave you tranquil and calm, two things I couldn’t be further from feeling.
‘You’re extremely tense,’ observed the young woman giving me a massage.
Adam raised his head from the adjacent table, looking so relaxed he was practically comatose. ‘Are you feeling tense?’ he asked, his voice threaded with concern.
‘No,’ I denied, praying the woman, who was now attacking the knots in my shoulders with the gusto of Paul Hollywood kneading bread dough, wouldn’t contradict me. ‘Well, maybe a little,’ I conceded. ‘Pre-wedding jitters, I imagine.’
It was the wrong thing to say, because it made Adam lever himself up on to his forearms. The woman conducting his half of our couples massage looked vaguely annoyed at the interruption.
‘You’re not nervous about the wedding, are you?’ he asked, seemingly unconcerned to be having this conversation in front oftwo strangers. It was the third time he’d asked me that question today, and it was still only mid-morning.
‘No. Of course not. Why would I be? Why would you think that?’ Some distant inner voice was telling me I was protesting too much, and I clamped my lips shut before they gave anything else away. There was nothing I could do about my shoulders, or the rest of my body that kept stiffening into fear-fuelled spasms whenever I thought about Josh’s confession the previous day.
I thought I’d done a pretty good job at disguising the turmoil my conversation with Josh had left me in. Luckily it was uncommonly bright for a winter morning, so I’d only looked slightly ridiculous turning up for breakfast with sunglasses on. We were seated directly beside a picture window that looked out on to the beautifully kept hotel grounds, which allowed me to keep them on. But Adam was attentive and observant, two traits I’d always loved in the past. Today, not so much.
We’d gone for a swim after our massage – my suggestion, which I refused to admit I’d proposed only because scything through the water, doing lengths, made conversation practically impossible.
‘Whoa,’ Adam had exclaimed, catching up with me as I paused to get my breath at the deep end. ‘Are you secretly trying out for the Olympics?’ he joked. He reached for my hand where it was resting against the gleaming tiles of the hotel pool. ‘God, Lily, your pulse is racing like crazy.’
‘It’s good cardio,’ I said, on a snatched, raspy breath.
His eyes look troubled. ‘Just slow down a bit. This is meant to be fun; it’s not boot camp.’
‘I’m having fun,’ I insisted, with such bleak determination it was sure to have worried him. I forced myself to smile, because the last thing I wanted was for him to suspect anything was wrong. Because there wasn’t. I wasn’t in the middle of the world’s most awful love triangle, because my heart belonged to Adam and alwayswould. It was just awful timing that the man I’d secretly loved for practically all of my life had now decided that he loved me too. Well, that was too bad. Too late. Too everything. My eyes were suddenly stinging, and I wondered if I could blame it on the chlorine, as I pushed off from the side once again. ‘Just a couple more lengths,’ I promised over my shoulder, before dipping my face into the water and silencing all further conversation.
When I emerged from the changing room, Adam was leaning against the wall waiting for me. As I approached, he slipped his mobile phone into the back pocket of his jeans.
‘So, what next?’ I asked with the kind of cheer that could have got me a job as a children’s TV presenter.
‘Actually, there’s something I need to sort out for later. Would you mind if I left you on your own for a bit?’
I tried really hard not to look grateful, because the mask I was wearing was growing uncomfortably heavy.
