She walked towards him, smiling, and he pulled her into his arms, inhaled the fragrance of her hair, held the woman he had come home to and hated it that he wasn’t capable of making their relationship last but he just did not believe in forever.
He was hurting her. Every day that they were together would simply make the parting harder, and so instead of diving into a kiss he headed over to the dresser and, rarely for Leo, poured a drink. ‘Do you want one?’ he offered.
‘Not if I’m driving.’
He hesitated but poured two.
‘It’s not working, is it?’ Lizzie was the one who broached the subject. ‘It hasn’t been since you visited the nursing home.’
‘It’s not that.’
Lizzie didn’t believe him. ‘Leo, what my mum said about a husband and babies was a ten-year-old Lizzie she was remembering.’
‘So you don’t want that?’ Leo glanced over.
‘I do.’ Lizzie was honest enough to admit it. ‘But I know that’s not for you—I know what she said freaked you out.’
He held his breath. It had freaked him out but not in the way Lizzie was thinking—it was more that she deserved someone who could give her all that she wanted when he honestly didn’t think he could. ‘Why would it freak me out?’ he asked. ‘I already told you it’s not for me.’
They stood there and the usual response would have been, So where are we going, then? Except Lizzie had always known the answer.
Nowhere.
‘I don’t want to fight,’ Leo said. He loathed arguments more than anything, loathed the sound of raised voices as people hurtled out of control.
Leo was always in control—always a step ahead, always making sure that it never came to that.
It had possibly saved Ethan’s life.
It had certainly messed up his own.
He looked at Lizzie, so loving and warm, so where he wanted to be, yet the gap between them was a chasm he could not breach.
‘We’re not fighting, Leo, we’re talking.’
Ah, but about their relationship, he thought.
‘Can you come on Saturday?’ he asked. ‘I have to give Lexi the name of the person accompanying me by the morning.’
She could do it, Lizzie knew that. She could head down to Brighton on Friday instead of Saturday, hit the worst of the traffic, and then race back Saturday afternoon, but they had birthday cake after dinner at the nursing home. Her father would be devastated if she wasn’t there—and for what?
Another night in Leo’s bed, then perhaps another.
For a glimpse of a future, she’d do it, but he denied them both that.
‘Leo …’
As she went to answer he walked over to her. He didn’t want to hear that, no, she couldn’t come, neither did he want the question about where they were heading, because it was a path he’d always refused to take.
So he kissed her.
A kiss that offered more escape than the brandy he’d barely touched.
‘Leo …’ She pulled back a bit and then gave in, because she wanted him so much, wanted that mouth that was on hers, that was kissing her top lip, over and over. Lizzie wanted him every bit as much as he wanted her.
They were frenzied as they set themselves free from an impossible conversation. He pushed her down so they were half leaning on the sofa, half kneeling on the floor, so their mouths barely need to part to undress each other. Frantic, deep kisses, till Lizzie was down to her bra and shoes and Leo was kissing her chest and up to her neck. He should rise, should get out of his trousers, but the taste of her skin and her hands pressing into his back were the only things Leo could think of.
His lips trailed a path from her neck to a mouth that was waiting and then he moved back down, over and over, tasting her skin till her neck was arching. Just inhaling her and crushing her as she pulled at his zipper and freed him, and continuing to kiss her. Concentrating on the same areas over and over—the neck he would never again kiss, the breasts that would tease and the mouth that would, from tomorrow, forever taunt him.
He didn’t do for ever, Leo reminded himself, except he wasn’t listening to himself now.
Lizzie wrapped a leg around him and sobbed as Leo stabbed into her. She rose to him, tightened her leg around him, and she almost just wanted this done, because his mouth was driving her crazy. Dizzy and crazy, because how could he kiss her with such passion when soon he would want her gone?
Lizzie curved into him, pressed herself to him, but then he slowed things down, thrusting slowly and deeply inside her, his mouth to her ear as her body urged him on.
‘Please …’ Lizzie said.
She wanted this done.
She lied.
‘Please …’ she begged to a groin that thrust slowly, to a mouth that was roaming her ear. She was coming and Leo refused to and she hated his control. Hated it that he could now look down and watch her come as he still moved deep inside her. Hated how his blue eyes could reproach her as they made love, as if it was she who was messing with his head, rather than the other way around.
Then she saw him, felt him briefly still, and watched the moment when Leo gave in—the grimace and the pleasure and the bliss of escape as he moved now and filled her with the most intimate part of him.
She didn’t want it to end.
It just had.
‘Lizzie …’ He looked down at her. He didn’t even know what it was he was going to say, he had never wanted to hurt her and whatever way it went now, surely he would.
He kissed her eyes and her cheeks and then met her gaze, and he could see the tears in her eyes that he’d put there.
She wriggled from under him, but he didn’t let her go.
The trowel had been passed to him now—it was Leo frantically plastering over the cracks. ‘I was thinking, if you went and saw your parents early and then came back …’
‘Leo, it’s Mum’s birthday on Saturday.’
Leo’s jaw gritted.
‘They do a cake at dinnertime,’ Lizzie explained.
‘Can’t they do it at lunch?’
He let her go then, sat on the sofa as she moved for her clothes, it was all so easy for him.
He tried, though. ‘I’m not saying don’t go, just that you were there yesterday, you could be there for her birthday—you don’t have to drop everything …’
‘But I do,’ Lizzie said, and stood to pull on her skirt. ‘And I will continue to do so. Leo, you seem to think yesterday was an anomaly, a brief inconvenience, but the last few weeks have actually been very quiet for me. Often I’m there every weekend with one drama or another …’
‘You make it harder on yourself.’
‘I never said it was hard.’
‘Actually, you did.’ Leo could be a bastard sometimes. ‘Several times.’
‘Oh, I’m to drop everything because you’ve got a dinner on Saturday with the directors of Kate’s?’
‘You drop everything for them.’
‘And I will continue to do so.’ Lizzie was dressed now. ‘For as long as they’re alive I will drop everything if they need me.’
‘That’s your choice.’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘If you ask me—’
‘I’m not.’ Lizzie just stood there. ‘I’m not asking your opinion on family. I’m not asking someone who’s so royally screwed up every relationship he’s ever had to tell me how I should handle mine. Yes, my parents are a huge part of my life, yes, I might have not much to show for it, but I’m content with my choices.’
‘Content.’
‘Too boring for you, Leo?’ Lizzie challenged. ‘I happen to like content, I happen to like sleeping and waking and living guilt-free. I’ve always known what I wanted—whether I’ll get it might be another thing, but I wanted to be a nurse and I wanted a family of my own, and a career, not screwing and partying and trying to outrun hell. It catches up, Leo …’
‘Not if you don’t let it.’ Leo shrugged. ‘I was right the first time.’
‘What?’ Lizzie’s head snapped round as she picked up her bag to go, to walk out. ‘Yes, I’m running into the woods, never to be seen again,’ she snarled. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be fine at work.’
Only Leo wasn’t referring to a fairy-tale, he was referring to a conversation that had taken place even before he’d met her.
‘Saint Lizzie …’ Leo drawled, his scalpel sharpened, ready to lance this once and for all. ‘You’re a martyr, Lizzie …’ He could be very scathing at times. ‘You really do need to get out more …’
‘Oh, I’m getting out, Leo,’ Lizzie said. ‘Just a little too late.’
She walked away and he wanted to call her back, to catch her and turn her around, but he just stood there.
He heard the door slam.
The lift bell pinged and he should run and stop her, tell her they could sort something out.
But what?
He looked at the roses, taunting him because romance was the only part he could do. The compromise, the rows, he did not.
Ah, but the making up afterwards?
It had never dawned on him that you could.
Leo wrenched open the door, went to run down the stairs, but for what?
Lizzie knew what she wanted from life.
He walked back into the apartment to the scent of her mingled with roses and he unleashed his anger at himself, slamming the vase from the table with his hand. The crash and splinter of the glass barely registered, such was the noise in his head.