He sighed. “I doubt Grace would. Why would she, when she thinks she’s perfect and everything that’s wrong is all my fault?”
He had a point.
“I’m not sure love can be trusted anyway. Well, not love, but the whole being-in-love thing. Not if it means you can’t really see a person. Because you need to be able to really see a person, don’t you? To judge whether you’ve got a good future together or not?”
I looked at him. Saw a grown-up version of the boy I’d first met at the age of four. Even the way he was plucking restlessly at his jumper with his fingers made me think of a mealtime when he hadn’t wanted to eat something—I forgot what, but I did vividly remember the way his bottom lip had stuck out and his fingers had plucked at his T-shirt.
“Maybe people in successful relationships love each other warts and all,” I suggested.
“Or maybe they don’t have warts.”
“Everyone has warts. Metaphorical ones, at least.”
“Doctor, doctor,” he joked. “I’ve got metaphorical warts.”
I wanted to be able to think of a clever punch line to create a moment of light relief, but nothing came to mind. Instead, I just started shivering, because it was seriously cold out there, and the cold had got through my coat.
“Come on,” Mark said. “Let’s go back inside. I don’t want your catching pneumonia to be on my conscience along with everything else.”
Inside, I laid the towels on the sofa so we could sit down. Buddy was still fast asleep in one corner of the room—a tiny, tucked-up ball of fluff.
Mark poured more wine. “No, much better to accept it’s over, I think. Even if I went back, I’d never be able to forget the way she looked at Buddy. She recoiled, Beth. From a puppy.”
Since this was also incomprehensible to me, I didn’t know what to say. So I just said, “D’you want a cup of coffee? I’m going to make one for myself.”
“Let me make you one. It’s only fair, since you did all the cooking.”
“It is very hard working, zapping things,” I agreed.
Mark smiled. “You always have managed to cheer me up,” he said, reaching out to tuck a stray strand of hair behind my ear. “How do you do that?”
My mouth was suddenly dry. When I tried to speak, no sound came out until I cleared my throat. “We’ve . . . just known each other for a long time, that’s all.”
Mark’s hand was stroking its way down my neck now. He had never, ever touched me in that intimate way before. And he hadn’t looked at my mouth like that before either—in the sexually charged way Jake had looked at it when we’d run into each other in the street.
“We have, haven’t we?” he said. “For years and years.”
It’s not that a brother doesn’t touch you. He does. A brother pretend bashes your arm or gives you a playful shove. Hugs you when you meet. Tickles you when you’re kids. But he doesn’t hold you like this, not even when your heart is broken.
When Mark had driven that hired van to fetch me and my belongings from Jaimie’s, we’d hugged for a very long time at the garage. But we hadn’t melted into each other like this. My breasts hadn’t found a home against his chest. A lick of heat hadn’t flared down my body like a flame catching on kindling.
For me, the potential of it had always been there, desire coursing beneath my surface like magma. I’d had to train myself to not acknowledge it. To get on with my life like a person who lives at the foot of an active volcano gets on with their life.
But now Mark was holding me, looking at me with total focus. Examining my face as if he’d never seen it before. And in a way, he hadn’t, had he? Because I’d never allowed him to see this me. Never let myself respond the way I wanted to. But how could I not respond now, when his hand was beneath my hair, deliciously caressing my scalp and the nape of my neck? When every plane, curve, and jut of his body was imprinted onto mine and his mouth was steadily descending to make contact?
The kiss was every bit as intoxicating as I’d ever imagined it would be—sweet and soft and firm, demanding all at the same time, the core of me lava hot as my lips parted to let in his tongue. I reached for him with shaking hands, pulling his body hard against mine.
But then Mark moved back to put space between us, and it was over as quickly as it had begun. I watched him rub his hands together as if to wipe the touch of me away. And I felt disgusting. Repulsive. Utterly betrayed and rejected.
“God,” he said, his voice shaking. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
Just for a second, a window had opened, showing me a glimpse of the paradise I’d craved for so long. But now that window was boarded back up with a thousand nails, leaving me in ice-cold darkness.
“I’m so sorry, Beth.”
I couldn’t look at him. Wanted very much to throw myself onto my bed and cry for the rest of the century. But I couldn’t—wouldn’t—do that with him here. Wouldn’t suffer his pity.
“You should go,” I said. “You can leave Buddy here with me, but you should just go.”
“You want me to?” Without looking, I could imagine his big-eyed, sorrowful expression.
“Yes.”
He got up. “Right. All right. Well, I’ll . . . I’ll be in touch about picking up Buddy.”
“Okay.”
“Look, Beth, I . . .”
I didn’t want to have to yell at him to get out, but I would if I had to.
“Goodbye, Mark.”
After he’d gone, I lay on my bed and cried and cried and cried. There were around twenty-five years’ worth of tears to cry, after all. Buddy licked my face for a bit, but after he got bored of that, he dived for my fingers or tugged painfully at my hair instead.
Finally, he went to sleep in the crook of my neck, and I let him stay there, completely against all the rules of dog training. He wasn’t mine to keep, so I didn’t have to be the bad guy who shut him away in another room overnight to get used to being away from his siblings. Let somebody else do it. Let bloody Mark do it.
We could so easily have ended up in bed together, Mark and I. But the horror on his face when he’d pulled away told me he would have been using me for comfort. Because he was upset about Grace. Which showed just how much he cared about me and my feelings.
We were never going to be unselfconscious with each other again. This was always going to be a snagging thorn between us. In a few short seconds, I had lost everything—my secrets, my brother, the man I loved.
“Oh, Buddy,” I said, sobbing into his soft fur. But Buddy was oblivious, gone wherever puppies go when they zonk out.
“Happy Christmas, Beth,” I told myself. “Happy bloody Christmas.”
Buddy was still with me the next day when Jake came round at twelve o’clock.
“Who’s this little guy?” he asked, reaching out to stroke him.
“This is Buddy. He’s my friend’s pup. I’m looking after him while he sorts things out.”
“Your depressed friend?”
“Yep.”
Jake stroked Buddy’s ears. Buddy promptly wriggled adorably onto his back in my arms and began to savage Jake’s hand with his needle-sharp teeth.