Page 66 of His Innocent Seduction

‘Yeah.’ Too gruff. Too serious. Jesus. She’s going to know something’s up. ‘Why not?’

Casual. Easy.

It seems to reassure her.

There are a dozen queues. Ours moves quickly. I watch her covertly as she places her handbag in the tray, loading it with her things, smiles at the security attendant and walks through the arch.

My gut contorts.

I move after her.

‘Which gate?’ I prompt.

‘Eighty-eight.’

I follow the signs, waiting for her to gather her bag and then put a hand in the small of her back.

She doesn’t speak now, and nor do I. There is a heavy emotional resonance surrounding us.

As we pass gate eighty our stride slows, until finally we’re at gate eighty-seven. Eighty-eight. I see a crowd of people at her gate. The Air France crew are starting pre-flight activity.

She stops walking, looks up at me. I force myself to look at her, to hold her gaze, even when I feel like she’s digging her hand into my chest and ripping a piece of me out.

I have to let her go.

I’m not going to ruin this for her.

Her smile is ambivalent. ‘Thank you,’ she says quietly. ‘For everything.’

‘Don’t thank me.’

She pulls a face. ‘But you’ve been so helpful. Such an excellent teacher.’ She looks over her shoulder towards the gate, then back at me. ‘And now you can go back to your old life.’

‘What if I don’t want that?’

Oh, shit.

Confusion clouds her eyes. ‘What do you mean?’

Can I wind this back? Take back what I said? No. Fuck it. No. Here, at the airport, I can’t do this. I can’t just let her go. ‘I mean, what if I don’t want you to leave, Millie? What if I want you to stay here, in Dublin, with me?’

Her mouth opens wide, the colour dropping from her face. ‘Why?’

She’s speechless, the idea something she apparently hasn’t even contemplated. I sigh heavily. ‘Because this is an arbitrary date. Because you booked your flights before you met me and, despite what you keep saying, everything’s different now. Everything’s changed.’

She shakes her head, her eyes clashing with mine. ‘Michael...’

‘I’m not the same man who agreed to fuck you, like it meant nothing. And I’d bet my bottom dollar on you not being the same woman who asked a guy she didn’t know to take her virginity.’

‘I’m not,’ she whispers, hushed, angry. ‘You’ve changed me. This has changed me. I’ve grown and I’m... Everything’s different. But not this. I have to go. I have to do this.’

‘But you don’t want to,’ I say flatly. ‘You’re doing it because you planned it, and you feel like you have to. But what do you want, Millie?’

She lifts her face towards mine, her chin defiant, her eyes sparking. ‘I want to go to Paris. I want to see the world.’

‘Like you promised your mother you would.’

‘Yes.’ She expels an angry sigh. ‘And like I promised myself I would. All those long nights nursing her, caring for her, my heart breaking—you know what it’s like, Michael. I know you do. When something is so bloody hard, and you have a talisman to pull you through it—that was this trip. This is what I promised myself I’d do, what I told myself would fix everything. I didn’t leave my life behind to get stuck in the first city I came to.’

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