Always and Only You

Chapter Sixty-Two

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

Present Day

That night we eat dinner on the roof again, but this time the silence feels a little less heavy. I feel something in our relationship has shifted, but I’m not exactly sure what. It feels rude to be sitting here eating beside him saying nothing after he’s been uncharacteristically kind to me.

‘I know you’ve never exactly warmed to me …’ I begin, unsure exactly where I’m going with this.

‘It’s not that,’ he says quickly.

I’m staring straight ahead, still just able to make Whitehaven out as a smudge of white amid the dark trees on the opposite bank, but I turn to look at him. ‘Then what is it?’ I really want to know. As much as I’ve always told myself it isn’t important, that he isn’t important, it’s always bugged me.

He lets out a heavy breath. ‘I can’t say.’

‘Can’t or won’t?’ I ask, my tone harder than I intend. He has to make everything a battle, doesn’t he?

He turns to meet my gaze. ‘Both. But I won’t apologize for it. Just trust me that no good will come from that conversation, for any of us.’ After a few silent moments, he adds, ‘But I want to apologize for arguing with you the night before the wedding. You’re right. It was a shitty thing to do.’

‘I did say that, didn’t I?’

‘You remember?’

I nod. ‘It’s the last thing I recall about that night.’

Gil frowns. ‘Well, then I’m doubly sorry. That’s a crappy last memory to have before what happened next.’

He looks so solemn that I want to say something to lighten the mood, but unfortunately, my mind is full of serious thoughts too. Questions. Always more questions. I fiddle with a button on my dress, breaking eye contact. ‘No one has told me much about that night. At the beginning, I think they didn’t want to upset me, and it feels wrong to ask now, as if I’m harking back to something I should have left behind.’

‘Have you left it behind?’

I sigh. ‘No. Not really.’

‘I don’t know everything, but I can probably fill in some of the gaps.’

There’s a hint of warning in his tone and a shiver rolls through me. I suddenly realize he was the last person I saw that night in the hotel garden. I’ve pushed these thoughts away before, but now they all come rushing back. Am I foolish to be sitting here with this man? Alone. In the middle of nowhere? It doesn’t feel that way. But I can’t really trust myself at the moment. My damaged brain could be giving me a false sense of security.

‘Yes. Tell me. What happened after we argued?’

‘You went back inside, and I hung around in the garden for a bit. There was no point in causing a scene.’

I let out a snort of laughter.

‘What?’ he says, genuinely perplexed.

I sigh. As much as Gil Sampson has driven me to distraction over the years, I can’t accuse him of that. ‘You are the least likely person I know to make a scene.’

He blinks and I swear I see a hint of a smile on his lips, in his eyes. But maybe it’s the twilight gloom making me see things that aren’t there. ‘Later, I went back inside,’ he continues.

‘Did you see me there?’

‘Yes. From a distance. I think you left before I did, but I didn’t notice you go.’

I chew over that information. It gives me a little more detail than I had before, but not much. ‘Simon said you found me, though, in the garden?’

His expression becomes grim, and I realize this isn’t a memory he enjoys revisiting. I’ve been a bit blind, too caught up in my own frustrations about the trauma of that night to fully appreciate how it affected others, and not just Simon and my family.

‘Yes.’

‘What brought you back out there? Getting some air from the party?’

He shakes his head. ‘It was way after that. I couldn’t sleep. Insomnia …’

‘… is a bitch,’ I blurt out, finishing his sentence for him. When he looks at me quizzically, I tap my head. ‘It’s been an issue, you know, since that night. Never had a problem with it before.’

He doesn’t move, doesn’t even blink, but the weight of his understanding is like a comforting blanket.

‘So it was late when you went back out?’

‘Past one.’

‘Wow. I hadn’t realized.’ On the one hand, that’s reassuring, because I know it happened hours after my argument with Gil and couldn’t have had anything to do with him, but on the other, it’s troubling. ‘I wonder what I was doing out there. Surely I should have been getting my bridal beauty sleep?’

‘You didn’t look like you were ready for bed. You were still wearing the same dress you’d had on at the party – that red one,’ he says.

I frown. ‘That means I didn’t even make it into bed.’

‘That’s all I know. I’m sorry I can’t give you more.’

I yawn. Fatigue finally is catching up with me. ‘No … Thank you, Gil. For both the information and the apology. I don’t know if it means anything, but I’m sorry I was salty with you too that night – it wasn’t really about you, you know. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed.’

‘I knew that.’

I give him a disbelieving but good-natured look.

‘At least I did when I calmed down.’

A moment of silence hangs between us, one where neither of us looks away.

‘Well, thank you for finding me, for taking care of me until the ambulance arrived.’

Gil gives a gruff nod. ‘Always.’