You Me Everything Page 19

  “I must’ve been using the term loosely.”

  “Come on, up you get,” Adam instructs. He jokingly goes to take me by the arm, but I shake him off, afraid of how I’ll feel with his hands on my skin. Then Rufus jumps up. All the adults seem to register at once that, with Adam, Simone and me, we have five people and only four sets of boules, the brightly colored plastic kind they sell in the supermarkets here.

  “I’ll sit it out,” I offer gladly.

  “NO!” protests William.

  “Well, I don’t mind,” Adam says with a shrug.

  “Oh, Dad, come on.”

  Which only leaves two children and Simone. William and Rufus glare at her.

  “Looks like it’s me who’s sitting it out then,” she says through a pinched smile, before returning to her seat and crossing her legs tightly.

  My eyes flicker up to Adam. “I really don’t mind not taking part—”

  “Just get on with it, Jess,” Adam instructs. “Come on, show us what you’re made of.”

  Chapter 51

  I try to remember exactly why it was I said I was brilliant at boules. Dad always told the ten-year-old me I was a natural, but as I pick up a ball, I realize that I’ve drunk too much to have the razor-sharp focus required for the game. Or indeed for putting one foot in front of the other.

  “Let’s toss a coin to see who throws the jack,” Adam decides, pulling out a handful of change from his pocket.

  “Tails,” William declares.

  Adam flips up a euro and smacks it on the back of his hand. “Tails it is.”

  William takes the little white ball and, with intensity on his brow, throws it on the ground ahead of him. His first shot isn’t bad, falling short by only a foot. Adam goes next and gets closer, before Rufus smashes that out of the way.

  I step forward and cup the boule in my palm as I get into position, hotly aware of Simone’s eyes on me. This has a peculiarly fortifying effect on my adrenaline levels, and I become hyperaware of my movements as I lunge back and swing my arm, sending the boule flying off at a mad angle—and prompting a great deal of hilarity from our audience.

  It turns out to be only the start. Over the next twenty minutes, I am repeatedly trounced by everyone, and it’s the source of no end of amusement to Adam. “It’s not that hard, Jess.”

  “I’m a bit rusty, that’s all,” I fire back. “Besides, don’t go on about it, or I’ll have to bring up the stone skimming.”

  He starts laughing and shakes his head. “I’ve got a good trick if you’d like me to show you?”

  “I’ll cope without a lesson.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “You might learn something, Mum,” William pipes up. Given that I’ve said this repeatedly to him over the years, this puts me in an awkward position.

  “Fine. Come and show me where I’m going wrong.”

  Adam picks up a ball and walks towards me, grinning as he bounces it in his hand.

  I am expecting him to simply demonstrate some daft hop, skip and jump maneuver, to which I’ll respond by rolling my eyes and calling him a smart arse. Instead, before I have a chance to object, he is directly behind me, sliding his arm past my waist and clasping his hand under mine.

  I freeze at his touch as my forehead throbs. I glance anxiously to check Simone isn’t looking. But she’s gone inside for something.

  “Like this.” I can feel his breath against my ear.

  I consider pushing him away and genially making a joke about him being patronizing. But as his body presses against my back, I can’t do it. Not without drawing attention to the effect he’s having on me. So I remain still, my belly swooping with guilty pleasure as I try to slow my breaths.

  I can feel the contours of his chest move against my back as, together, we swing the ball and release it. It trundles to the ground, miles away from the jack. It’s the worst shot of the game.

  He straightens up, and I glance backwards at him anxiously. His face looks too serious as he whispers: “Never mind.”

  “Fat lot of good you were,” I reply.

  I’m trying to lighten the mood with a joke, but it comes out sounding so flirtatious that my color deepens further.

  “How about we try again?”

  As he smiles his heart-stopping smile, we are interrupted by the shrill of Simone’s voice. “Adam, I’m going home.”

  She crosses her arms tight against her chest, and I am stiff with shame.

  “Simone, why don’t you stay and take over from me,” I leap in, stepping away from Adam. “I’m completely rubbish at this. Come on, I insist.”

  “Thanks, but I’ve got a migraine,” she says flatly.

  “Oh no. They’re a nightmare,” I reply, pretending I haven’t noticed the tone in her voice. “Do you get them a lot?”

  She glares at Adam. “I seem to lately. I’ll see you all in the morning. Enjoy your evening,” she says curtly, and walks off. I dig Adam in the ribs. “Go after her.”

  He looks genuinely confused by this suggestion. “Why? She’s got a headache.”

  “She’s pissed off with you, Adam.”

  “What have I done?”

  But I can’t answer that, because it would mean admitting what’s changed between us. The change that’s suddenly proving difficult to fight.

  Chapter 52

  Becky and Seb’s children drift off to sleep on Adam’s sofa like dominoes, first Poppy, then Rufus, then James. Adam and Seb carry the boys back to their cottage, deadweights over their shoulders, while Becky pushes Poppy in the pushchair, her little chubby fingers wrapped around Pink Bunny’s ears.

  William, meanwhile, sets out to prove that Guardians of the Galaxy never gets old, by curling up in Adam’s spare room to watch it for the seventeenth time on my iPad while I offer to help clear up some dishes.

  I pop my head round the door, and he looks up, surprised, then closes down the screen. “What are you looking at there? I hope it’s not something inappropriate?” My head erupts with drunken, fragmented thoughts about the HD website I’d forgotten to close down on the day of the storm.

  “No, no,” he says, handing it over to prove that he’s been unsuccessfully attempting to watch a video entitled “Epic Fails.”

  “Is there swearing in this?”

  “Not . . . much,” he replies, as his jaw breaks into a greedy yawn. “I’m really tired.”

  “Come on, we need to head back, and you’re too big for me to carry these days.”

  He groans and rolls over, pulling the sheet over his shoulders.

  “He can sleep here tonight if he likes.”

  The heat from Adam’s flesh next to mine makes me shiver, and I deliberately shift away.

  “I’m sure he can manage to walk home, even at this hour.”

  “No, I want to stay here,” William protests.

  I glance between my son and his father.

  “Fine, but take your shoes and socks off and at least get into bed. I’ll come and collect you in the morning, okay?”

  “Okay,” he says eagerly, scrambling under the sheet, ripping off his socks and flinging them in my direction.

  “Gee, thanks.” I grimace as I catch them and walk over to kiss him. I let my cheek linger against his skin and, as I pull back, feel my heart twinge, overcome by one of those moments of pure gratitude that I have him.

  “I love you,” I whisper.

  “I love you more.”

  “No, I love you the most.”

  “No way,” he says as I laugh and back out of the room, expecting Adam to have left by now. Instead, he is watching us, his eyes blurring with unexpected emotion before he walks over and plants a lingering kiss on William’s forehead.

  * * *

  —

  As I head outside, the light from a high moon casts shadows across the
grass, and constellations hang like celestial cobwebs above us. Adam begins to stack the chairs, and I pull my bag over my shoulder.

  “I’d better head off,” I say. “Are you sure you’re all right with him?”

  He stops and straightens his back. “Of course.”

  I nod and go to leave.

  “Jess?”

  “Yes?”

  “Fancy a brew? I hate to boast about being able to get hold of illicit substances, but I’ve got Yorkshire Tea.”

  I smile automatically. “Who’s your dealer?”

  “She’s called Maureen. She’s sixty-six, comes here from Shropshire every year, and you wouldn’t mess with her. Go on, I’ll put the kettle on.”

  I sit on the faded bench outside his cottage and wait, as the lyrical rhythm of crickets breaks the silence.

  When Adam appears with a pot of tea, the sight of his outline against the light behind the door makes my insides fizz. He brings it to the table and steps over the bench, sinking onto the wood so he’s directly facing me. I glance away and study the knots in the surface.

  He pours two mugs, then lifts his and clinks mine. “Cheers.”

  As the hot liquid slips down my throat, I find myself inhaling him, my head thick with memories. “What’s that smell?”

  He looks up and jokingly sniffs his armpits. “What smell?”

  “It’s not unpleasant. I just mean . . . your aftershave. I thought I recognized it.”

  A heartbeat passes. “It’s Terre d’Hermès.”

  I swallow the cotton wool in my throat. “You always used to wear that.”

  He looks as if I’ve caught him out. “Well, not for years, but I saw some in Sarlat and remembered I liked it.”

  His dark eyes fix on mine, and I am flooded with a sensation so powerful it makes my fingers tremble. As I sit next to him, the man I’ve loved and hated, I find it suddenly impossible to remember why we’re not together.

  There is a vague logic whispering in the back of my mind, telling me that now’s the time to leave. But the feeling that another person can turn you inside out just by looking at you is so exhilarating that I don’t want it to stop.

  Right now I ache for him. I cast my eyes to his lips and crave their taste. I want to run my fingertips along his jaw and see if it feels the same as it used to.

  An intense pressure starts building in my belly, and I recognize a feeling I haven’t had in years. A white-hot desire, gathering momentum as Adam refuses to remove his eyes from mine.

  Above all else it reminds me of one thing. Whatever life might throw at me, right now, there’s this: I’m alive.

  I’m not sitting in a corner tormented by my future. I’m not torn apart by fear for my son, my mother and me. I’m living and breathing and feeling. He leans towards me.

  When our lips touch, the kiss feels new and old all at the same time. He guides my leg over the bench, takes me by the hand and pulls me in, wrapping me around him, molding my body to his through my clothes as his mouth sinks deeper into mine.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this,” I whisper, arching my neck as his lips travel to the skin beneath my ear.

  “We should,” he says, sliding his hand through my hair, kissing my mouth, my temples, my neck, as I consider a vague thought that I’m drunk, that this is why I’ve allowed things to go this far.

  But that’s not it.

  I might be full of wine, but I want this.

  I want it when he takes my hand and stands, inviting me to do the same. I want it as he leads me into the cottage, past the door where we left William, stopping only to check that he’s asleep under his sheets. I want it as we walk along the corridor to the other side of his cottage and I enter his bedroom, where he clicks shut the door, kissing me again as his hand slides up my spine.

  We undress each other slowly, savoring every moment of new, bare skin.

  I’d forgotten how beautiful Adam is naked. I am torn between whether to touch him or look at him, the agonizing perfection of his body. I don’t get to choose. As the weight of him sinks into me, I grip the small of his back with my fingers and feel my blood pulsate. Then he stops and puts his hand on my chin.

  “Do you know how beautiful you are to me? Do you know how beautiful you’ve always been to me?”

  His words make tears prick into my eyes. But I don’t want to talk. I only want the heat of him inside me, and that soaring, obliterating feeling, just like it was in the beginning.

  Chapter 53

  The sound of a crowing cockerel grates in my ears until I’m jolted awake, lifting up my head from Adam’s chest. My eyes skitter around the light-filled room, taking in my surroundings, the shutters we left open, particles of dust reflected in the sunlight, the clothes strewn across the floor, like evidence in a crime scene.

  I turn to Adam and feel my stomach lurch at the sight of his parted lips, his bare neck, the skin on his shoulders.

  Then my head explodes.

  There are so many things wrong here, my head throbs with the insanity of what happened last night.

  Top of the list is William. Who was right there, on the other side of the cottage, when this happened! I know he was fast asleep and that parents all over the world have sex in the same house as their kids, but not when the parents in question are meant to have split up a decade earlier.

  He’s had his whole life to come to terms with the fact that Adam and I are not together and are never going to be together, so what this would do to his poor prepubescent head doesn’t bear thinking about.

  He wouldn’t just be confused by it; it’d be worse than that. He’d be hopeful. Left under the terrible, misguided impression that this can mean something.

  I’d be completely unable to reassure him with a viable explanation, because there isn’t one, other than that it was a drunken mistake. He’d be bound to read more into it than there is. It’s not like I’ve had a huge amount of casual sex in my life. The most promiscuous thing I’ve ever done involved imagining I was ruffling Jamie Dornan’s hair when I was sleeping with Toby.

  My only option would be to look William in the eye and tell him that this was what it was: a one-night stand, with his father.

  Which brings me to the other unpalatable part of this sorry affair—the fact that I am the other woman. Me. I’ve spent so long feeling wronged that the shock of self-loathing about what I’ve done to Simone is like a punch in the gut. I don’t care that I hardly know her, or that she may be nothing more than Adam’s latest flame. At this moment in time, he’s meant to be hers.

  And yes, there’ve been dozens like her, before the next one kicks her off her pedestal. But I don’t want to be the next one. How the hell did I become the next one?

  That thought makes me leap up as if the sheets are on fire. Adam stirs. I wince and glare at him as he adjusts his position, his eyes still closed.

  I silently bend down and grab my top, edging off the bed as I begin to creep round the room, collecting my clothes. I pull them on, my heart pounding as I pray I’m not going to open the door and find William in the hall looking for somewhere to plug in the iPad charger.

  When I’m almost done, I perch on the edge of the bed and slip on my sandal. I pick up the other one, when a hand grabs my wrist and I gasp. I’m expecting Adam to say something flippant, until I see the look on his face.

  “Don’t regret this.”

  At first, I’m lost for a response, so I simply shake him off and stand up. Then I spin round and scowl. “Well, Adam: I do.”

  “Why?”

  “Do I really need to spell it out to you? What about Simone?”

  He pulls this infuriating expression, dismissive, almost, as if the small matter of his having a girlfriend is irrelevant.

  “Jess . . . there’s no comparison. What you and I had—”

  “Had is the operative word.”
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  A bang outside the door silences us both.

  “He can never know about this,” I whisper.

  Adam swallows. “No. I mean, yes. You’re probably right.”

  I sit back on the bed anxiously and start biting my nails as I listen for movement outside the door. “Shit, what if he’s up?”

  “That was the bathroom door—it blows closed if the window’s left open sometimes. I’m sure he’s still asleep at this hour.” I look at the clock. It reads 7:15 a.m., about an hour earlier than he’s generally been rising since we got here.

  “I’m going then.”

  “I suppose a good-bye kiss is out of the question?”

  I tut. “What do you think?”

  I walk to the door, pry it open and peek out. The coast is clear. “Remember—not a word.”

  “Yes. Okay.”

  The floorboards creak under every step, even when I find myself on my tiptoes, against the wall, edging along it like a poor impersonation of a cat burglar dodging lasers in the Louvre.

  I silently pass the bathroom and, with my heart thumping in my throat, eventually make it to the front door. My hand is inches from the handle . . . when the sodding cockerel crows again, and I nearly jump out of my skin.

  “Mum?”

  I look up and realize that unless I let out some breath, I might keel over. “William! Did you sleep well? I thought I’d pop over early to get you. Have you just woken?”

  “No, that rooster woke me up ages ago. I’ve been watching Guardians of the Galaxy. Then I heard you and thought Dad must’ve been up.”

  “Hmm . . . no, he must still be in bed. I’ve only just arrived, so I couldn’t say for sure.”

  “You’ve only just got here?”

  “Yes!”

  “How did you get in?”

  “I . . . picked the lock.” The reason I plump for this explanation—rather than something simple like, the door was unlocked—is anyone’s guess.

  His eyes expand to mind-blown proportions. “You can pick locks?”