Page 64 of Someone Like You

“Yes.”

The hand Ian had on Phil’s hip twitched. “Better not make the same mistake twice.”

Surrender stripped the last vestige of hope out of Phil’s look and the fight out of his body.

“Not seeing you,” he said meekly, “isn’t gonna change how I feel.”

Ian felt his chest go cold, tighten, and crack. “You’ll get over it,” he soothed, but deep down he knew it was a white lie — one he was trying to sell to himself.

“No, I won’t.” Phil swallowed, a watery shimmer gathering in his eyes. He hastily wiped it away with the cuff of his pullover, then stopped to stare at the wet stains in the fabric like it was some wondrous phenomenon. “Well, look at this.” A cynical chuckle heaved out of him. “Didn’t think I still had it in me.”

The sight of Phil’s tears inflamed Ian’s protective instinct. He wrangled it back into its cage, reminding himself thathewas the cause of those tears. It was his cue to go before his willpower toppled and left him with no defences and no rational thinking to hold him back.

“Go back inside, you’re shakin’.”

Reddened hazel eyes lifted on him like weapons. “It’s not the cold.”

Not a single fibre in Ian’s mind, body, and soul wanted to leave, but it was now or never. He needed to believe that it was for the best, for all of them. Phil would move on. One broken heart was better than three.

“Take care of yourself, old man,” he said, taking a step back, away from Phil and the raw emotion strewn across his pale face, but before he could take another step Phil grabbed his wrist. For a moment Ian thought, almosthoped, that Phil would try to stop him, but Phil just pulled at the elastic bracelet on his own wrist and transferred it to Ian, pushing it past the large hand.

The gesture etched a harrowing sorrow in Ian’s already crestfallen soul. He wanted to rip it off and give it back, because it burned like live embers on his skin, but Phil’s supplicant look paralysed him.

“Just keep it. Please.”

It fit a bit too snugly and looked comical buried in his dark hair, but if a pink plastic trinket was all he got to keep of Phil Hanson, then it’d be his most prized possession.

He accepted the gift without question, without even glancing up.

Phil stood there, frozen, and watched powerlessly as Ian brushed past him, hands jammed back into the jacket’s pockets, and walked away in the rain, never looking back.

chapter 11

PHIL

‘Take care of yourself, old man.’

Ian’s last words to him had sounded like a broken caress.

A door closed gently and left ajar. No goodbye, no real closure.

It seemed appropriate.

Phil had almost retorted:‘Take care of me yourself, you coward!’, like he would have any other day. Ian would’ve snorted at it, but just to conceal his mirth, and then would’ve said something pungent but touching along the lines of‘Believe me, I’m trying’,leaving Phil speechless.

Instead, Phil’s speechlessness had kicked in too early, and all he’d been able to do was grab Ian’s wrist and give him that stupid bracelet that had looked even more jarring on him than it had on Phil, as if that could in any way keep their bond alive. Phil still had the helmet and the beanie, after all. Ian had accepted it — a worthless string of plastic beads picked up from a filthy airport floor — without a word, without asking what it was, what it meant.

Not even Phil knew what it meant.

Even though it hadn’t brought any sunshine, that bracelet had marked the beginning of Phil’s new life in Scotland and he’d held on to it, waiting for the day he could feel the sunshine again. Who could have imagined that sunshine would come in the form of a smart-mouthed Scottish hunk with kind blue eyes and the sexiest brain Phil had ever met?

“You’ll get over it.”

But, even as he’d said that, Ian had sounded like he knew it wasn’t going to happen. There was no such thing asgetting oversomeone who rightfully owned a piece of your soul. Phil would just have to learn to live with the gaping hole Ian had left in him and pray the numbness would eat the pain like it had eaten everything else. It was going to be hell, but he couldn’t find a single ounce of regret within himself, nor was he surprised by that fact. Ian could remove himself from the picture, but he couldn’t take the memories, couldn’t erase the imprint he’d left behind. Phil would be clinging to them for the rest of his life.

Head down, the broad back curved forward under the rain, Ian had walked away with Phil’s sunshine in his pocket, never looking back. Probably the most anticlimactic goodbye in heartbreak history.

Phil didn’t know how long he’d lingered outside the café, staring at the spot where Ian had disappeared from his sight, but by the time he dragged himself back inside his clothes were damp and his bones felt like ice. Sandra shot him an alarmed look as he lurched past the counter, barely aware of his surroundings. The noise, the movements, the sudden heat… It was all relegated to the periphery of his perception, muffled and blurry, unimportant.

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