‘There were other ways!’ Her fists clenched again. He couldn’t justify his way out of what he’d done!
‘No. Believe me, I had tried them all – the letters, the lobbying, the networking. That gets you only so far. It’s easier to get close to the President than it is to Bill Gates, or Jeff Bezos, or your father.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘No? Look at Attenborough. He had an audience with Obama at the White House – but what actually changed? There were some headlines and photo ops, but what the planet needs isn’t slogans or posters or promises. It needs cold, hard cash.’ The word was a sneer. ‘There’s only a handful of people in the world who can write the big cheques – and I mean the really big ones – that translate into action. The moment I actually got to talk to your father, he got it immediately. That was all I’d ever needed. An hour with the Big Man!’ His eyes shone suddenly. ‘My brilliant plan worked, except for one thing: you weren’t just a face in a newspaper article anymore.’
‘Spare me your sorrow. We both know you’d do it again.’
He hesitated. ‘. . . It’s true I thought eventually I’d get over it.’
They stared at one another as the unarticulated ‘but’ hung in the air, but she didn’t reach for it. She left it dangling like a dream catcher in a window, catching the light and offering to sweep away all the proclamations that had gone before.
He took a single step towards her. ‘Look, I’m not making any excuses. I stand by the decisions I made, and the reasons I made them. It was always bigger than the two of us. You know it’s not an exaggeration to say that the consequences from this project will impact millions of lives. I thought you and me . . .’ His shoulders slumped, as though his soul was wriggling free from his body. ‘But there hasn’t been a day since when I haven’t wished it could have been different.’
‘Well, that makes me feel so much better. You’d do it again but at least I know you feel bad,’ she sneered. ‘You asked me to marry you, just so you could hurry things along—’
‘No. That was real. I never planned it.’
‘I don’t believe you!’ she cried. ‘I don’t believe a single word that comes out of your mouth.’
He fell quiet, staring at her under the night sky. ‘. . . Do you remember what I told you my mom used to say to me?’
‘No. I made a point of forgetting all your lies.’ Her tone was withering, her eyes cold as the lie tripped off her tongue easily. It was her only weapon.
He blinked. ‘The people who are meant to be in your life will appear in it, twice, without trying.’
‘This isn’t twice,’ she replied, shaking her head, instantly knowing where he was heading with this. They weren’t fated.
‘Yes it is. What were the chances of—?’
‘No. Because you were trying. The first time we met, you had engineered it. You did your research, found out one of your targets had a daughter round about your age and you tracked me down. That’s stalking, not serendipity!’
He stepped towards her, forcing her to take a step back. ‘Tara, you can throw your sarcasm and your hate and your anger at me, and I’ll take it because I deserve it. But we both know you’re lying. I still love you, and you still love me.’
‘No.’
‘I’m not going to let you go again.’
‘You don’t have a choice! When are you going to hear what I’m saying? I hate you.’
She turned to walk away but he caught her by the elbow, swinging her into him and kissing her again, setting the world on fire.
‘Fine,’ he said when they finally separated for air, eyes burning, hearts pounding. ‘Hate me, then.’
She lay in the hammock, wretched and sleepless. She had gone against her own nature, defying every instinct to listen to his words and believe them, and now her heart couldn’t rest. She was at war with herself, the lies she had told herself over the years falling to ashes on her lips.
Even here, alone in the middle of the night, she didn’t want to admit the truth that her entire life since that fateful day in her parents’ home had been a charade. That she had smiled, laughed and achieved without feeling any of it; that she was an excellent doctor and a brilliant friend; but a distant daughter and only a good-enough girlfriend. She had moved through the motions of her life according to the path of least friction, watching her friends live life on her behalf – throwing confetti as they married, babysitting when they had kids. They had no idea that she envied what they had – houses that were homes, lives bursting at the seams with anniversaries, arguments and school term dates. It didn’t matter that they worked first and foremost to pay the mortgage, and any career satisfaction was largely incidental. She had climbed to the top of the tree to show the world she was more than what Alex Carter had deemed her: just a rich man’s daughter. But she could never save enough people to feel truly needed. She could never trust another man enough to believe she was truly wanted.
In the wake of his betrayal, she had excised him from her life like a tumour – a clean, surgical strike – but she saw now that stray cells had been left behind, multiplying in silence, hidden from sight and constantly sabotaging her efforts to move on. He moved through her bloodstream like an infection and she would never fully recover. He made her febrile and shaky. Hate me, then. She couldn’t trust herself. She couldn’t trust herself not to trust him. The pull towards him was gravitational, his kiss making undeniable a truth she had
