Unbound: (InterMix) (29 page)

“But you didn’t . . .”

“I didn’t. I wanted to, so badly. But for the first time I can remember, I made a
choice, in that moment. My hands were shaking so hard. The barman saw. He knew. He
asked me if I wanted to send it back, and I said I did. And I went home.”

“That night?”

He shook his head. “Not quite. I wandered around the city for a long time, waiting
to see if I’d fail. Testing myself, I think. Then the pubs closed, and the off-licenses,
and then I wandered some more, trying to know what to do. Whether to bother you again,
or leave you be.”

“I guess I know which you decided.”

“By then it was dawn, and I knew you’d be bound for London. So I walked until I was
home.”

All those hours she’d spent in transit, back to California . . . he’d spent them walking,
walking, walking. The both of them homeward bound, but for such different places,
on such different journeys. Goodness, what a weird man.

“I’ve found a therapist,” Rob added, turning his attention back to his tea.

“Good for you. Is it for the alcoholism, or the . . . your personal stuff?”

“Both. Just the drinking, at first. She put me on an antidepressant for a couple months.”
He met her eyes. “Which is something I never thought I’d do.”

“Did it work?”

He nodded. “Took the edge off being back in a city, and it dulled the cravings. Got
me eased into the routines—you know, meetings and all that. And once the day-to-day
alcohol stuff was feeling manageable, we started really talking about everything else.
My childhood, everything with my family and my marriage. And with my . . . kinks,”
he said softly. “I never imagined I’d share those things with a therapist, but it
just sort of came out.”

“She’s not weird about it, I hope.”

“No, she talks about it like it’s a food allergy. Neither bad nor good. Just a thing
I’m stuck with, whether I embrace it or simply accept it.”

“She sounds like a good fit.” Merry felt the dog sigh, warm ribs pressing her ankles
like an inverted hug. “And so where are you living?”

“I was down by the river for the first few months, renting a little place, then just
three weeks ago I bought a different flat. I bought the whole building, actually.”
Rob smiled then, a private, humble little grin.

“You bought a building? In the city?”

“Nothing grand.”

“Are you working?”

He shook his head. “No, but I’m quite comfortable.”

She squinted at him. “How?”

“The money I got when my partner bought me out, and rental income on my house in Leeds,
and whatever investment magic my broker’s been working. I’m not a millionaire by any
stretch, but I’ve got a nice cushion to live off while I get myself sorted.”

“Huh.” She propped her chin on her hand, curious what other assumptions she’d gotten
completely wrong about this man.

“What about you?” he asked. “How have you been?”

“Aside from heartbroken?” she teased. “I’ve been okay. Gained a few pounds back, but
I’m not stressing myself out about it.”

“I’ve done that as well.” He patted his middle. “Funny how that happens when you don’t
have to catch or harvest your dinner. Everything else going all right? Work? Friends?”

She told him about her new role, and how things had evolved between her and Lauren.
“Everything’s a bit blah, but I can’t really complain. Frankly, I don’t know how things
could feel anything
but
blah, after last year’s trip.”

“I’ll show you my place,” he offered, “if you’d like to see it.”

“Of course I would. Is it on the outskirts? Close to your escape route?”

He smiled. “No, it’s downtown, actually. Quite close to here.”

“That’ll be a change.”

“Quite close indeed,” he said, fiddling with his cup. Then he pointed out the café’s
front window. “That’s it, there.”

“Where?”

“That one, right across the way.”

She turned in her chair to stare at that funny, skinny old building with the erstwhile
candy store on the bottom. “No way—what a weird coincidence.”

He smiled. “No, it isn’t.”

“No?”
Because of me, you mean? Because it meant something to you, because it had meant something
to me?

“The flat’s nice. Two floors, sort of odd and narrow, with a spiral stair. But I like
going up to the roof with the dog on warm nights with a cup of tea and watching the
river and the people. Nights have always been hard for me. It’s been good to make
a new ritual of them.”

“Any plans to rent out the storefront?”

“A few people have inquired, but none I’ve cared to make tenants of. No sense jumping
into too many roles, my first year of recovery.”

“Sounds wise. So . . . where do we go from here?” she asked. “Today?”

“That’s entirely up to you. Whatever you want.”

“I haven’t got the first clue what I want. I’m here until Sunday morning, with no
real agenda aside from finding you. So I’ve already accomplished my goal. What do
you
want?”

“I want . . . I want to show you my flat, and make us tea. And I want to sit on the
roof with you and talk.” His gaze dropped to the tabletop. “I want to spend the next
few days with you, and for you to see Inverness the way you’d intended. And wherever
we might be by the end of it all . . . just friends, or anything more . . . I want
to say good-bye to you the way I should have, last year. Before I bollocksed everything
up so badly.”

She considered the invitation, visited by a dozen incarnations of misgiving and longing
in the space of a single breath. After a deep drink of her coffee, she nodded. “Okay.”

“Yeah?” The hope was audible in his voice, and it intensified the pang lodged between
her ribs. Yearning as deep and sharp as a blade.

She nodded. “Yeah. Yes to sitting on your roof, and to seeing what feels like the
next step, after that.”

Their two cups were empty in no time, and suddenly Rob was holding the leash, holding
the door, inviting Merry to come across the street.

“Would you like to see the shop?”

“Sure.”

He fished in his pocket for keys and unlocked two bolts. An alarm
bleep
ed and he punched a code into a security panel as the door eased shut at Merry’s back.

She glanced around the store. A perfect, modest size, with a generous front window.

“It’s adorable.”

“I’ve pictured you here. A hundred times.”

She blinked at him. “You have?”

“I pictured you here, surrounded by your dresses and things. Chatting to customers.”
He smiled. “Maybe that’s why I’ve found it so hard to let. No tenant’s plans can ever
stand up to yours.”

“Wow. If only.” She couldn’t actually
do
that, though. Move here, start a business . . . But neither could she help but imagine
it. This space, hers to decorate. Hers to get lost in, doing the thing that obsessed
and enlivened her like nothing else.

“Come see the back.” He led her across the main floor and into a curtained-off space.
It was ideal for a sewing studio, with enough room left over for a little office at
one end.

This is yours,
some part her brain whispered.
This was made for you.

“It’s perfect,” she told him, smiling as she glanced around the back room. “If I had
a business plan and a visa and the money to risk, I’d snap it right up.”

“There’s a rear stairway to the flat through here.”

She followed him out, across the shop floor and around to a back corner, then they
climbed a tight set of stairs to a landing. Rob unlocked the apartment. He unclipped
the dog’s leash and hung it on a peg, and the three of them entered.

The first thing that struck Merry was the eerie
rightness
of the place.

There was something about the long shape of the living room they stood in, or the
way the light came through the three tall windows, or the black iron of the stairway
that corkscrewed up from one corner . . . Something positively
drenched
with familiarity, as though she’d been here, or dreamed of it on a hundred nights.
It was sparsely furnished, barely decorated, but it was the shapes that tugged at
her, and the view.

“So this is the parlor-type area,” he said, “and there’s a tiny kitchen through here.”

She followed him into the next room—just enough space for a fridge, stove, and sink,
and Rob’s table and chair from the cottage. She ran her hand over the wood, smiling.

“I’ll put the kettle on.”

Once two cups of tea were steeping, Rob showed her the spare bedroom, with a twin-sized
frame done up in a fawn-colored comforter over chocolate-brown pillows, across from
a writing desk and dresser.

Would Merry cancel her room at the hotel, and sleep here, in this bed? She hadn’t
the faintest clue.

They added milk and sugar to their teas and carried them up the spiral stair to the
third floor, to a landing big enough to pass for a small sitting room. Rob had only
a stereo and his old rocker there at the moment, plus a little table. At the rocker’s
side sat a plaid dog bed, and Merry smiled, picturing the two of them here, dozing
as the sun sank, Rob filling his ears and head with music, to keep other appetites
at bay.

Other appetites.
Suddenly it wasn’t the alcohol she was thinking of, but other vices that had given
him so much needless grief. The ones she’d indulged, and gladly. Her body warmed,
that old wickedness she’d feared was wrecked forever rousing from a long slumber.

“And over here’s my room, these last few weeks,” Rob said, leading the way. He pushed
in his door, and Merry stepped inside, breath gone in an instant.

A different bed frame, but his same blankets and pillow cases. Just . . . just the
scent of him, subtle but unmistakable. There was a dated laptop on his desk, a bookshelf
that held a couple dozen volumes plus his eReader, CDs, shoe boxes containing who
knew what. Just the trappings of some ordinary life, yet they captivated her. Also
on the desk sat one of his old kerosene lanterns. Smiling, she wandered over to toy
with its wire handle.

“Why did you bring this back?”

“I missed the smell of it. And I like reading by it—so much nicer than some glaring
white bulb.”

She looked out his window, facing the wide expanse of the city to the north. But his
bed stayed in her periphery, its presence nagging like a needy child.

No, you’re not going to cancel your hotel room and stay in his spare room.
She knew that now.

She’d be staying right here. Under that coarse wool blanket that surely smelled of
wood smoke, between his soft, worn sheets. Against the strong body of this man, the
one she’d missed with such a constant, haunting ache.

A good idea? She couldn’t say, but it was the only one her heart was going to let
her make. She knew that, surely as she knew the sky above Inverness today was blue.
Surely as she felt acceptance and admiration every time Rob’s gaze alighted on her.
Attraction, affection. The seeds of love, already planted, ready to grow if only they
could find their way to fostering them.

“Roof?” Rob asked.

Merry shook her head. “The sun’s a bit much,” she lied. The sun was fine, but the
sky seemed too big a witness to this reunion. She wanted to close herself away with
this man, lock them together as they’d been for those few, life-changing days the
previous fall.

He led her to his little sitting area instead, and Merry stood before the windows,
enjoying a sliver’s view of the sparkling River Ness beyond the neighboring rooftops.

“It must be beautiful at night, with the lights bouncing off the water.”

“It is. More beautiful than a glass of gin set before me on a bar, even.”

She turned, finding him wearing a tight, humble smile, one that told her the statement
was both true and hard-won. That he wasn’t proud of it . . . and yet he was.

“Have a seat.” He motioned to the rocker and set their cups on the table beside it.
He sat on the deep windowsill across from her, close. His feet framed hers, and though
they were near enough to touch, his hands rested on the sill beside his hips, hers
wrapped around her knee. She unlaced her fingers and extended her arm, spanning the
space between them. He took her hand. One bridge now standing once more, no matter
how many might still lay in ashes in Rob’s rearview.

She spoke without thought. “I’m glad you wrote to me.”

“So am I. I hope I said what you needed to hear.”

“I needed to hear that you were okay.” She squeezed his hand, met his eyes. “And I
needed to see it, even more.”

For a long moment he simply held her stare, his lips tense with unreadable thoughts,
thumb stroking her palm. Then he moved, letting her go to crouch before her. Merry
leaned forward and let him take both her hands in his warm ones.

“Tell me,” he said quietly, “if I’m being too familiar. Or too physical.”

“You’re not.” She wanted so much more, and with an urgency she’d not dared to expect.

Rob nodded. “Good. I didn’t know it’d feel like this, seeing you again. I didn’t know
how badly I’d need to just . . . touch you.”

“It’s nice,” she assured him. “I’ve needed it, too.”
And I’m spending the night with you.
But she wouldn’t tell him, not yet. She’d waited her whole life for a man to look
at her as Rob did now. With longing and pain and fascination, a hundred fierce things
at once.

“I hope whatever it is you saw in me, last autumn . . .” He trailed off a moment.
“I hope that’s still part of who I am, to you. I hope maybe you can see whoever that
man was, in the real me. The one who’s here in a city. A wreck.”

She nodded. “I absolutely do.” He was here, holding her hand. He was right there behind
those blue eyes. She’d spurred him to flee, that awful night when she’d triggered
his worst fears, but the man who’d said good-bye to her . . .

“Do you still think of me as that delirious woman who barged her way into your house
on the verge of puking?”