At Last (10 page)

“You caught them?”

“Bare arsed. There was annoyance, pain, suffering, yadda, yadda. I got over it.”

“Oh my God,”
I whispered. “Coincidentally, during all this pain and suffering and having to live with the cheating bastards…when did you…when did you…decide to pick out my email address and start writing to me?”

“There was a sufficient grieving period.”

“Of how long?”

“Seven, eight weeks.”

“And out of all the girls in his group email, why did you pick me?”

“You don’t believe it, but he likes you. He’s always liked you. He would talk about you to wind Melissa up on the perfect level of adoration from a woman. When he got that email from you asking about me, he didn’t acknowledge me for two days straight.”

“Oh God…”

Ryan was talking as if on automatic. “I emailed you, told him about it, and he and Melissa had one of their many rows about his feelings for you that night. I had a celebratory beer in your name.”

“Thank you,” I said dully. “I hope you enjoyed it. I hope it was all worth this feeling right now, this minute. I really hope you feel like you’ve achieved something. At my expense.”

“Court, it may have started out like that…”

“Until what,” I asked, “you felt obligated to fuck me? Give me a little reward for being such a massive part in the get-one-over-on-Chris scheme?”

“It’s not like that at all. You know that!”

“I know exactly sod all, mate. Thank you; you seem to be giving out lessons all over the place today.” I started shaking really badly. “So what was the end result supposed to be? Chris dumps Melissa for me and she cries on your shoulder? What?”

“Court…” He started to curve his arm around my shoulders.

“Don’t. You. Dare. Touch. Me.” I warned.

“Listen to me—I was in a pretty dark place. All right? Probably not the best time to tell you this, but I thought I was going to marry Mel, and I caught her cheating with that prick. Then I had to live with them for months on end. You would have done some pretty inexcusable things too.”

“Not to someone who didn’t deserve it,” I murmured. “I feel so utterly stupid. All those girls in there thinking what the hell is she doing with him. I should tell them it’s a grand master plan.”

“Please don’t say things like that.”

“I need to get out of here…”

“No, talk to me. Listen. When that email from you turned up, I was flattered. Of course I was—you’re gorgeous. And then I got to know you. I stopped messing around when you didn’t want to email anymore and I spent the day taking that photograph for you. And then you wrote that mental, rambling letter to me and I was completely hooked. I carried that silly letter with me everywhere. I mean for fuck’s sake, I still do.”

“You're a liar,” I choked. I needed to get out of here; I couldn’t breathe.

“Here, look!” He fumbled in his trouser pocket and handed it to me, French postmark and all. “I’d see your name on my inbox and I’d be grinning at everyone the whole day. I’d get a call from you and I wouldn’t sleep as well as when I heard your voice…”

“I don’t want to hear this,” I told him, thrusting the letter into his chest and struggling to get past him. But he held me still, tucking the letter back to safety in his jacket.

“Whatever it started out as, I fell in love with you, I swear.”

“NO!” I screamed at him. “Let me go, leave me alone. I can’t be around you…”

His arms went around me so fast, pulling me tightly to him. I fell against him and burst into tears. He kept whispering to me that he was sorry, so sorry and that he loved me.

From over Ryan’s shoulder I saw Chris standing there. “Courtney, are you all right?”

“Will you fucking disappear?” Ryan roared at him.

“I’m not going anywhere until I know that Courtney’s all right.”

“Like you give a shit,” I croaked.

“More than he does!” Chris threw at us. It was a red rag to Ryan who grabbed him by the collar. I couldn’t help the scream that emerged from my throat.

“Ryan, stop it!”

“You fucking cretin. You do not get to do this to me twice, and you definitely do not get to do this to Courtney.”

I tried to prise his hand from Chris’ throat. “Ryan, let him go.”

“Why?” he demanded, his eyes lasering into mine. “You were happy, we were happy, and he ruined it for fucking nothing!”

Chris was turning purple. “Ryan, please,” I begged.

Ryan threw him to one side in disgust, only for Chris to land at Melissa’s feet. “God, why are you acting like such a caveman? Stop upsetting Courtney—I mean, look at her poor face.”

“You know what? You can just shut up,” I snapped. “This is all y
our fault. If your cunt wasn’t the M25 for every bloke in South Africa to use, none of us would be here.”

I looked around at all three of them and gave a nasal snort of disgust. “If I ever see any of you in the next millennium, we’re going to have problems. Like you won’t have heads on your neck problems. Yeah?”

I pushed past Melissa so hard she fell over and cracked her bony arse on the floor. I vaguely saw Jay and Andie together in an alcove recreating
9½ Weeks
. I didn’t want to think about how far up Andie’s dress his hand was, or that the top had slipped down under her breasts. It made me smile until I felt tears threatening to spill down my cheeks.
Hold it together, please, woman, just for a little bit
. I saw Summer and Iain by the exit and I couldn’t help myself; a sound came from me I didn’t at all recognise. But the horror in Summer’s face told me she understood immediately.

“Iain, get a taxi, now!” She curled her arms around me as I collapsed on her. “Courtney?”

“He used me!” I cried. Summer held me tighter, cradling me to her. Her body tensed immediately. “Leave her alone,” she warned, and I knew she was addressing Ryan.

Iain was inside the cab as Summer all but dragged me inside. “Court, please, you need to understand.”

“She doesn’t need to do anything but be away from you.” Summer directed him so sharply he almost stopped.

Summer put me in the cab and turned to him. “I’m not telling you again—back off.”

She sat next to me and Iain said impatiently to the driver, “Use the force, man, and let’s go!”

Ryan slammed his hand against the window in frustration, and for some reason, I stopped crying right about then.

“We’ll drop you home,” Summer insisted.

I looked through the Dior clutch and realised that it was three in the morning, and my keys, my own house keys were in Ryan’s flat. My parents were visiting family in Leeds as well. No telling if my brothers were at home. I’d have to go to Ryan’s and get my stuff.

“You’ll have to drop me at Knightsbridge.”

“Bad idea,” Summer announced immediately. “Stay with me.”

“I still can’t get home. Even my mobile is at his place. Just drop me there and I’ll get home myself.”

Summer looked as if she was about to argue with me, but Iain put a hand across her lap. “Stop it,” he murmured. “Okay, little mate, we’ll wait for you.”

“No, seriously, go. I’ll be fine—I know all the cab drivers in this area now. I’ll get a discount for being foxy.”

“Call us when you get home.”

I opened the door to Ryan’s flat and collected most of my things. I stripped off the dress in favour of a denim miniskirt and t-shirt, stuffing it and all the crap I had managed to leave here in the last month into a bag. I was a girl who knew how to move in. I could hear my mobile ringing, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. Finally I saw it under the bed, and when I emerged, I noticed Ryan sitting on the bed.

“Hell on a fish cake,” I muttered, acknowledging his presence.

“Found it?” he asked conversationally.

“Yep, and now I’m off.”

He stood up and blocked my path. “Don’t go.” He looked drawn, pale. Good, I thought. I hope this hurts just a tenth of how much I’m bleeding. “We should talk about this.”

“Talk?” I spluttered. “You are joking. What else do you need to talk to me about? Were Summer and Andie involved in the scheme? Was Christopher Nolan supposed to direct you for another scene? What, what the hell else is there for you to say? What?”

“Court, I promise you, if I wanted Melissa I wouldn’t be here. I’d be back at the club trying to reassure her that her cunt is not at all like the M25.”

My mouth twitched involuntarily, as did Ryan’s. Then I got angry with myself. My own stupidity had put me here. I was the one who had been laughed at. “So go comfort her. I don’t want you to be here at all. The only reason you are is because it’s ruined the nice guy act you’ve put on with everyone.”

“That’s not true. I feel shitty about dragging you into the middle of the whole me-Chris-Melissa thing, but I can’t say sorry for it because I met you.”

“Stop smarming,” I ordered. “Why use me to get back at Chris? Why not hurt Melissa? She was the one who cheated on you. Chris didn’t know you; he didn’t have a shred of loyalty for you.”

“But you had loyalty for him,” he admitted slowly. “Melissa couldn’t see the wood for the trees with him, and the only way…fuck, this sounds so goddamn petty now, but…the only way I could make her see what he was, was to let her know about you. I told you this before, but he has always liked you. But you’re a good girl. You’re the daughter of his parents’ best friends. If he fucked around with you, he’d probably be disowned. But you had this view of him, like he couldn’t do anything wrong. So if I changed your mind, if I showed Melissa just how much he did think of you…”

“Abracadabra,” I mocked.

“That’s how it started. Look, I may have wound him up into coming back here.”

“Why?”

“When he sent those fucking emails, I sent one back saying that now he knows how this feels. To have someone take the person you care about away from you.”

“Mission accomplished. If you’ve finished, I need to call the taxi company.”

“No…you still…”

“Don’t!” I warned as his hand came toward me.

“The first few emails were my cards. And I played them. Then I wanted to know why a girl who was obviously smarter than me and a hell of a lot prettier than she gave herself credit for was waiting around for such a dickhead.  Then it was why you weren’t in a relationship. Then if you could like me for me. Not because of my parents, or money, or where I live… I loved that you talked to me like I had been your friend for years, you asked me for advice, for dirty jokes, for company. I wanted to tell you about Melissa, but then… It didn’t seem that important. Because there was a point where it wasn’t about getting back at either of them, but being with you.”

“Sounds like bullshit. I’d swallow, but good girls don’t do that,” I sneered.

“I haven’t lied to you!” he insisted. “I just…just didn’t tell you something.”

“Something sort of vital, you bastard!” I reminded him on a rising scream.

“If you knew how much I love you, it wouldn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters! And you don’t love me. You do not do this to people you love.”

Ryan took a breath and sighed. “I know. I’m sorry. I wish I could take it all back, but I can’t. And if I could it means I wouldn’t have met you. And I can’t wish that.”

“I do,” I stuttered over my tears. “Because I’ve given you something I can’t get back. You can take that bag back to Dior and get your money back. I can’t do the same.”

He knew what I was talking about. “That was not part of any of it. You know when it got serious between us.”

“But it’s part of why you were upset the next morning. Because you knew you shouldn’t have.”

“I am not apologising for sleeping with you! For fuck’s sake, that bastard comes back for all of a few hours, spins his version of the truth and you rewrite our whole fucking history. Did anything about that first time together seem forced or fake? No, and you can’t argue with me on that—you know that was genuine from beginning to end.”

“No, you don’t get to tell me what to believe, you do not get to manipulate me any more.”

“Do you know why you’re mad? Because if you’d had the foresight to use another guy to make Chris jealous, you’d be crying about the waste of your virginity to Summer or Andie within five minutes, I guarantee.”

“Shut up, just shut up!” I screamed. “Just accept for once in your fucking life that you’ve done something wrong and you do not get instant forgiveness, you don’t deserve it.”

“I know,” he whispered eventually, his voice breaking. “I know, I know. But you’re the most important person in the world to me, and I hate that I’ve done this to you.”

My chest was heaving with sobs again. I knew why I hadn’t left. Ryan would give up and go back to Melissa. And I would have nothing. Everything was tainted with him. Even my job now was courtesy of his introduction. “I’m sorry, babe.”

“You’re not. And don’t call me babe.”

“I am sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”

We both sat down on his bed, facing opposite directions, which said just everything about our relationship. Ryan tried to catch my hand a few times, but I wouldn’t let him. Finally he left the room. I emptied the clutch and put the bag back inside the box. Ryan came back into the bedroom. He handed me a glass of whiskey and some tissues. I didn’t want to accept anything from him, but sense took over. Even though the whiskey burned, it soothed me and my aching throat. My eyes watered for chucking it down so fast. He then handed me a strawberry mousse and teaspoon. I’d been eyeing that strawberry mousse earlier. Courtney Phillips twenty-four hours ago. She’d been a lucky cow, I thought derisively. It didn’t stop me from wanting to be her again.

Ryan sat down on the bed and leaned forward, his elbows on his thighs. “I used to think that Melissa was perfect. My mates never really liked her. They thought she was superficial and just stayed with me because of all the benefit she got from being my girlfriend. I couldn’t see it, though. Not until she… Then she told me everything she hated about me. Hard to hear. But you, with your terms and conditions and your prodding and your teasing, and your random ideas… I’m just me when I'm with you. Apart from Melissa, I’ve told you everything. She doesn’t even know about my parents.”

“Does any of this make a difference?” I asked. “I’m going.” I put the untouched mousse on the bedside table and put on my flip-flops. I dialled Anderson Lee from my mobile and they said they’d be ten minutes.

“How the hell am I supposed to live here now?” Ryan said so quietly I barely heard him. “Tell me, what did you do? Rub yourself on the walls, roll around on the carpet? Everything in here smells like you. My fucking underwear smells like you!”

“I borrowed a pair of boxer shorts, washed them at home and put them back,” I admitted guiltily. “Maybe a few t-shirts. And some towels. Look, if you did washing more regularly, I wouldn’t have to take it home to do it.”

“One more of my many failings, right?”

“It’s a growing list,” I said through my teeth.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“Live with it.” I shrugged.

“If I didn’t care, why would this bother me?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care.”

“There’s no need for this, Court. You don’t need to put yourself through it.”

“I didn’t put me through this, you did!” I yelled. “You did this! You did this to us, not me!”

Ryan caught me around the waist and kissed me hard. I didn’t want to kiss him back, I didn’t want to need him, but it was as if my body clicked into gear despite myself, a fizzing sensation burning between my thighs as he removed my t-shirt. For the first time, he didn’t say anything.

“No, stop it, get off me.” I tried to push him away, knowing why it was so different.

He cupped my face and tasted me again. How could he still want to kiss me? All I could taste was my own disappointment and sadness. He stopped kissing me to remove his clothing stitch by stitch. My palms traced over the raised flesh of his dragon tattoo as he pressed me against the full naked length of him. He turned so when he lay down, with an arm hooked around my waist, I was on top of him. I felt the width of his fingers against my bare pussy lips, spreading them open as his thumb traced over my clit. He smeared some of my cream over his dick before he thrust into me determinedly. A million shivers ran from my scalp down to my toes.

We’d never fucked without a condom before. He knew I was on the pill but it was for medical reasons, not for sex. Ryan’s hand slid into my hair, his arm anchoring me to his hot body before he started to thrust up into me, rapidly pounding. It was too intense, my breasts tightening all over, and I was moaning louder than I ever had before.

Ryan suddenly moved so I was beneath him, his mouth locked on mine, his hands tight on my hips, pressing me into the mattress as he rammed into me. He gave an intense groan and pressed even harder and faster into me. He reached between us and rubbed firmly at my clit, and I gave a scream as my climax ripped through me. I felt a flush of wetness inside me as he came, his balls pressed tightly against me.

I held on to him, feeling tears stinging my eyes again.

“Oh God, Court,” he muttered into my mouth, kissing me once more. He slipped out of me, then cradled me against his chest. I tried to catch my breath, thinking how I could get dressed and leave as soon as possible.

I felt his breathing slow as he fell gradually asleep, and the muscled arms relaxed. I tucked my breasts back into the cups of the bra and wriggled out of his arms, then found my t-shirt underneath his clothes and pulled down the denim mini skirt. I didn’t know where I could find some underwear; I would just have to cross my legs and hope it was dark enough for the cab driver to not realise I had cum running down my thighs. Ryan sat up. “Where are you going?”

“Home,” I said abruptly, running my fingers through my hair and checking my phone. There was a text from the cab company to confirm my driver was waiting outside.

Ryan stood up slowly. When he touched a hand to my cheek, we both flinched. Ryan was scared of my reaction, and I was scared that I’d confuse myself again and be under his spell. “You know that I love you; you know that. This is pointless because we need to be together…and…”