Page 7 of Never Too Late

“What?”

Cillian’s gaze swung back my way. “I was worried. I thought something might have happened to you. I couldn’t get through to you on the phone and all my messages went unanswered. When I went round to your flat, you weren’t there. Or at least, you weren’t answering the door.”

“When?” I asked.

Cillian frowned. “When what?”

Great! He was back to frowning. The anti-Botox fairy strikes again. Hopefully, he’d made the most of his months of line-free skin. “When did you call me?” I sat back in my chair, familiar emotions that had nothing to do with attraction, and everything to do with promises that were never kept and being made to feel like I was second best, bubbling to the surface. “Because… I waited that night for you to call me like you said you would, and you never did.”

The slight shake of Cillian’s head reeked of confusion. “I don’t remember. It was a friend who pointed out that the call always going to voicemail after a few rings meant you’d blocked me.” He gave a bitter laugh. “She thought we must have argued. She thought I was lying when I said we hadn’t.” He wrapped his hands around his coffee cup, but made no move to drink it. “So I guess you didn’t get any of my messages?”

“No.” Such a simple answer. Yet, it suddenly felt incredibly petty. Like something a child rather than an adult would do. I refused to give in to the feeling, wrapping myself securely in the irritation of our past relationship instead. “I’d had enough. I’d reached the end of my tether.”

“Had enough of what?”

It all came out in a rush—all the things I’d wanted to say, but hadn’t been able to. “Of playing second fiddle to your work. Of never being able to spend any uninterrupted time with you.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is true,” I argued. “Name one occasion when we went anywhere without you taking at least one phone call?” I left a deliberate pause, Cillian’s confusion growing. “See! You can’t. You can’t because it never happened. Hell, you even stepped outside on our first date to take a call. Remember that?” Cillian opened his mouth to defend himself, but I was on a roll. “So I guess the person I should really be angry at is myself, when I should have known from the start what I was getting.”

“What you were getting?”

I ignored the edge in Cillian’s voice. “Someone work-obsessed who only needed someone around when he had an itch to scratch. And I played that role for months without questioning it, because that’s apparently how much of an idiot I am.” I took a huge gulp of my coffee, the liquid burning my throat. “I would have been better off with a dildo. At least it wouldn’t have made promises it had no intention of keeping. I could count the times on one hand when you saying you’d call me, or we’d go for dinner, actually happened when it was supposed to. And I’d have plenty of fingers left over.”

A woman a few tables along raised her head, the brasserie quiet at this time in an evening. I offered her an apologetic smile, and she went back to reading her book. Either she didn’t understand English and had just reacted to the heat in my words, or she’d decided it was none of her business. Either way, it was a useful reminder that we were in a public place. “I wasn’t happy,” I said much more quietly. “I wanted a boyfriend who was present in the relationship.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

Cillian’s face showed his hurt, and though I hadn’t asked him to come, I hated being responsible for his pain. “I tried. A few times. That last day when I came to your office, I said I wanted to talk, right?” I waited for Cillian’s nod. “Well, there you go. That’s what I wanted to talk about. Except… we ended up in bedinstead. And then, as usual, you took a phone call straight after. Two phone calls.”

“I was in my office.”

I gave a harsh laugh that lacked humor. “Of course you were. You’re there ninety-eight percent of the time. That’s why you have a bed there. I don’t know anyone else who has a bed in their office.”

“Jacob Mawlinson has one. Nathan Cartwright has too.”

“I don’t know who either of those people are, but I’ll assume they’re fellow ad execs. Or at the very least, CEOs of some ridiculously successful company.” Silence descended once more, and I heaved out a sigh. “I didn’t want to do this.”

“Do what?”

“Come across as bitter.”

“No? You thought it was better to block my number, find a job in another country, and leave without telling me instead? Did you think that would be kinder?”

I traced a pattern on the tabletop. “Not kinder, no.”

“Then why do it that way? And don’t give me that crap about not being able to have a conversation with me. You could have left a voice message. You could have sent me a text. You could have written a damn email.”

“Yeah, I could have done,” I admitted as I held Cillian’s gaze. How honest did I want to be? I supposed it didn’t really matter now. “I feared you’d flutter your ridiculously long eyelashes and get me to change my mind, that I’d end up stuck in a relationship that wouldn’t give me what I needed. It seemed like the only way of doing things, and yes, I recognize it made me a coward. I’ll hold my hands up to that.”

“I’ve never fluttered my eyelashes at anyone!”

I laughed at the horrified look on Cillian’s face. Who knew that would be the part he’d take the hardest? “It was a turn of phrase.I thought it sounded better than you’d have flashed your cock at me and my clothes would have fallen off.”

“You make it sound like there was nothing between us but sex.”

“I never said that. That was just the part we got right.”

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