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CHAPTER SEVEN
Edward
WE’RELEFTALONEPROMPTLY. As though the staff sense the mood in the air and want no part of it.
Save for Marie, who has a sparkle in her eye—a sparkle that reminds me too much of Gran. Had the two been in cahoots? Had Marie known about this arrangement even before we did?
I should ask her, although I’m afraid of hearing more than I’ve bargained for.
‘I think Marie has outdone herself for your benefit.’ I scan the table—game pie with all the trimmings. ‘I hope you have an appetite.’
Better than mine, at any rate, because I can’t find any desire for food past my desire for her...no matter what’s wise, what’s sensible, what’s fair.
‘I can’t remember the last time I ate anything quite so wholesome,’ says Summer.
My huff is stilted with tension. ‘That’s one word for it.’
She closes her eyes, inhales deeply, and I can’t tear my gaze from her look of sheer, unadulterated bliss. ‘It smells amazing too.’
Her appreciative murmur tugs my gaze lower, to her lips, her angled chin, her throat...
She looks amazing...
I clench the fork I’ve picked up. ‘I’m sure it’ll taste even better.’
Eat. For God’s sake eat and focus on that. Not her.
But swallowing proves trickier than chewing. Especially when she makes no attempt to eat herself.
‘Are you not hungry?’ I ask.
‘I am. I just...’
‘You just?’
She wets her lips, nips the bottom one—I wish she’d stop doing that. The hint of vulnerability is killing me, triggering a protective instinct that should be long since dead.
‘I know you don’t want to hear this, Edward, but I’m going to say it anyway.’
I take up my wine, every nerve-ending on high alert. ‘Hear what?’
‘I know you want to leave the past in the past, and I get it. But I can’t do that until I’ve told you how sorry I am.’
The food sits like a boulder in my chest, the wine sloshing on top of it, and I can’t seem to swallow, or speak, or do anything but stare into the intensity of her blue eyes and acknowledge that she means it.
Though it’s too little, too late.
‘I’m sorry I left without saying goodbye.’
‘I was at university,’ I say carefully, stripping the emotion from my voice. ‘You could hardly swing by.’
It’s what I told myself back then.
But that hadn’t meant she couldn’t call, write an email, send me one of the many postcards she sent Gran.
‘No, but I could have told you I was leaving that weekend you were here for the ball.’
My teeth grind...my knuckles flash white around my glass. ‘Are you trying to apologise or rub it in?’
