Page 90 of Away With You
I take one look at Rosie’s concerned face and burst into tears.
“What’s happened?” she asks, taking me into her arms and wrapping me in a fierce hug. “Tell me.”
I draw in a shuddering breath and shake my head. There’s no time to explain. I have to leave.
“Rosie,” I say as I wipe my cheeks and try to pull myself together. “I need some help. Can you help me?”
She nods, her worried eyes bouncing between mine. “Of course I will. Let’s get you into some air-conditioning, and then you can tell me what’s wrong.”
We walk towards the bungalow, and my stomach revolts at the sight of it. I can’t stay here. I won’t.
“There’s no time for me to explain everything,” I tell her as we walk through the door. I throw open the cupboard. “I need you to help me get back to London. I want to go home.” My words stutter into a pathetic hiccup, and she rushes to stall my hands as I clutch my empty suitcase.
“Go home? You can’t go home? Where’s Nathan? I’m calling him now.”
“No!” I shout at her. “Don’t do that.”
Her mouth drops open, and she puts her phone in her pocket and holds her hands up in surrender. “Let’s just take a breath and talk about what’s happening.”
I shake my head, grabbing a handful of clothes and shoving them into the suitcase. In my frenzied state, I don’t care what I’m packing. I’m only taking one bag home with me. Nathan can have the rest. He bought most of it, anyway.
“I just need to get out of here,” I say as I rush to the bathroom where all my valuable stuff lives. My hair straightener is at the top of the list.
“But why?” she asks, following close behind me.
I stop moving. If I don’t tell her something, she won’t help me. “I saw Nathan.” I pause, my throat too tight to get the rest of the words out.
“You saw Nathan?”
“And Victoria.”
She shakes her head, her blonde hair swinging over her shoulders. “You saw Nathan and Victoria?”
“Together,” I say with a sob.There. Now she knows everything.
“No way.” Rosie frowns as she takes me by the shoulders and stares into my eyes. “That isn’t possible. You got it wrong. Tell me exactly what you saw.”
I draw in a deep breath and give her a summary of the scene in the chapel, my hands busy stuffing my make-up into a bag.
“Well, then. That’s not so bad,” she says when I finish.
I glance at her in the mirror, and my heart sinks. Her face does not match her words. She looks…upset.
“It’s not so good either.” I push my hair out of my face and turn to stare at her. “He had so many opportunities to shut her down. To push her away. Instead, he did nothing.”
Her lips twist into a grimace. “That’s true. It doesn’t look great. But he’s a man, Katie. He must have got confused.”
“Confused?” I scoff. “Let’s say that’s true, that his brain was taking a second to catch up. What does that say about our relationship? About what I mean to him? I wasn’t really anywhere in that discussion.”
She says nothing, and I take her silence for acceptance. If Nathan felt even half as much for me as I feel for him, that conversation would never have happened.
“Even so,” Rosie rallies as I brush past her to put my toiletries into my suitcase. “Shouldn’t you give him a chance to explain?”
I pause. She’s right. I should give him at least that. But then…
“I think he still loves her,” I whisper.
She hurries to put her arms around me while I cry. I sink into her and give in to the sadness seeping into me.
