‘There isn’t.’
And it was all his fault, he knew. He’d done this to them the minute he’d destroyed her ability to trust him by cheating on her and Kit felt the knowledge hit him as if someone had thumped him in the solar plexus. He didn’t deserve her love. He didn’t deserve her trust. He wasn’t worthy of her. And he had to let her go. ‘Lily…’
‘I know. I’m sorry,’ she whispered, the tears now flowing down her cheeks as she leaned forwards and gently kissed him. ‘So sorry.’
He kissed her back, knowing that it was a kiss goodbye, and it just about broke him apart. ‘So am I, my darling,’ he said. ‘So am I.’
FOURTEEN
On a professional level the last fortnight had been great for Kit. Plans for the new hotel in Rome were coming along apace and business was booming. To his delight—and no small amount of relief—Paula Burrows had been headhunted by another PR firm and just yesterday he’d heard that one of his hotels was up for an award.
On a personal level, however, the last couple of weeks had been diabolical. However busy he kept himself, however hard he worked, he couldn’t stop thinking about Lily. He couldn’t stop wondering how she was and what she was doing, and he’d been going mad wondering if there was anything during their relationship that he could have done differently.
He couldn’t seem to get rid of the dull ache that lived deep inside him, the pain that filled every cell of his body or the sorrow and regret that washed over him practically every other minute.
The need to find out how she was drummed through him constantly and the temptation to call her had been so hard to resist that he’d had to delete her details from his phone.
If only it had been as easy to delete her from his memory. But that was nigh on impossible because she was in there all the time. Teasing him. Tormenting him. Driving him pretty much insane.
And making him do all kinds of things he’d really rather not do. Such as getting up in the early hours and searching the web for news, photos or anything really that might give him a hit of her. Such as composing emails he’d never ever send. Such as on one particularly bad night driving round to her house, parking up outside and waiting for the merest glimpse of her.
It had to stop, thought Kit, rubbing his hand along his stubbly jaw and then across the back of his neck as he sat in his kitchen and brooded. It really did. Quite apart from the fact that some of the things he’d done lately bordered on stalkerish, as painful as it was, as much as his heart was aching, Lily had made it very clear that they were over, and he knew perfectly well that there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.
Hadn’t he tried during the entire time they’d been together? And then the night in her garden, hadn’t he abandoned his pride? Hadn’t he begged? Hadn’t he very nearly wept, for goodness’ sake?
Well, he wouldn’t be doing any of that again, he thought with a shudder at the memory of how desperate to hold on to her he’d been and the lengths he’d gone to to achieve it. And he wouldn’t be doing any of the other things he resorted to in his wretchedness any more. He’d had enough of the heartache and he was pretty sure that his staff had had enough of his filthy mood. So there’d be no more web searching. No more seeking her out. No more thinking about her. And after this lunchtime, no more playing squash with Dan just so he could pump him for information.
He had to excise her from his memory and his heart because he didn’t deserve her and he couldn’t have her and he might as well get used to the idea.
*
Lily stood on the dais in the fitting room of the bridal shop, risked a quick glance in the mirror directly in front of her and practically recoiled in horror at her reflection.She looked absolutely hideous.
When she’d dragged herself out of bed this morning after yet another night of too many tears and too little sleep she’d slapped on some make-up and hauled a brush through her hair and thought she wasn’t doing too badly considering how wretched she felt.
But under the harsh bright fluorescent light of the fitting room she saw that she’d been deluding herself. Great grey bags sagged beneath her eyes. There were hollows beneath her cheekbones. Her hair hung limply and dully around her ears, and despite the tinted moisturiser she’d applied—very patchily it seemed—her skin was the colour of wallpaper paste.
Whichever way she looked at it, and given the many mirrors surrounding her that was a lot, she wasn’t doing the gorgeous floaty silk dress she was wearing any kind of justice.
But was it any wonder?
The last time that she and Kit had broken up everyone had said that she’d get over it. That all she needed was time. And while she’d been miserable they’d been proved right. But that strategy wasn’t working so well for her now and, as she’d feared, it didn’t look as if there was any hope that it would.
It had been a fortnight since he’d prised her off him and walked out of her garden, her house and her life, and she was no better now than she had been then. If anything she was worse because she was finding it pretty impossible to see how she was ever going to get over him.
She thought about him constantly. Dreamed about him regularly. Every morning when she woke up she remembered that they were over, and her heart shattered all over again.
Most of Kit’s stuff had been gone for days now—he’d been round when she’d been at work, packed up and dropped the key through the letter box—but eve
ry now and then she found something he’d forgotten. A random sock that had made it into her drawer. His toothbrush lying beside the basin. A copy of the Financial Times folded in the way that only he folded it. And every single time she’d come across something of his—or even something that merely reminded her of him—she crumpled into a heap on the floor in a flood of tears.
This wasn’t like the last time when every time he’d crossed her mind she’d mainly thought ‘good riddance’ and ‘what a relief’. This was hell on earth. Absolute agony. Because, as a result of all their baggage and the way they’d managed to deal with most of it, their relationship this time round had been deeper than before. Closer. And thus the break-up was all the more devastating.
Ending things might have been the only thing she could have done after discovering that she might love him to bits but she just couldn’t trust him, but that didn’t make it easier to bear. It didn’t lessen the pain and didn’t make her miss him any less.
This time she knew there’d be no third chance. No trying again. This time, this really was it.
As the reality of what she’d done slammed into her head yet again, Lily could feel the tears welling up again and she sniffed them back because she really couldn’t damage this dress. She’d never forgive herself. Neither would Zoe, who’d been sitting on the sofa while the seamstress had rotated round Lily sticking pins into the fabric. Zoe, who was also proving surprisingly unsympathetic about her sister’s miserable, agonising plight.