Off Limits

I move closer towards him, my voice a whisper. ‘I know that anyone who has been in love would want their partner to be happy. Not to live out their life in a hollow, empty wasteland as some kind of sick tribute.’

He squares his shoulders as I speak, as though he can make my words bounce off. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

It’s so arrogantly defeatist that I almost laugh. But I’m weary. So weary now. Deflation has set in and is sucking my energy.

‘What are we doing, Jack?’

He turns to face me slowly. ‘I’ve been asking myself that same question.’

‘What do I mean to you?’

I look at him as he sweeps his eyes shut, the truth apparently not something he’s ready to communicate to me.

‘You’re my in-house,’ he says, with so much gentle concern that I feel tears sting the back of my throat. The use of my actual job title makes everything worse, somehow. ‘And my lover.’

I am very still while his words sink in. ‘You can’t compartmentalise me. I can’t be your employee at work, your lover after hours and nothing in between. It doesn’t work like that.’

‘Why not?’ he demands with husky urgency. ‘This is good. Those things are good.’

‘But I want more.’

‘That’s all I have,’ he says honestly. ‘It’s all I can give you.’

A muscle jerks in his jaw and I lift my finger to touch it lightly. ‘You’ve already given me so much more. Don’t you see that?’ I say gently.

‘It’s not possible.’

His eyes are dead ahead, his jaw locked. I know Jack Grant—I understand him. I know when he’s made his mind up and when it’s useless to argue. I see his determination and in it is the answer I have been waiting for.

It is the end.

And yet knowing that and truly accepting it are two different things.

‘How can you think this is just sex?’

He shakes his head. ‘I should have been more careful. I’ll never be what you want.’

‘And what’s that?’ I push, approaching the precipice of what we are.

He meets my eyes; there is bleak reality in them. It breaks my heart.

He reaches for my hand and squeezes it. ‘I’m not your boyfriend. I don’t want to be. And I don’t want us to get more serious. I just want to fuck you.’

Oh, God. The pain is like ten thousand blades running over my spine. It’s unbearable and yet I revel in it, because somehow I feel I deserve it. It makes it easier to accept the truth.

My head jerks upwards. My eyes are clouded by grief. ‘So that’s it?’

His expression shows that he too understands the inevitability before us. ‘Yes.’

His voice is pleasingly roughened by emotion so I know he’s not unaffected.

I don’t trust myself to speak. Not for a moment. I wait, counting to twenty in English, French and Russian, and then I reach into the neoprene case for my laptop and pull out the crisp white piece of paper I printed that morning.

‘This is Carrie Johnson’s CV. She’ll be in at lunchtime to meet with you.’

He frowns, as if the sudden change in conversation has surprised him. As though he expected me to argue for longer, to fight for what we were.

‘What for?’ He doesn’t look at the CV.