“Did I really imagine it? The connection? The intensity of it? Did I dream it?”
She shook her head, eyes prickling again, voice too unsteady to frame words. He had felt it too.
“So why…?” His words trailed off. All the crinkles on his forehead—how she wanted to smooth them.
“When I saw the wedding picture…”
“Couldn’t you have asked me about it? Or at least called or messaged me to tell me I’m a lying, cheating bastard? I could have worked with that. Your silence left me wondering if you were alive or dead! Seriously, I rang around the hospitals. Anna…”
“You…did you really?”
He nodded, put the glass down on the floor, reached out for her hand. She let him take it, her hair standing on end at the static thrill of his touch.
“I should have told you from the start, I suppose.”
“You…I suppose it isn’t ideal first date conversation.”
“I had my opening. When you told me about your parents. But I didn’t want to. I just wanted to be sure of you. After we danced, I was sure of you. But now…”
“You can be sure of me,” Anna interjected, darting forward so her cheek almost brushed his. “I swear. I wanted to call you. So badly. I really wanted to.”
“Why didn’t you?” His hand was on the side of her head now, the fingers mussing her hair up around her ear. She leaned into the gesture, wanting to sigh as he stroked his thumb over her ear.
“My friend…she was only trying to protect me. She took my phone.”
“Oh, my darling.” At last, a smile, albeit a sad one. “Your friends want what’s best for you. But only you can really know that. I know what’s best for me. Do you know what’s best for you?”
“Please forgive me.”
He silenced her trembling lips with a kiss; a sweet, deep and thorough communion, leaving her in no doubt as to the sincerity and renewal of his passion, nor the magnitude of his forgiveness.
“Can we put this behind us?” he murmured, and when she nodded, he slid up beside her, momentarily dislodging her from the chair so that he could reestablish her on his lap. More kissing followed, the kind that brings deep sighs up from the lovers’ chests and into each other’s mouths; the kind that fills dreams and fantasies; the kind that captures and binds hearts.
“I feel I should tell you all now,” he said, emerging from the swoon-haze to pick his drink up again. “It isn’t a long story. Just a sad one.”
“I’m so sorry,” Anna repeated, but she was on autopilot now. Nothing mattered to her anymore but John, John all over her, above and beside her, on and inside her.
“She overdosed. On a cocktail of drugs—some prescribed, some recreational.”
“Oh my God, that’s awful. How awful! Did you… Were you there? Was it…suicide?”
“No, accidental death. She’d always been a party girl. I liked that about her at first, but I didn’t realise how far she was prepared to go for the sake of carrying on the party. Look.” He turned away for a minute, biting on a knuckle. “I feel I’m speaking ill of her—I don’t intend to do that.”
“No, no, of course. But if it’s the truth…you know. What can you say?”
“I tried to stop her, took her to specialists, begged her to go to a detox clinic, but I’m just one man. Up against the chemicals, I couldn’t win. She had to do it for herself, not for me. I wasn’t reason enough.”
“Oh God, you’d have been reason enough for me.” Anna was impassioned, her eyes swimming again. John’s melancholy smile melted her even further. He kissed her, just a brief meeting of lips, but so heartfelt that Anna felt as if her soul were transferring to his possession.
“I know,” he said softly. “Thank you. It wasn’t long after the wedding. I was overseas on business. Saskia went to a house party with friends. So at least I didn’t see…it. I was in a meeting when I got the call…” John’s voice wavered. Anna grasped his hands, so hard that her nails dug into his palms.
“I didn’t know her, but I’ll never understand her. Never!”
“You and me both.” He cradled Anna’s head against his chest and they sat like that for a long time, until the room was dark and the ice in the brandy entirely liquid again.
The excess of emotion coupled with exhaustion meant that Anna was beginning to drowse when John bent his lips to her ear and said, “Stay with me.”
“Hmm?” Anna’s glazed eyes met his, so dark, the pupils all black with a tiny outer ring of golden brown.