Page 56 of The Paris Chapter

‘I did,’ he argued. ‘You have no idea how much I wanted to be with you. I know I screwed us up. I screwed a lot of things up. I swear the last thing I wanted to do was hurt you.’

I looked away from him again. The sights of Paris rolling past the river didn’t help this time. All I could think about was how he had broken my heart. ‘What is the point of this? You did hurt me, Joe. You really hurt me.’

Joe looked crushed. ‘This isn’t going the way I was hoping.’

‘What were you hoping?’ I asked, confused as to what he was expecting to happen here.

Had he thought I’d leap into his arms?

‘I hoped that you had missed me too,’ he said, confirming my thoughts. He moved a bit closer on the boat bench. ‘Tessa, I know what I did was wrong, but you have no idea the pressure I’ve been under. My family expects a lot of me. My father especially… They love Rachel. She’s a family friend. Our fathers are in business together, for God’s sake. It’s been expected we’d get married since we were teenagers.’

‘So why did you start something with me?’ I asked pointedly.

‘Because I don’t love her. No, I do… but I’m not in love with her. When I saw you in the park that day, I was desperate to get to know you and every day we spent together confirmed that what I have with Rachel isn’t the real thing.’

‘You can’t believe what we had was the real thing,’ I said, startled that he was being so open with me after all this time. It made me hesitate. Had he actually loved me? I felt confused and just like I had felt when I was him – unsure what was real and what wasn’t.

‘Of course it was! We fell in love, didn’t we?’ Joe asked, hislips curving into that devastating smile of his. ‘I know we were happy. That you wanted me. That when I held you in my arms, it was real.’

‘Only because I had no idea I wasn’t the only woman you were holding.’ I shook my head.

‘I never held her like I held you, I swear. Tessa, I made a huge mistake. But Rachel was the mistake. You never were.’

‘I thought you said you came to give us closure.’

‘I came to get you back,’ he replied matter-of-factly.

26

Joe’s words hung in the air as the boat continued on down the River Seine. I stared at Joe as he watched me.

I came to get you back.

‘I know you have missed me too,’ Joe said then. He reached out and touched my cheek. ‘Haven’t you?’

My skin warmed to his touch, the familiarity of it confusing me for a moment. Looking into his eyes on this romantic boat trip was seductive. Like the past two months could be erased if I leaned into him. But did I actually want them erased? I thought about Ethan then and I leaned away from Joe’s touch. ‘I’ve been here with Ethan,’ I said, avoiding answering his question directly.

‘Well, Ethan has always wanted everything that I have,’ Joe said. ‘He has really low self-esteem. He’s always been jealous of me. Has he said anything about you two carrying on after Paris?’

‘Um…’ I didn’t know what to say. We hadn’t exactly made any promises to each other. I knew Ethan had compared himself to Joe in the past, he’d admitted it and questioned whether he could be my type after I’d been with Joe. But I knew our kisses had been real. He wasn’t with me because of Joe.

I really hope not anyway.

‘Besides,’ Joe said, carrying on when I failed to respond. ‘It’s not like you’ll get much time together when he moves here, and you’re in London.’

‘Why would Ethan move to Paris?’

‘To open a restaurant with Juliette,’ Joe said with a shrug. ‘Here.’ He held out the champagne and re-filled our empty glasses.

‘What do you mean?’ Whenever they had talked about it, neither Ethan nor Juliette had mentioned their restaurant would be in Paris, and besides that, I knew Ethan didn’t want to do anything about opening their own place until he’d paid back the money Joe’s father had lent him to study to be a chef.

‘That’s what I came to tell Ethan,’ Joe said. ‘I wasn’t lying, I did need to talk to him but I decided to come to Paris instead of call him so I could see you too. Ethan told my dad that he wanted to pay back the money he’d lent him years ago and my dad had been thinking about it. He finally told me the full story and said I could tell Ethan.’ Joe paused to sip his champagne, and I did the same. ‘Ethan’s mum inherited money from her parents and put some of it into an account for Ethan without him knowing. When she became ill, she went to my dad and asked him to take the account over and use it if he needed it. She didn’t want Ethan to spend it and end up in financial trouble like his father had done. She was adamant Ethan shouldn’t know about it until he turned thirty when my father could hand it over, and he’d be responsible enough to handle it.’

‘Oh,’ I said, thinking Ethan must have been shocked to hear this. ‘So, your father dipped into it when Ethan said he wanted to study to be a chef?’

‘Exactly. So when Ethan said he wanted to pay the money back before he could open his own restaurant, my father decided to come clean about the whole thing. The money left in the account is more than enough for Ethan to do what he wants.’

‘Wow. What did Ethan say?’ I asked, wishing he had replied to my message and told me all of this himself. He could finally make his dream come true. I was so happy for him. And Juliette too.

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