‘You came all this way to give me a present?’
Mo nodded wordlessly but Netta didn’t move to take it from him. She glanced at the gift, trying to ignore the inconvenient beauty of the hands holding it, and then returned her gaze to his face. Seeing him in her apartment felt too surreal to be true. A jarring collision of two very separate worlds. A cosmic admission that the whole thing had been real, not just a momentary shift from reality, but a part of it. A part ofher.
‘How did you know today was my birthday?’
‘You told me when it was. I remembered. I remember everything about the time we had together, Netta. Everything.’ He put the present on the bench, twisting his fingers together until the white of his bones showed through his stretched skin. ‘I’m so sorry about how I left things.’
Netta pressed her hands into the benchtop and looked down at them, nodding silently. She raised her gaze to meet his. ‘Why?’
‘Because I was an arsehole to you,’ he said. ‘It was unforgivable. We had a connection—something really special—and I treated you like it hadn’t meant anything.’
‘No, I mean why did you leave it that way?’ Netta’s icy gaze was an eggshell-thin front. Inside, she was on fire, the flimsily taped-up box she’d attempted to keep Mo in reduced to a smouldering, useless mess.
‘I … I can’t explain it. If I could go back in time …’ Mo’s eyes dipped to the present and back up to her face. ‘Did you listen to the song I sent you?’
‘It was beautiful.’
‘But not enough.’
Netta shook her head. ‘So much has happened since I came home.’ Tears filled her eyes and she swiped a tea towel from the oven handle and pressed it to her face.
Mo moved around the counter and opened his arms to her but she stepped back, out of his reach.
‘No,’ she said. ‘You have no idea what I’ve been through since London.’ She sniffed. ‘And now you’re with Lorena … I can’t complicate things again.’
Mo let his arms drop. ‘I’m not with Lorena.’
‘I saw the photos, Mo.’
‘It’s not what it looks—’
‘Don’t.’ Netta cut him off. ‘I don’t want to know.’
Mo pressed his lips together as though fighting against words desperate to escape his mouth, and Netta had to look away from it, cursing the power it still had over her.
‘Do you want me to leave?’ Mo’s voice was low, smaller than Netta had ever heard it.
She fixed her gaze on him once more and bungeed between London and losing the baby and this moment, right now, flung from heaven to hell and now to this precipice. Toeing the edge of a crumbly cliff with this beautiful, messy, irresistible, unreliable man—who she now knew, unequivocally, she was in deep, dangerous love with. Her chin crumpled and dragged the corners of her mouth down, closer to her aching heart, which she knew she’d have to break to move forward.
Her eyes met his and she nodded. ‘I do.’
Mo swallowed hard, blinking. ‘I understand,’ he said, his voice wafer thin. He tapped the box on the bench. ‘Read the card.’
Netta nodded.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Goodbye, Netta.’
‘Goodbye, Mo.’
Netta closed her eyes as he turned to leave and didn’t let the sob she was holding escape until the door clicked closed behind him.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
NETTA
Netta slid to the kitchen floor, back against a cupboard, and let it all out. Deep, racking sobs hollowed her, scooping out her insides until there was nothing left. After the miscarriage, she had thought nothing would ever be able to make her cry again. She’d thought she’d used up her life’s quota of tears. That nothing would ever match the loss she’d felt. That nothing would ever make her feel sad again, because how could it? How could anything touch her when she’d been through something like that and come out the other side, still breathing? And yet, here she was, realising that grief came in many guises. It seemed letting Mo go had found a new part of her heart to break.
As the tears dried up, she took a deep, steadying breath and rested the back of her head against the cupboard door, softly smacking her hand against her thigh.
