About Last Night

Winston leaned back against the wall, unperturbed by Richard’s rage and Nev’s fraught silence. “You haven’t given her any money, then?” Winston asked Richard with a sneer.

“He hasn’t,” Cath said from the doorway. “And he won’t.”

Nev’s heart rate spiked when he saw her, but he kept his seat. He didn’t know what she’d heard. She had the fierce expression she’d favored when they met, the challenge in her eyes and the lift to her pointy chin that dared anyone to toy with her.

Let her fight her own battles. She was more than capable. She didn’t want his help.

It surprised him when she turned and trained all her ferocity on him. “Neville and I aren’t married. He only told you we were for the sake of his lousy job. Which he hates, by the way. But we’re not.” She glared at him as she twisted the rings off her finger and hurled them in his direction. Her cheeks were pink with anger, but in her eyes he could see only pain. “I wouldn’t marry you. You’re a despicable coward.”

She walked out.

He said nothing. He couldn’t muster any words, insouciant or outraged, indignant or shamed. She’d kept her secrets from him, messed him around for a month, let him fall for her while she walled off her heart, and now she was angry with him?

And why did he care? Why did the misery in her eyes pull him to his feet and force him to pace the room and battle the impulse to follow her and find her and hold on to her tight until she stopped looking so wounded? He had nothing to say to the woman. They were broken. There was no fixing it, and it wasn’t his fault. It was entirely hers.

“Well,” Winston said eventually. “That was unexpected.”

“Sod off.”

“Neville, darling,” his mother said, “I’m not really certain what—”

“Shut up.”

“Pardon?” his mother asked, her spine stiffening.

“I said, ‘Shut up,’ ” he repeated. “I don’t want to listen to you pretending you didn’t arrange this whole bloody episode. You set me up. You issued the ultimatum that gave me the stupid idea of bringing Cath here to begin with. Now that you’ve managed to ruin my life, the least you can do is sit there and keep your meddling mouth shut.”

“Nev,” his father said sharply.

Nev rounded on him, ready to fight for the right to speak his mind, but Richard didn’t seem inclined to put his fists up. “Go after her,” he said instead.

“There’s no point.”

“You love her, don’t you?”

“Of course I love her. I worship her. I wanted to marry her. I’d marry her today if she’d have me. That’s not the issue. The issue is she won’t bloody have me.”

“She will. Go after her.”

“Richard,” Evita interrupted. “Perhaps we’d best—”

“Keep out of it, darling. You’ve done enough for the day.”

“With all due respect, Father—” Winston said.

“You too,” Richard replied. “Keep out of it. You should both be ashamed of yourselves.” He said this without turning away from Nev, as casually as if he ordered his wife and son around every day. So far as Nev knew, he’d never issued an order to either of them in his life. He’d never come to Nev’s defense. Not once. Until now.

“She loves you,” his father told him. “It’s perfectly obvious. She looks at you like you’re the sun and the moon and the stars, all rolled into one.”

?

?She does?”

“She does.”

His mother sighed and said, as if very bored, “She does, Neville. Honestly, you can’t see that? I’d always thought you were such a perceptive boy.”

“I’m not a boy.”