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Charlotte closed her eyes, trying to work out if that was admirably moralistic or stupidly naïve. “This is going to change everything,” she said with a shake of her head. “My whole life. My work. Everything.”
He turned to her quickly, eyes assessing. “Your work should not be impacted by this.”
“In theory, sure.”
“Is this why you stay single? Because you’re afraid your job and accommodation will be in jeopardy? Because that’s not exactly a sign of a true friendship, you know.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I know they’d never fire me. I just meant, the pleasurable, friendly arrangement we have. I like my job, my home, my life. And you’ve come in, for one week, thrown a grenade into the middle of everything, and tomorrow morning, you’re going to get on a flight and leave.”
“Do you want me to stay and help pick up the pieces?” He asked, but in a tone that was flat, devoid of feeling, so she knew it wasn’t a genuine offer.
“I think I’ll do a better job of that myself.”
He pulled the car into the parking lot of the pub, finding a space near the door despite the fact it was almost full.
“I’m leaving this afternoon,” he said, quietly, staring straight ahead, a frown etching into his handsome features.
Charlotte couldn’t quite conceal the little gasping sound. She stared at him as her heart caught fire and began to meltdown. “Since when?”
His throat shifted as he swallowed. “Does it matter?” He turned to face her, eyes almost mocking as they met hers. She shivered, trying to find a hint of the man she’d come to know, the man she’d fallen in love with. “Does any of this matter?”
Charlotte’s lips parted on a whoosh of hurt surprise. She knew it didn’t matter to him, but that didn’t make it easy to hear.
“I guess not,” she responded with a small shake of her head, but it was horrible to say that, let alone to believe he felt it. Yet, she’d said as much to Caleb. She’d told him this didn’t mean anything, because for Alessio, that was true, and therefore, it had to be a universal truth: how could a relationship have meaning if one party didn’t allow it to?
“Then we’ll leave it at that.”
Charlotte turned away from him again, but this time, she didn’t look out the window. She kept her eyes closed, and focussed on her breathing, and on doing everything she could not to cry.
Chapter13
THE PUB WAS A LIVELY, jolly swirl of people when they walked through the doors, in total contrast to the shellshocked mood that had stolen through Charlotte. Nonetheless, everyone in town knew her, and she had no choice but to paste a smile on her face and greet all the locals and respond to their well-wishes in kind.
Alessio didn’t wait for her. A quick glance showed him striding through the pub, towards the door that led to the guest accommodations.
Her heart shattered.
She’d presumed he would find her to say goodbye. She’d presumed he’d…do something, to fix the awfulness of what had happened over lunch, but as the afternoon progressed towards night, Charlotte realised he was going to leave without another word.
It hit her like a cannon being aimed square at her gut.
She collapsed onto the sofa and dropped her head into her hands, and sobbed with all the grief in her heart, because she’d fallen so hard in love with him, and the day had turned out to be so awful, destroying her relationships with three people who mattered an awful lot to her. She felt lonely, alone and completely without hope, in a way she hadn’t known since Maggie and Michael had died.
Her sobs grew louder as she indulged in a brief, rare fit of self-pity. She sacrificed so much of her life to be a good mother to Dash, but just this once, she’d thought she might be able to have her cake and eat it too. To enjoy a no-strings fling with someone like Alessio.
She lay back on the sofa and stared at the ceiling as tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, down her cheeks, to the fabric beneath her, and she replayed the details of their time together like a highlight reel of a movie. One after the other, she remembered the way it had felt to be with him, to look forward to being with him, to touching him, to kissing him, to travelling with him.
Her heart was in stitches, her body made heavy by a strange sense that she recognised, belatedly, as grief. A grief as real as any she’d ever known, it was just becoming clear to Charlotte that she’d never see Alessio again. Never.
And Charlotte didn’t know how she could live with that reality.
As he boarded the flight,he told himself he was relieved. Relieved to be leaving his mother, brother and even Charlotte behind. Everything about the trip had been a disaster and he couldn’t wait to get back to Italy and his normal life. To feel like himself again, instead of the strange man he’d been morphing into thanks to Winona’s confessions and Charlotte’s…
Charlotte’s what?
Influence?
The way she made him question his long-held beliefs about almost everything?
