I knew I could no longer put off what I needed to say. The coach was leaving in forty-five minutes.
“Am I?” Stalling. Coward, I thought.
He trailed fingers up and down my back and I shrugged him off. A quick glance showed what I already knew. I’d hurt him—I was hurting him. “I’m sorry. I guess I … I don’t like goodbyes.” Liar. Saying goodbye to a lover was easy. This is easy. You know how to do this.
“I want to see you again.” There it was. Had he said, “Hey, when can we catch up again?” I would have known we were on the same page. What he had said was loaded with far more meaning.
“Sure. Yes. We should make plans.” The acquaintance in the street. Non-committal. Casual.
“Catherine, look at me.”
I did.
He tentatively took my hand and I let him. What else could I do? “By chance, fate, we found each other again. I …” He looked down, as though searching for the words. I welcomed the reprieve from both his words and his eyes, which were wrenching my heart.
I was about to break his and I could barely stand it.
“I loved you once. I was a boy then, but I am a man now.” He looked up. “I am wiser now. I know that this is not love—yet. But it could be. It is not usual, what is between us.”
“There is a strong attraction, yes.” A flicker of honesty.
“It is more. There is a pull, yes?” he looked at me intensely.
“Yes.” Madly in lust. Madly in lust. “But—”
“You have been on my mind constantly since that night in Paris. In Naples, I am working and I am thinking about you. In Roma, waiting for you to arrive, you. After kissing you, all I could think about the next day and the entire drive here, was you. Making love to you. Holding you. Talking to you. All of it.
“The physical pull is very strong between us. I know this. Making love to you, it takes me out of myself. I know you feel that too. But it is more, Catherine. There are old feelings that have come again. I missed my dear friend, and now she—you—are here. And where my body and my heart meets, that’s where you are.” He clenched his jaw and his eyes seemed to will me to understand.
The thing was, I did understand. And it was the most beautiful thing anyone had ever said to me and it spun around inside me whipping up a frenzy of turmoil.
It was my turn to talk. “Yes. To everything you just said. The attraction, how it is physically between us, that is undeniable.” I smiled, hoping to break the tension and I saw his jaw unclench—a little.
“And once there was this boy I loved—and I did love you. You were my best friend and even though it was my doing, I really missed that boy when he wasn’t a part of my life anymore. And when I’m with you, or thinking about you, I am trying to see the boy, to reconcile you—this gloriously handsome, grown, accomplished man—with the sweet, hopeful, precocious boy. Because part of me wants him back.”
I saw relief in his eyes, which tore at me. I knew I needed to get the next part out before I lost my nerve.
“Wait. There’s more.” A look of concentration settled on his face. I took a slow breath. I had one chance not to mess this up. “We have this attraction, this physical intensity between us here …” I indicated one end of the spectrum with my hand “… and over here, we have the friendship we both want to rekindle.” He nodded, listening intently. “But here, in the middle, is a spectre. You said you were once in love with me, and I am very afraid that will happen again. I don’t want to hurt you.”
A thousand thoughts seemed to flutter across his eyes in an instant. It took a lot of courage not to break eye contact with him.
“You …” He looked down. “You do not want to be in love.” It was a statement, a realisation.
“No.”
“So, you are afraid of love?”
“I wouldn’t say I’m afraid.” Defensive.
“What would you say?” There was an angry edge to his tone and I didn’t blame him.
“I—” I tried to answer. He deserved an answer. “I … this is what I want, to not be in love.”
I sounded far less convincing to myself than I hoped I sounded to him. Tears filled his eyes but didn’t fall. He drew a sharp intake of breath. “Are you sure?”
Was I? Why wouldn’t I budge on this, even for Jean-Luc?
But I knew why. Like I’d told Lou, I became a shadow of myself after Scott and I parted ways in Paris. The whole excruciating thing—the cheating, the lies, the accusations that it was all my fault—it broke me. I had moved through life like a marionette, doing everything I was supposed to and feeling none of it. I smiled when it was expected and cried in private. Eventually, after aeons, I stopped crying and went numb. It took years to get back to myself.
I wasn’t chancing that again. Not ever. Not even for Jean-Luc.
I nodded, steadfast. He made a sound, a slight groan. He said nothing more—just left the room and went to stand on the balcony.
As I watched him lean against the railing and his head drop to his chest, my heart breaking at what I’d done, I couldn’t ignore the thought buzzing around my mind. It wasn’t Jean-Luc who broke my heart.
Somehow, I got through those minutes—we got through them. I finished my unwanted coffee and washed the mugs in the sink, then brushed my teeth. I did a final check of the room for wayward clothing that might have been flung across it during our lovemaking. Lovemaking. The word sat like lead in my stomach.
Never again, Cat.
I zipped up my case and when it was time to walk to the chalet, Jean-Luc insisted on carrying it down the stairs to the street. I raised the handle so I could pull it behind me. He walked alongside me and I took a moment to enjoy the sunny morning and the crisply scented air. It was so beautiful there and I didn’t want the memories of Lauterbrunnen to be marred by the last half an hour.
When the coach was in sight, with Tom and some of the women from the tour loading the group’s baggage underneath, Jean-Luc stopped. I set my case upright and forced myself to look at him. I owed him that much.
“I, uh … I wanted you to have this,” he said. He pulled out the letter he’d mentioned the day before, still in its envelope, from his back pocket. “I have read it perhaps a hundred times.”
Oh God, the letter. I’d forgotten. I didn’t want it, but how could I refuse it?
“Oh, right.” I took it and tucked it into my messenger bag. “Thanks,” I added weakly.
The silence between us seemed never-ending. “Jean-Luc—”
“Goodbye, Catherine.” He reached down and enveloped me up in a hug. I wrapped my arms around his waist. He held me for some time, resting his head on mine. Then he kissed the top of my head, turned and walked away before I could say anything more.
What the frigging hell had I done?
Chapter 18
I was numb as I handed my case to Tom. He flashed me a smile, but it disappeared as soon as he saw my face.
Most of the group were milling about outside the coach, perhaps enjoying their last moments in Lauterbrunnen, but I just wanted to get on the coach and hide away from everyone. I chose a window seat at the back, facing away from the direction Jean-Luc had walked—away from “our apartment”.