Page 75

Theo looked like he was about to interject, but Melissa held her hand out to stop him.

‘Let Scarlett finish, Theo. Scarlett, what did you think when you saw that message?’

I sighed, feeling a mixture of anger and sadness as I remembered how devastated I’d felt.

‘I assumed he’d already lined up his next conquest – for that night. That he would be sleeping with me in the morning and Poppy in the afternoon.’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ said Theo quietly.

I turned to him. ‘I know things were bad for you growing up, but they were tough for me, too. I could never let myself be vulnerable, I had too many responsibilities, but I could be vulnerable with you. And I didn’t feel the need to care for you, in fact, I felt cared forbyyou, which was a whole new experience. And yet the entire time you were hedging your bets, planning other dates on the same day we’d had sex. I was clearly just one of the women you were planning to have a night of fun with and then push away.’

Theo had his hand across his mouth. I might have felt bad for him under other circumstances. He’d clearly spent the last six years believing that he’d been blameless in all of this and now I’d laid the cards on the table and made him accountable for his actions. He’d probably convinced himself it was fine to shag multiple women at once, but my confidence had been so knocked that I’d ended up falling straight into the arms of Jackson Clark, who had never made me feel anything as deeply as Theo had.

‘Theo, would you like to respond?’ asked Melissa.

He put his hands in the prayer position, as though emphasising his point.

‘Scarlett, I promise you that I had no idea you’d even seen that message. And I didn’t meet up with Poppy that night, nor any other night. Our “date” or whatever you want to call it had been arranged weeks before but I’d already decided I didn’t want to go because there was only one woman I wanted to be with, and that was you. And stupidly, I madeassumptions of my own. That you’d regretted what we’d done. That I had nothing to offer you and you’d realised that and that’s why you’d rushed off without so much as a word about seeing each other again.’

Now it was my turn to be shocked. It was a total misunderstanding, then? A set of mixed messages that could all have been solved with one phone call; one conversation. But instead, we’d both taken our childhood baggage and had let it colour our perspective, resulting in everything we’d started coming to a grinding halt. Instead of revelling in our success together, we’d spent the following months struggling through events and launches and signings with forced smiles and a hole where our hearts had once been connected. Once or twice I’d softened a little, tried to smooth things over, but I’d taken one look at Theo’s face, which had seemed cold and closed off, and had decided that this was just how things were now. Carla had pushed for us to write a second book together, but we’d both categorically refused with no real explanation except that we’d fallen out. I didn’t think Carla had ever entirely forgiven us.

‘Is that why you shut me out of some of the book publicity?’ I asked him.

‘What do you mean?’ he asked, seemingly genuinely confused.

‘That interview you did for the magazine. You barely mentioned me at all, it was like you’d frozen me out completely.’

Theo shook his head. ‘I was excited about the article, for both of us. I wanted the two of us to be featured equally, obviously, but for some reason the magazine duped me. They said they’d do your photo shoot at a later date, and your interview. I emphatically told them how closely we’d worked together on the novel, but they cut most of that out. And when the magazine was published, I wanted to reach out toyou, but it was the night of the agency’s summer party, do you remember? Jackson was stuck to you like glue. At one point, you were alone at the bar and I saw my chance, but then Carla swooped in, wanting to introduce me to someone, and when I looked for you afterwards, someone told me you and Jackson had already left. I assumed you were happy together, that I should back off and leave you to it.’

I pressed the heel of my hand against my forehead. All this time I thought he hated me, that I’d meant nothing to him. I was mad at myself, more than anything, for not having had the guts to try and work things out.

‘This feels like a lot for both of you to take in,’ said Melissa, sensing the drop in mood, the utter falling out of the bottom of my world.

I fumbled in my bag for some water, taking huge mouthfuls of it because I suddenly felt quite shaky and sick. Everything we’d believed about each other had been false. It was our own fault we’d ended up like this and nobody else’s. My mind was reeling. I suddenly imagined what our lives might have looked like if I hadn’t fled his apartment that day, if I’d just talked to him, told him that I’d seen Poppy’s message, that I was scared of getting hurt, that I wanted to hear what he had to say. We could have enjoyed the success ofLittle Boy Losttogether, as a team, instead of trying to avoid each other every time we were in the same room.

‘Do you mind if I take a walk back on my own?’ said Theo, turning to Melissa. ‘I think I need some time for all of this to sink in.’

‘Of course,’ said Melissa. ‘Why don’t the two of you give each other some space and we can re-group at the activity tomorrow afternoon?’

‘Fine,’ I said, desperate to get away myself.

Except that Theo and I both started striding off in thesame direction at once and when I slowed my pace to let him pass, he did the same, and when I sped up, he lengthened his stride, too. Was he doing this on purpose?! Finally Theo stood still with his hands on his hips in frustration as I strutted off down a staircase, needing to put as much distance between us as possible. See, this was why it was much safer to put everyone else’s feelings before my own. Because mine were complicated. And I didn’t know what to do with them. And now we’d gone and stirred everything up, just as we’d found an easiness with each other. If you could call kissing each other and trying to pretend it hadn’t happened easy. Stomping back into the centre of Cannes, I hoped that things would blow over eventually, once we’d both calmed down. They had to, because we’d missed several opportunities over the years, and this book we’d started was too good to let that happen again.

Chapter Twenty-Two

When I woke up the following morning I walked past the inter-connecting door between our rooms and ran my hand over it. I wanted to talk to him. There was nobody else who would understand the enormity of everything that had come to light in our session with Melissa because I, for one, had downplayed my relationship with Theo to every single person in my life. I’d chalked it up to experience because I was angry at myself for falling for someone who treated women the way I’d assumed he treated them. Now I knew more about him, I got it. It was fear that had been stopping him from taking things further, not arrogance or any of the other things I’d suspected. Without overthinking it (i.e. talking myself out of it) I ripped a page out of the notepad on the bedside table and scribbled a note. It had broken the ice between us last time we’d overstepped the mark, so maybe it could work its magic again.

Can we talk?

And then I marched over to the inter-connecting door, hesitated for a second, and pushed the note underneath.

I distracted myself by getting ready for the Zoom meeting Carla had organised for us that morning. Theo would be on the call, too, of course. As the minutes ticked on, I wondered if he’d read my note yet, and if so, why hadn’t he replied?What if he hadn’t noticed it lying there, and I’d be thinking he was blanking me and he’d be thinking I hadn’t reached out and we’d be back to square one?

Opening the Zoom link, I ran my fingers through my hair, smoothing out any errant knots, and then lunged down into my bag to slick on some lip gloss before popping back into the screen again and pressing Join Meeting. Theo was already there, as was Carla. I couldn’t quite meet Theo’s eye, not that it mattered because on Zoom, you couldn’t tell who was looking at who, anyway.

‘Guys!’ exclaimed Carla, who was work-ready both in terms of make-up and attitude, despite it being only 7.30 a.m. in London.

‘Hey,’ I said.