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‘But you let her fix us up on a date for prom, a few weeks later,’ she pointed out.
‘I did it as a favour to Ruby. She was worried that you’d be a wallflower.’
‘She told me she was worried that you wouldn’t have a date because you were the biggest nerd in the world,’ she countered.
‘She was right. I was. I probably still am,’ he said. He laughed, and stole a kiss. ‘Abby. Today. We’re supposed to be polite and civil to each other.’
‘So why are we alone in the garden together? Why did you kiss me?’
‘And why did you kiss me back?’ he asked.
‘I...’ She shook her head, as if unable to find the words.
‘Maybe it’s just the emotion of the wedding.’ He knew that he was lying. He was here because he wanted to be here. He’d kissed Abby because he’d wanted to kiss her. Because he couldn’t help himself.
‘It’s a good wedding.’
He nodded. ‘And it’s made me realise how selfish we were, eloping the way we did.’
‘We were so young,’ she said. ‘Just eighteen.’
‘And we didn’t think of anything or anyone else,’ he said. ‘Just Gretna Green.’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘We deprived everyone of a good party.’
‘But I never, ever regretted marrying you,’ he said.
She looked straight at him. ‘So why did you divorce me?’
The big question. And he owed her honesty. ‘Because I thought I was doing the right thing.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Are you trying to tell me there was a shiny suit of armour on top of that hair shirt of yours, and you were riding a white horse at the time?’
‘Abby, I was a mess. I felt I was dragging you down.’
‘That’s the point of wedding vows, for better or worse. We should’ve stuck it out,’ she said.
She could say that now? ‘You were the one who left me,’ he pointed out.
‘I wasn’t deserting you when you needed me.’
‘It felt like it, though.’
‘I simply wanted to shock you into realising what you were doing and stop you pushing me away all the time.’ Her eyes filmed with tears. ‘But it backfired. You divorced me. It wasn’t supposed to be like that.’
He hadn’t wanted the divorce, either. He’d wanted Abby—but he’d tried so hard to be unselfish, to unshackle her from the mess he knew he’d become so she would have a chance to be happy. ‘It’s nearly five years.’ He rested his palm against her cheek.
She turned into it, kissing his palm, and it felt as if he’d been galvanised. ‘And neither of us has really moved on, have we?’
No. They hadn’t. That was a problem they needed to solve, because they couldn’t go on like this.
Though there was a solution. An insane one. She might say no if he suggested it, and he’d accept that. Then again, she might say yes. And how he wanted her to say yes. His heart thumping, he said, ‘Maybe we need closure. To get things out of our system at last.’
‘Closure. Getting things out of our system. Maybe you’re right.’ Her eyes were sea green. ‘The bride and groom have slipped off to their honeymoon suite. We don’t have to be here any more.’
So she was thinking along the same lines that he was? ‘We could get a taxi. Go...’ No. It wasn’t home. Nowhere had felt like home since she left him. Not the flat they’d shared, not the college rooms he’d moved into after the divorce, not the flat he’d bought when he’d accepted the job in London. ‘Back to the cottage,’ he finished.
She was silent for so long that he thought she’d changed her mind. But then she nodded. ‘I’ll text my mum and say I’m fine but I have a bit of a headache and I’m going home for an early night, so nobody worries about me.’
He stole a kiss. ‘Good thinking. I’ll do the same.’
And from there it was easy.
A taxi was there in five minutes.
They didn’t say a word to each other all the way back to the centre of town. They didn’t need to. He paid the taxi driver, unlocked the door and ushered her inside.
‘Coffee?’ he asked.
