More Than Anything (Broken Pieces 1)

“Yeah, okay,” he acquiesced, patting his jacket pockets absently. “Just let me get my phone and wallet.”

He turned away to gather his thoughts and his equilibrium. After a few deep breaths, he faced her again with what he hoped was an insouciant smile.

“Do you have any place in mind? For lunch?” She shook her head. “Right. Uh, let’s go.”

Twenty minutes later they were facing each other across a tiny table in an equally tiny coffee shop in Sea Point, about ten minutes away from the Chapman Global Property Group’s head office on the Foreshore. The coffee shop was alarmingly intimate, and Harris cursed himself for choosing it. He had never noticed the close confines before, usually coming here for quick working lunches because it was quiet.

“I was saying that I wanted to sell my Bantry Bay flat,” she repeated after they had placed their orders, and his brow lowered.

“Why? It’s a good investment.”

“MJ’s is doing quite well, and I like Riversend. The town suits me. I feel at home there. Hanging on to the flat seems pointless.”

“I’m not a real estate agent, you know?” he said, forcing humor into his voice, when inside he felt scraped raw. She wasn’t coming back. That made sense. She was starting a new chapter in her life, but she couldn’t do that without closing the old one.

And Harris knew that he could not be part of that new stage of her life. Not if she stood a realistic shot of making a success of that fresh start.

“But you guys deal in rentals, resales, and property development,” she pointed out, practically citing their motto. The Chapman Global Property Group dabbled in real estate, but they mainly concentrated on property development. Their primary business focus was the design and building of upmarket housing estates, which they then sold to investment groups or private companies.

“Yes, we do. Pretty damned well too. But you should find a property agent to help you with your flat. I can recommend someone reliable.”

“See? You’ve helped me already,” she said, and his eyes narrowed.

“It’s not like I’m telling you anything you didn’t already know. So, what’s the real reason behind this lunch?”

“I needed to give you this. I can’t keep it.” She picked up her handbag and scratched around a bit before producing a tiny tissue-wrapped object and placing it in the center of the table. Harris knew what it was even before he’d slowly reached for it and unfolded the paper.

His pendant. He swallowed and shook his head, trying to hand it back to her, but she moved her hands out of reach beneath the table.

“I can’t take it,” he protested, his voice taking on a hoarse, panicked note. “I never had any right to it.”

“Why did you keep it?” she asked, and he glared at her, angry that she was pushing this.

“You know why!” he snapped.

“Not really.”

“Because it reminded me of you. Because it made me feel close to you.” The words emerged involuntarily, and it pissed him off that he’d actually spoken them.

“And now you no longer need it?”

What the fuck was she trying to do to him? This was deliberate torture, and he was done with it.

“I have to go,” he muttered, pushing himself away from the table.

“We haven’t even eaten yet,” she pointed out, staring up at him, naked pleading in her vulnerable eyes. “Please, Harris. Sit down.”

He blinked repeatedly, bringing a hand up to his nape in a futile attempt to massage the tension from his neck. He had sunk down, unable to resist, when she turned those lethal eyes on him.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” he said on a helpless whisper. “This is agony, Tina. And maybe I deserve to be punished, but you’ve never struck me as a deliberately cruel person before.”

“I don’t think you deserve to be punished, Harris. You’re the only one who thinks that. I am angry with you, though. But only because you dropped a bombshell on me and then left before I had a chance to process it. That was a crappy move.”

“It was the only option open to me,” he said. “I couldn’t stay there any longer. I should never have been there in the first place. Libby didn’t need me; Grey didn’t either.”

“Turns out that I needed you,” Tina said, keeping her eyes level and her expression neutral. Her statement confused him completely, and he wasn’t sure what to say in response to it.

“I don’t understand.”

“For ten years I was stuck in the past, Harris. I felt incapable of moving forward with my life. I was trapped by my own incapacity to let go. I suffered from panic attacks, awful nightmares, and a crippling inability to settle in one job for too long. I know I appeared flighty and irresponsible. When in truth I was incapable of digging myself out from beneath a mountain of suffocating self-doubt and fear.”