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She smiles and grabs her things. ‘Wait we haven’t paid.’
‘It’s on the house.’
She looks at me questioningly.
I realise this is the moment, the moment that I have to make a decision, something I’ve known deep down since I invited her on this trip. If I don’t tell her the truth now, it will seem like I’ve been lying to her, and I can’t predict how she’ll react to that. I wouldn’t like it if the tables were turned so I have to assume she wouldn’t either. Iwantto tell Leyna. I’ve never felt this way with anyone else, but I want to share aspects of my life with Leyna that I’ve kept hidden for so long.
I wait a split second before finally deciding I need to be honest with her. Completely honest. ‘When you’re the owner of the restaurant, not only do you not have to pay, but they make sure the food is superb.’
Her jaw drops.
Chapter 29
Leyna
I’d known Jack wasn’tlike the other professors from the moment I started working in the English Department.
I was also under the impression that we’d come to the Lake District under the pretence that Jack hadworkto do here. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t noticed that he hadn’t done any reading or writing and certainly no preparing of presentations. With all the secretive phone calls and not a conference in sight, I was questioning everything. And now this. So, Jack owned the restaurant we’d just been to...
I’m starting to wonder, is Jack who he says he is? It’s almost like he has two lives. In one life he is a guarded, mild-mannered English Professor and in this other life he owns multiple houses, fancy cars... and restaurants?! What else is he hiding? I have so many questions and so few answers. I need to start by asking him a few.
We get into the car and take our seats. ‘Were you going to tell me that you owned that place?’ I ask, side-eyeing Jack while attempting to stare straight ahead.
‘I wasn’t sure if I would. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want you to think any differently.’ Jack puts the car into gear and takes off down the quiet roads, taking us out of Keswick and back out towards the countryside.
His words sting. ‘Why would I think differently? Differently from what? Newsflash, Jack. We’re in the Lake District at your second home, which is like a fucking mansion, by the way. You keep a spare sports car here just to drive around while you’re visiting your second home. And now you tell me you own that restaurant, but you don’t want me to think any differently?’ If he was under the impression that I saw him as some sort of pauper, he was sorely mistaken. I battle emotions I don’t quite understand and inside my head, I go back and forth between this not mattering and this mattering very much.
I tell myself Jack doesn’t owe me any explanations because we’re not dating. This is just a bit of fun. After all, hadn’t we both agreed to just a weekend, to get it out of our systems? And of course, this went well beyond our initialjust this once-agreement, no matter how flimsy that agreement was to start with, and yet I keep coming back to this feeling, not that he’d lied to me, but that he’d felt there were things he couldn’t tell me. And that’s what stings the most. Because even if this is a fling, I’m starting to realise that I still need some level of honesty.
After all the toing and froing, I couldn’t get over the notion that Jack felt like he had to hide a part of his life from me. Hadn’t I bared it all to him? I can’t stop myself from saying, ‘Is there anything else you’re keeping from me?’
A troubled look briefly crosses his face, the tell-tale furrowed brow and pursed lips a dead giveaway. Sheepishly, he admits, ‘I have another restaurant in the Lake District. In Ambleside. I’d like to take you there tomorrow.’
‘I see.’
‘And there are four other restaurants, dotted around the country, mainly in Somerset.’
