What a stupid mess.
And he couldn’t even regret interfering back in London. If he hadn’t stepped in when Sibyl wanted to let Lila go, they would never have had all this time together. He would never want to change that.
Lila
Lila kept trying to sip at her coffee even though she knew it was too hot. She needed to do something to look normal, when the truth was, she felt like a drawing of herself that a toddler had coloured in with a thick black crayon – loops and slashes all spilling over her edges and some areas left completely transparent.
When she’d got to the airport yesterday evening, she’d realised she didn’t even know where she was running to. It had made a lot of sense when she was back at the apartment, but when she was there, looking at the flights for New York, it occurred to her that going there was hardly going to help her either. Seeing her mom again, having to explain what had happened… No. She hadn’t wanted to do that, almost as much as she couldn’t face the idea of going to work again with everyone talking about her.
So, she’d done something that she hadn’t been capable of months ago. She’d sent a message to her brother, Stephen, asking if she could come stay with him in London.
He’d immediately said yes. No questions asked other than whether or not she was okay – and wasn’t that the million-dollar question?
She’d taken the next flight to Heathrow and slept all the way. The deep sleep of denial. And now she was sitting in a coffee shop at the airport, trying to battle her nerves at seeing her brother in person for the first time and figure out whether she was just jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
It was easy to seem one way in texts and emails – what if the reality of Stephen was quite different to the image she’d begun to build in her head? And what if the same was true of her for him?
Her mind darted from worry to worry. What would she do if Stephen wasn’t a nice person? What if they didn’t get on? What if he hated her? What if he’d seen the newspaper gossip and put two and two together and thought she was a…a slut or a gold-digger or something and now she was afterhismoney because her plan with Rowan had blown up in her face?
She wanted to pull her phone out to distract herself, but it would only tempt her to look on social media. Or look at the photos she’d taken in Sicily. Or see Rowan’s texts.
She didn’t know what to say to him. Shewasangry that he hadn’t told her, but really, he hadn’t known her at the time he did it. He hadn’t realised what he was doing would affect her so profoundly and he’d only been trying to do his best to help. He’d been under pressure from his agent at the time and still risked his reputation to intervene on her behalf – just like he’d done with Ruth. It was a smaller act of course. Which was probably why it hadn’t even registered for him. She knew he hadn’t meant her any harm.
But the harmwasdone, and the blinkers were off. Being with Rowan meant living with added attention and judgement. Even if she didn’t go back to work, word got around in the movie industry, and her reputation would precede her. No one would want to hire the girl who only got a job because she was screwing Rowan Walker…and thenabandonedher job.
And so, even if she gave up yet another career, there was still normal life with him to contend with. People watching them whenever they went anywhere in public. They’d been planning to go to Taormina the following weekend, even though she’d been nervous of the idea. He’d reassured her it wasn’t like he couldn’t walk down a street without being stopped or having photos taken of him – that he could blend into a crowd. But even if it was the exception to the rule, it still happened.
It all hurt too much. She didn’t want to think about it anymore. And anyway – it looked like Stephen was here. She could see a couple standing outside near the doors of the terminal. The man was tall. She couldn’t really see his head as the writing on the windows obscured it, but the woman was a lot shorter with red hair, looking up at him with a smile and rubbing her hands on his chest in a comforting gesture. He cupped her face gently and bent to drop a kiss on her lips, then walked through the door of the coffee shop.
There was no question about it, the genetics were undeniable – he really did look just like her father. Tall, dark and handsome. It was like having a ghost or a memory come to life and start wandering around in front of her.
To her horror, tears began falling from her eyes – almost independently of her mind and her thoughts and feelings – like it was just some kind of physical recognition of a deep, buried hurt finding a pathway through the raw mess she was at the moment.
His eyes fell upon her, and his lips parted. It was probably her reaction, more than anything else that gave her away. She didn’t think she looked like her father. Not the way he did. She was a mix of both her parents, with some recessed genes thrown in from an aunt she’d never met, apparently. Another reason her mom never liked looking at her.
She swiped hastily at her cheeks as he walked over and tried to take a couple of deep breaths to calm herself, even though her heart was galloping in her chest. What a great first impression to make.
‘Lila?’ he said softly, stopping just at the edge of her table.
She nodded, unable to find the words to speak just yet.
He gave a grim smile. ‘I’m Stephen.’ He held his hand out to her and she half rose to take it, bumping into the table, making her coffee spill a little over the edges of the ridiculously huge mug. She forced herself to shake his hand rather than just stand gaping at him and then let herself collapse back down onto her seat again, grabbing napkins to mop up the spill and then more fresh ones for her face.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she croaked and cleared her throat. ‘I didn’t want to be such a mess when I met you for the first time.’
‘Is it the meeting me part that’s upset you, or something else?’
Lila took a deep breath and looked at him. Stephen. Her brother. God this was strange. But he was looking at her with nothing but concern, his hand extended across the table as though he’d like to take hers to offer her some comfort but wasn’t sure whether he should or not.
She had a choice here. A choice like she always had, to do what she’d done with Rowan and be really, truly honest in the hopes of forging a connection – or to lie and pretend, second-guessing what Stephen might want to hear and probably getting it all wrong, like she had done with Ruth.
Maybe it was because she was so low already – so convinced that there was nowhere left for her to go, knowing she couldn’t keep trying to outrun herself – she decided to go for the first option.
‘I think it’s a bit of both. Things at my job, with my…’ She bunched up the soiled napkins, tightly in her fist. ‘With my boyfriend. They’ve got a bit complicated, and I needed to get away. And then seeing you. God, you just look so much like our dad. I wasn’t expecting that to affect me really, but it’s…’
‘A shock? I’m a dead ringer for him, aren’t I?’ He rubbed his hand over his face, as though he could wipe the features away.
‘Well, what I can remember of him anyway.’ She gave a little shrug. ‘It’s not your fault.’ She bit her lip. Was that the wrong thing to say?
