Page 110 of The Rest is History
Yeah. Not an option.
I’ll need to start looking at other roles as a matter of urgency.
I’m almost finished tiredly dismissing my class when she appears in my doorway, an angel backlit against the bright corridor beyond. I stiffen but jerk my head in acome ingesture. She sidles in hesitantly and perches on the empty desk nearest the door while I match the straggler parents with their kids and bid them farewell.
I practically kick the last child out of the room and close the door before turning back towards her and approaching her carefully, like she’s an animal I’m afraid of scaring off. If this had been last week, I would have shut the blind on the door andpushed her up against it and found her neck with my mouth about the same time that one hand curled her hair around its fist and the other found her ass.
But it’s not last week.
And I suspect I know what this is about.
Suddenly, twenty-one grand feels like a small price to pay for getting her alone and not having her look at me like I’m the most despicable creature she’s ever seen.
‘Hi.’ I take a step towards her, and she stands. I’m sure it’s so she’s not at a height disadvantage, but it has the effect of closing the gap between us. I stand there like an idiot and drink her in. Her hair’s loose today. Dark and glossy and gorgeous, tumbling over her bare shoulders. I could smell her shampoo when she sat next to me earlier.
Objectively speaking, she looks tired, but her beauty still takes my breath away. I itch to pick up a strand of hair and roll it between my fingers. Ache to slide a hand around the back of that neck. To drag my thumb over her full, pink bottom lip before leaning in and biting down on it.
The only thing I have going for me in this moment, so help me God, is the utter certainty that I’ve done the right thing by her. No matter what she thinks of me.
‘Charlie,’ she starts, and my name on her lips rolls through my body. ‘I—my sister called me. She told me you paid Olive’s school fees for a whole year.’ She rubs the spot between her eyebrows tiredly. ‘It’s too much—there’s no way we can accept.’
I exhale. ‘It’s not too much. It’s the very least I can do.’
‘When you say it like that, it sounds like a payoff. Like you’re trying to—I don’t know—make amends. And even though it’s staggeringly generous, and I’m really touched, I don’t want any guilt money from you. You don’t owe me anything.’
I can’t bear this. I really can’t. She sees it as a big deal, because the struggle to put Olive through this expensive schoolhas dictated so much of Elodie and Grace’s choices over the past year, but it’s really not a big deal for me.
Not financially, in any case.
What is a big deal is being able to walk away from her knowing that I haven’t just broken her heart. That something good has come out of the trust she placed in me.
Now I just need to make her understand. I need to make her agree to accept my gift.
‘It’s not about owing you, El.’ I pause, rake my fingers through my hair as I find the right words. ‘I know how much you’ve given up to be able to help your family out. You’ve been at Grace’s side, and you’re incredible with Olive, and you took a new job just to be able to help with the fees. And now I’ve gone and made that miserable for you, too.
‘I just want you to have some options. Some freedom. Without wanting to sound like a complete twat, this isn’t a big deal for me financially. What you’ve done with Olive is so admirable, but I don’t like seeing you constrained by having these fees hanging over you. And I didn’t want you having to keep up the Hampton Court thing because you were worried about money. This way, if you want to quit, you can walk away without worrying.’
Her eyes widen. ‘Do you want me to quit?’
‘No.’ I clench my hands into fists at my sides. I want to reach out and touch her so fucking badly. ‘I don’t. But I’m sure it’s something you’ve considered. And I don’t want money worries to be part of the equation.’
She cocks her head, considering my argument. ‘I don’t know, Charlie.’
I sense a chink in her armour and push on.
‘Come on, El. Everything you do is for other people. You’re sleeping in your sister’s spare room, and teaching a period in history you hate, and now you have to deal with me letting youdown, too. I just... I can’t bear it if I’ve made your life worse. Just take the money and let me do one thing to make your life easier, for God’s sake.’
She swallows, and I can sense her yielding. ‘It’s not money I want from you,’ she says in a low voice, and Jesus Christ, it nearly kills me.
‘I know, sweetheart.’
We stare at each other, my heart so full of love and pain that it swells right up to my throat.
She folds her arms over her chest. ‘You don’t get to call me that anymore. You’re the one who wanted to end it.’
She’s so hurt.
So bewildered by my actions.
