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Her music was blaring in her ears when she pulled the apartment door open, demanding all of her attention, which is why she didn’t see him at first. Caradoc Moore, reclining indolently against the wall, his eyes fixed on her flat.
She startled when she did see him, and he raised his hands in a gesture of apology.
“You know,” she said snappily, her heart pounding, “This is bordering on weird now. Are you stalking me?”
His lip lifted as he shook his head. “Believe it or not, I was trying to be respectful.”
“Oh? How so?”
“You didn’t want to talk. I get that. But I need … I do need to speak with you.” He cleared his throat. “Please,” he said again, as though the word might hold magical sway over her.
“So I don’t want to talk, yet you’re forcing me to, and you think that’s respectful?”
“God, Finn, what do I have to do? I am standing here, five feet away, and all I want to do is hold you. And kiss you. And make love to you. I want to push you into your apartment and show you that everything is exactly the same between us now, as ever.” He clenched his hands by his side. “But instead I’m asking you to please … just talk to me.”
“No, no, no and no,” she said simply, though her heart was racing so fast she thought it might actually cut from her chest and leap towards him. “I don’t want anything from you, least of all talk.”
“You said you loved me,” he reminded her, trying another way to get through to her.
“And you said you don’t believe in love,” she shrugged as though her heart wasn’t crumbling anew, then slipped her earphones back in. Metallica blared out at her. “I’m going for a run,” she shouted over the music. “Don’t be here when I get back.”
And he wasn’t.
She was gone several hours, running and then going through her Karate routines with her old Sensei. She got home and hoped against hope that he’d still be there. Why? Because she was sick, she thought huffily.
But he wasn’t.
A single, long-stemmed rose was placed across the thresh hold, and the sight of it broke her heart.
Roses were for love, but there was no love between them.
She picked it up and carried it inside, before dumping it straight into the bin. It was no worse than what he’d done. Actually, it was a lot better. She’d given him actual love and he’d trashed it. This was just a hollow gesture ten weeks too late.
Despite her run, she couldn’t settle. Connie and Cliff came home, and she went through the motions of their usual dinnertime, but at midnight, she was still wide awake.
She reached for her phone, planning to surf some news sites before drifting off, but she had a little imperious red circle on her emails calling her attention.
Her finger tapped into it automatically and a single new email appeared. It was from Caradoc.
Finn,
You don’t want to talk, but I need you to know these things. Read this email and then decide if you truly don’t want to speak to me again.
I have thought of you every day since you left. I am miserable without you. I crave you. All the time. Everything in my apartment reminds me of you. I smell you in my pillows.
I don’t even have a photo of you, and yet I can see you in perfect clarity. Your image is burned into my brain.
I have picked up my phone to call you many times, but I have been so ashamed by how we left things that I just couldn’t. I have no right to ask anything of you.
Letting you go was the biggest mistake in my life.
You said you loved me and I shut you down.
You were right. I don’t believe in love. I never have. I don’t know if I ever will.
But I believe in us. I believe in you, and me, and that what we have is beyond anything I’ve ever felt.
I’m not perfect. You know that better than anyone.
