Читать книгу The Things We Need to Say: An emotional, uplifting story of hope from bestselling author Rachel Burton - Rachel Burton, Rachel Burton - Страница 17

MARCH 2005

I don’t know how we got through that week at work, that week after we first slept together. Our eyes lingering on each other for longer than they should, our hands itching for the want of touching each other, fevered text messages at night that turned my insides to liquid. His fingers innocently brushing against mine as he passed me a file would send shivers through my body. Nobody had ever made me feel like that before. I began to wonder if I was imagining it.

We didn’t get any time alone together until he took me for dinner that Wednesday.

‘A proper date,’ he said as we walked to the restaurant, just before he pulled me into All Saints Passage and pressed me up against the wall, kissing me until I was breathless.

‘I’ve been wanting to do that for days,’ he said.

I felt my shoulders relax then, the tension melting off me like candlewax. Part of me hadn’t been able to trust him. Part of me didn’t think he’d meant it.

Later, when he drove me home and we sat outside my house in his car – a place we’d been so many times before – I asked him if he wanted to come inside. His fingers were at the base of my skull; I felt his breath on my neck. I heard him groan quietly, kissing the soft place behind my ear before pulling away, straightening himself.

‘I do,’ he said. ‘But I’m not going to. I don’t want our first morning together to be spoiled by the rush of going to work, by me having to leave early to find a clean shirt.’

I tried to hide the disappointment I knew was showing in my face.

‘Let me take you away this weekend,’ he said.

We went to a hotel in the Cotswolds, away from everyone who knew us so we could get to know each other. We made love, slept late, ate breakfast in bed and took long walks in the beautiful countryside, all the while talking about our lives before. That’s how it always felt to me – my life before Will and my life after.

He told me about his brother, his huge family, his parents’ reaction when he refused to go to Oxford and did his law degree at Durham instead. He admitted to his obsession with cricket; how, before he got married, he used to play at county level.

And he finally told me about his first wife. He tried to explain how he felt after she left him for his best friend from law school, the guy who’d been best man at their wedding.

‘All I ever really wanted was to get married and have kids,’ he said, his eyes flicking away from me.

I told him about how much I’d loved living in London, how I hadn’t wanted to come back to Cambridge, but how, after Mum died, I hadn’t wanted to return to London either. I told him about Jake, the man I’d left behind in London. Jake, who I’d promised to go back to but never had.

‘Why?’ Will asked.

To answer that I had to finally admit how much Mum’s death had affected me, how I’d shut myself away from everything because I hadn’t been able to handle the fact that I couldn’t make her well again.

‘You saved me, you know,’ I said as I lay in his arms on our last morning.

‘No I didn’t,’ he replied. ‘I just helped you realise how strong you are.’

‘I was so lonely after Mum died. I didn’t know what to do with myself. And then you came along.’ I turned to face him.

‘You don’t ever have to be lonely again,’ he said, running the side of his hand down my cheek.

‘I do probably need to get another job though.’

‘You don’t have to,’ he said. ‘I like seeing you every day.’

‘We both know I do have to.’

He looked at me then, quietly for a moment.

‘I love you,’ he said after a while. It was the first time he said it.