Page 119 of Paper Roses

I raise my chin and try to keep the awful hurt from my voice. “Now your fake husband is out of the way you’ve taken up with someone else.”

“Out of theway? I didn’t bury you in a field. And I haven’t taken up with anyone else. I’m bloody married. What thefuck?” He draws in a bolstering breath. “I don’t know where this fictional person even came from, Artie.”

“You were trying to tell me about… him.” I quickly play back our conversation, and suddenly what seemed so sure doesn’t anymore. I shift awkwardly. “I mean, weren’t you?”

His eyes flare with emotion. “No, I fuckingwasn’t.”

“Oh.” I stare at him and say quickly, “Then let’s forget what I just said and not discuss it anymore.”

“No, let’s.” He scrutinises my face.

I raise my hands in confusion. “So, what were you trying to say, then? You’re being very odd today.”

“I was trying to tell you that I’m inlovewith you.” The words come out loud enough to be a shout.

I feel like I’ve just been hit on the head with something heavy. “What?”

“I’m so fucking inlovewith you,” he repeats, still loud but not as shouty. “I tried to ignore it and call it something else, but the truth is that you’re everything to me. You’re bright and bold, and you warm me all the way through to the cold bits no one has ever touched. And if I’ve lost you because I was stupid, then you can rest assured that it will be the biggest regret of my whole fucking life.” He sucks in air, his eyes panicked. “Shit, I’m so sorry.”

“Why?” I say faintly.

“I had a whole lovely speech planned. This isnotthe way I wanted to tell you.”

“How did you want to tell me, then?” I whisper.

“With flowers and a big speech. Not on a side street in the middle of a rainstorm while we’re shouting at each other.” He shakes his head in disgust. “Shit,” he says again with feeling.

Suddenly, I want to laugh. Emotion is filling me up like helium in a balloon. So much of it that if his hands weren’t tethering me to the ground, I would float away to the moon.

The rain is thundering down now, bouncing on the pavement and running in rivers down the street. He lets me go and starts to pace, forcing his hand through his hair and muttering about being an idiot. His hair is sopping wet, clinging like a seal’s pelt to his skull.

“Well, I think it was absolutely perfect,” I say loudly, cutting through his emotional rant about being the stupidest person in the world.

“What?” he snaps.

I smile at him. “I said that I think it was perfect.”

He stops mid-pace. “You do?” he asks cautiously. He bites his lip and this wild-looking man is so far from the buttoned-up perfect man I first loved that I want to laugh and kiss him.

I know so well now that he is not perfect. Yet, in the end, it turns out he’s absolutely perfect for me.

“I have a confession,” I say softly, coming closer.

He swallows hard. “Tell me.”

“When we got married, I lied to you.”

His shoulders tense under his sopping jumper and coat. “Why?”

“I was in love with you then,” I say steadily. “I think I’ve been in love with you since I walked into your office, and you smiled at me and took my jacket. And I never stopped. I can’t. It would be like stopping breathing.”

He gasps, his face transforming before me, jubilation and happiness chasing away the heartbreak.

“And,” I continue, “I should have told you that before I made you fake-marry me.”

“I wasn’t ready to hear that you loved me,” he says. We’re two feet away from each other, but it feels like we’re already in each other’s arms. His eyes are brimming with emotion. “I wasn’t ready when you told me, and I’m so sorry for that.”

“I’m not,” I say, suddenly both serene and very certain. “You had to come to it in your own time.”

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