Spiralling Skywards: Falling (Contradictions #1) (14 page)

We sat quietly for a few minutes. He stroked his fingers up and down my thigh and my spine, and I finally came down from whatever high he’d sent me spiralling to. The water began to run cold, and small shivers raced through me.

“Let’s get you out of here. Can you stand?” I nodded. It was all I had.

He stood, taking me with him. My legs were shaky, but he held me up. I kept my eyes to the floor as he wrapped me in a huge white towel and steered me towards the bed before sitting me down on it.

He knelt in front of me and spoke.

“You doing okay, bub?” He tucked my dripping wet hair behind my ears and brushed his fingertips over my face. I nodded my head.

“I just feel drained,” I said quietly.

“Yeah, that was a little intense.”

“A little?”

He shrugged his shoulder and gave me his full-on crinkle eyed smile.

“Ok then, a lottle.”

“A lottle. Is that New South Austrian speak?”

“It is and I aim to have you fluent in it before the year is out.”

“Can’t wait.”

“I bet.”

***

We dried ourselves off. I found a comb and a hair tie in my bag, rubbed face cream on my face, and pulled Liam’s T-shirt back over my head. He wore his boxers and his chunky cardigan. We ordered pizza from a number he had stored on his phone, luckily it was the place my brother used and was the best in town. I drank wine from a mug and Liam drank beer straight from the bottle as we sat on his bed and ate.

“You know I have a perfectly good sofa and a television just across the road, don’t you? My place is empty. We wouldn’t be disturbed.”

I watched him as he sucked pizza topping from his thumb, my internal muscles clenched so tightly that I had to fight not to roll my eyes at my very predictable self.

“Yeah, but that’s just it. Over the road is
your
place, this is
ours
.”

His reply caused my heart to skip a beat and then pick up four.

“Ours,” I said it aloud, trying it on my tongue. I’d never had anything that was “
ours”
with a man before.

“Yeah,
ours
.”

“I’ve never done the ‘
ours’
thing before, have you?”

He visibly flinched and then looked away. The mouthful of pizza I’d just swallowed lodged like cardboard in my throat. I took a gulp of my wine to help force it down, where it then crashed and sat like a brick in my stomach.

Despite
him
not looking at
me
, I never took my eyes from his face. He threw the slice of pizza he’d been eating back into the box. He closed the lid and lent over the side of the bed to place it on the floor, retrieving his beer as he sat back up. He took a swig, before pushing himself back to lean against the headboard.

I watched a nerve tick in his jaw as he set the bottle down but didn’t look at me. My skin prickled. I had no clue if I was feeling hot, cold or numb.

“I have actually, yeah.” His eyes finally found mine as he spoke. “C’mere, I wanna talk to ya.” He tapped his legs, and I moved to straddle them, trying my hardest to ignore the acid boiling in my belly.

I sipped my wine, he cleared his throat.

“I was actually married at one time.”

Married.

Was.

My heart switched from a comfortable trot to a canter. He cleared his throat again, looked around the room and then looked back at me.

“It didn’t work out. It should never really have happened in the first place if I’m honest. It lasted a little over two years, but it was bad. From the very beginning, it was bad.”

I wanted to ask why. I wanted to ask what was bad. I wanted to ask around seven hundred and ninety-four questions, but I didn’t. I remained silent.

“We both fucked around. Neither of us were faithful, but she, she erm . . .” He reached up and around to the back of his neck. “I never got caught. She, on the other hand, took someone back to our apartment in Sydney. I came home from a meeting in Melbourne a day early, rather than go home to her, to our house in Perth where I thought she was waiting for me, I decided to have a night in Sydney on my own, or . . .” He trailed off again.

My heart couldn’t decide if it wanted to maintain the canter or break out into a full on gallop.

“Or maybe find some company. I walked into the apartment and she was there, fucking a business colleague of mine. I left. That was two years ago.”

And? There had to be more. And then what?

“You divorced her?”

“We’ve been separated since then. There were business interests that . . .”

White noise rushed through my ears, escaping through my pores and bouncing off my skin.

No. No. No. No. No.

“You’re still married?”

“On paper yes, but I filed a month ago, I’m just waiting on the signed paperwork to be returned.”

My heart. My heart. It skipped the gallop, threw its rider, bucked off the saddle, broke free from its reins, and bolted. The pain this pace caused in my chest took my breath away.

Married.

He
is married.

And I’m just like her.

“You’re married? You
have a wife?”

She tried to lift herself up and out of my lap. I gripped her hips and kept her in place.

“No. Let me go.” She struggled as I held on to her.

“Sit still, le’me explain, Sarah.”

I wasn’t letting her go. Not now. Not ever. Her shoulders slumped, and she stopped struggling. I kept my palms splayed over each of her hips, brushing my thumbs gently over her soft skin. I did it to calm myself, as well as her.

“We separated two years ago, but our businesses were merged. My family owns a development company, hers owns land. Hers own mines that need engineers, we have a recruitment agency.”

I watched her wide eyes search my face and her chest rise and fall with the deep breaths she was taking.

“It was business. The business side of things will make a divorce complicated, and I put it off. It was wrong.”

I spoke quickly, trying to explain. Trying to get my point across but knowing all the while that I’d fucked things up. I should’ve been upfront. I should’ve told her sooner. I definitely shouldn’t have told her straight after making her orgasm for the second time.

“She’s not my wife, Sarah.”

She shook her head again.

“Did you marry her?”

“Yes, I married her.”

She nodded her head this time.

“Did you divorce her?” A sob escaping as she spoke. Her face crumbled as she waited for my answer. I fucking hated myself for doing that to her. I should’ve just been honest, or better still, I should’ve stayed the fuck away. But still I pled my case anyway.

“I’m divorcing her now. I’ve filed. She’s not my wife.”

“You should’ve told me, Liam. You have a wife. You should’ve told me.” She cried as she spoke.

I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her tightly against me. Her arms hung limp at her sides and she cried like she did on our first date.

“I should’ve told you. You’re right. I should’ve told you sooner, but it’s over Sarah. It’s
been
over for two years, before then even. She’s had the divorce papers for almost five weeks. I’m waiting to hear from her lawyers any day now.”

Her shoulders shook. I thought she was still crying, but she pulled back and looked at me while drawing in deep breaths.

I’d fucked up and totally underestimated her reaction to my news. I needed to make it clear to her that Olivia and I were done, our marriage over. I needed to reassure Sarah that everything that had happened between me and her was real. My head and my chest both felt like they would explode from the panic caused at the thought of losing her over this.

“You won’t go back to her?”

“No. No. It was wrong to marry her in the first place. I never loved her.” That made me sound like a complete arsehole.

“I don’t mean I never loved her, I mean . . .”

Fuck. Everything was coming out wrong.

“Le’me explain.”

“What’s her name?”

“What?”

“Your wife, what’s her name?”

I let out a long breath. I’d spiralled from cloud nine to the deepest depths of the darkest ocean in a matter of minutes.

“Sarah, please.”

“What?”

“Don’t call her that.”

“Don’t call her your wife? What should I call her then Liam? That woman you married? They both mean exactly the same in my book.” Her voice rose with every word.

Okay, she wanted to know. I’d tell her. I’d tell her all of it and let her see me for the arsehole that I was. At least then she’d know the type of person she was getting involved with.

“Olivia. Her name’s Olivia. Our fathers are best friends but were competitors when it came to business. Her dad had no sons, my dad had me. Our lives were planned from the time we were kids. I loved her like a sister at first, but they wanted us married. Hormones came into play when we were teenagers and emotions got involved once we had sex. I was her first.”

She closed her eyes and tears rolled down her cheeks.

“Was she yours?” I closed my eyes and tilted my face to the ceiling. Why the fuck did she ask that? Why did she do that to herself? She let out a little whimper even before I answered.

“Yes, we were each other’s firsts. I was her only for a long time, but I didn’t commit to her the way she deserved, the way she thought I would. Her family are strict Italian Catholics. She wasn’t really allowed out much during high school. My parents divorced when I was six, I lived mainly with my mum, but because I had two older sisters and was a boy, my mum was a little more relaxed with me.

“I was a boy. Just a normal teenage boy. My only interests were sports, sex, and food. I grew up in a beach town where there were parties every weekend. I was allowed to go to them. Olivia wasn’t.” I puffed out my cheeks and blew out air whilst considering how to word what I was gonna say next without sounding like a total prick.

“I was young. I was a dick. I was fucking Olivia and anything else female that had a pulse and was willing. She just accepted it so I just kept doing it. I had no intention of marrying her, but then my dad had his first heart attack and wanted to slow down. He wanted to start making plans to hand the business over to me once I’d finished uni. I wanted to travel. By that point, he’d remarried and had two more boys, they were much younger than me at this stage, so he threatened to leave the businesses in trust for them if I didn’t marry Olivia. So we made a deal. I would marry her but I still wanted to travel for a while. All I wanted to do was make him happy. I didn’t want him to stress about the future of the business he’d spent so much of his life building up. It’d cost him two marriages; I didn’t want it to cost him his life too. But I also needed time to be me, so this worked for both of us.”

We sat silently for a few long moments. Sarah tilted her head down, resting it on my shoulder, her arms still down at her sides. I brushed my fingertips from the tops of her thighs to her knee and back up her thighs again, acutely aware of the fact that she was naked underneath the T-shirt of mine she was wearing.

“I spent two years overseas, and when I got back he turned the business over to me and I married Olivia.”

I let out a long breath as I remembered the heated arguments I’d had on the phone with my dad about me coming back home. In the end, I just stopped calling.

“I was twenty-four when I got back, I managed to put the wedding off for another year, but my dad had another heart attack, and I knew it was time to step up and fulfil my part of the bargain. We stayed married and together for just under two years, we’ve now been separated for two years. We’ve actually been apart for longer than we were together.”

I’d watched her the whole time I was talking, trying to gauge her reaction as I spoke.

“How’s your dad now?”

See, that was why I was in so much trouble. That was why it was going to be so easy to fall in love with this girl. I’d just confessed to being married, and her first concern was for my dad.

“Dad’s doing okay. He had to have a bypass, which gave him a new lease of life and enough energy to move on to wife number three.”

Her eyebrows shot up at that piece of information. Maybe I should’ve left it out, the last thing I wanted was her thinking I was anything like my old man.

“And he’s not pushing you to stay married?”

“No. We talked after I caught Olivia in bed with Seb Markham. I admitted that neither of us had been faithful during our marriage, that it wasn’t working, and that there was no way I would ever consider having children with Olivia.”

She nodded her head but kept her eyes fixed on something just over my shoulder. I was blown away by how calm she was being about all that I was admitting to her.

“And you think it’s gonna get complicated? Will you have to go back? For the divorce I mean.”

She finally looked up and made eye contact as she spoke, hope bloomed in my belly that she would accept my explanation and excuses regarding my marriage.

“I hope not,” I told her honestly. “I hope the lawyers can deal with it all in my absence.”

I watched as she raked her teeth over her bottom lip while thinking about my reply.

“I’d like to go back one day and take you with me, if that’s something you’d like to do?”

She stilled for a moment, her blue eyes widening.

“To Australia?”

“Nah, to New South Austria. Yeah Australia. Would you fancy that?”

She smiled, not enough to flash her dimple but a smile nonetheless.

“I’d love to go there,” she said quietly. “But please don’t lie to me again. If you had just told me about your wife in the beginning . . .”

“What? If I’d told you in the beginning that I was separated, waiting on a divorce, what? Would you have still gone out with me?”

She tilted her head to the side, considering my question.

“No, probably not.”

“Well that’s exactly my point. I wanted to see you again, I wanted to take you out and get to know you.”

“But you should’ve told me sooner, maybe not straight away, but it’s been a month since we started seeing each, Liam. You should’ve been honest and given me the choice as to whether I wanted to see you again.”

“I know. I fucked up, and I’m sorry. What can I do, how do I make this better?”

“Just be honest with me. And don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Sounds simple enough, but will you answer a few questions for me just so I have things clear in my head?”

“Go for it.”

“You and Luke . . .”

Her eyebrows shot up, I think I’d surprised her with the direction I’d taken the conversation.

“Do you have the same dad?”

She licked her lips and nodded her head very slightly.

“Yeah.” She pushed out a slow breath and her eyelids fluttered closed for a long second before she spoke again. “My mum got pregnant with Liam when she was really young, just sixteen in fact. Vinnie, our dad, was eighteen. He moved in with my grandparents, and they tried to make a go of things, but Vinnie didn’t wanna stop doing the things that eighteen-year-old boys do and was rarely home.”

She was quite for a while, and I watched her chew on the inside of her lip.

“From what I’ve been told, they loved each other passionately but were toxic together. He’d stay out all night, they’d fight for hours when he eventually came home, and then they’d spend three days in bed making up. They eventually moved out from my grandparents’ and into their own place, but they just couldn’t make things work. They separated, he met someone else and married her really quickly. At some later stage, he and my mother started an affair. It went on for years.”

She looked down between us. I watched as tears splashed onto her T-shirt . . . my T-shirt. I lifted her chin, forcing her to meet my gaze.

“It went on for years, but he still had two more children with his wife, all the while he promised my mum that he would leave and move back in with her. He didn’t, and when she eventually told him she was pregnant with me, he left for good.” Her bottom lip quivered and she looked so young and broken that I couldn’t hold back from pulling her in tight against me.

“Not just us. He didn’t just leave Luke and me, he left his wife and
their
children too. He never even stayed around to meet me, Liam. I’ve never met my own father.” She cried into my chest. I stroked up and down her spine, understanding a little better her reaction to my telling her about Olivia. I felt like a complete arsehole. Again.

She swiped the back of her hands over each eye, but tears still hung from her lashes as she looked back up at me.

“My mum spiralled down into depression after that, becoming even worse after I was born. Social workers were involved, but she fought for us, got on medication, promised to do better. We were her last and only connection to him, she was never gonna give that up. My nan says that my mum was convinced he would return after I was born, but he never did. Her depression worsened, Luke pretty much looked after me the first three years of my life, then the car accident happened, and we finally went to live with our grandparents.”

I had no clue what to say. I had absolutely no concept of what she and Luke had gone through. My parents were divorced, but it was drama free, at least in front of us three kids, and we’d all come out of it relatively unscathed.