Conviction(28)

I swallow the last of the wine in my glass. It’s gotten a little warm and I shudder as it goes down. Warm white wine is so not pleasant.

“If you weren’t still in love with him, you would’ve moved on from what happened fifteen years ago. You still love him! It was written all over your face while you watched all that unfold. You felt every bit of pain he did because you love him.”

“Fuck off,” I tell her.

“No, I won’t f*ck off. Now tell me the truth. Tell me why you married Marcus the prick, and admit to me that you’re still in love with Conner Reed.”

I top up both our glasses and begin telling her the story of how I came to marry Marcus Newman.





Sophie sits forward on the edge of the sofa, her elbows resting on her knees, her fingers steepled in front of her lips. She hasn’t said a word as I told her what my brother had done and how unhappy I was in my marriage.

“At the end of the day Soph, I allowed this to happen. I paid Pearce back a couple of years ago, but I’ve remained married to Marcus because it’s safe. I don’t have to feel and I don’t have to worry about the risk of being hurt, because I know that what I feel for him is nothing like I felt for Conner. Marcus could never hurt me like Conner did, I don’t think anyone could.”

She moves back to the corner of the sofa and faces me, crossed legged.

“Do you know how f*cking angry I am with you right now?”

My eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Why are you angry with me?”

She gives a small laugh and shakes her head. “Why, Neen? Why the f*ck d’ya think?” Her eyes are wide and look all over my face. “I just can’t believe you kept this from me. Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you ask for my help? Apart from the fact that you married someone you didn’t really want to, you put our partnership, our business and ultimately, our friendship at risk. My mum and dad would’ve lent you the money or acted as guarantors for a bank loan.” She shakes her head and rakes her hand through her long blonde hair. “I love you. I love working with you, and I’m so f*cking proud of what we’ve achieved, but f*ck Neen, I’d give it all up in heartbeat to see you happily married and in love with a husband that you actually chose to be with, not someone you were blackmailed into marrying.”

I give a nervous laugh. “I wasn’t blackmailed into marrying him.”

She shakes her head some more, then looks up at the ceiling for effect before looking back at me. “No? Well, what would you call it then, Neen? Your brother threatened to pull his money out of your business, our business, if you don’t say yes to his boss’s marriage proposal. What is that, if it’s not f*cking blackmail?”

Anger rises up from somewhere within me. I’m not sure if it’s because Sophie’s got it all wrong, or because I know that I have.

“It’s a marriage of convenience, Soph. It suits both of us.”

Tears run down her face as she continues to shake her head at me. “You can’t honestly believe that, babe? You’re such a beautiful person, Nina, inside and out. You deserve so much more than a marriage of convenience. So much more.”

I don’t know if it’s the wine we’ve consumed, the drama of the events that we’ve watched play out on the television today, or just two lifelong best friends being totally honest with each other, but we both cry.

“God, I need a cigarette,” Sophie states.

“No, you don’t,” I tell her. Sophie quit smoking three years ago. She’d gone from an occasional social smoker to a twenty-a-day girl, when her marriage started to fall apart.

Her marriage to a crazy Italian chef had been a disaster from day dot. They married just two weeks after meeting and three months later she caught him shagging one of the waitresses from his restaurant. Luckily my brother had represented her and she didn’t have to give up any of the business as part of the divorce settlement, despite him trying to lay claim to half. What she did give up though, was about twenty pounds in weight and in return gained an addiction to nicotine. It eventually took a client asking Soph to go and find a mint or some gum to chew, because she couldn’t bear the smell of tobacco breath in her face as Sophie cut her fringe, to convince her that she needed to quit the habit.

“No, you’re right. I need something stronger, like a joint. Have you got any weed in the house?”

I roll my eyes at her. “Soph, my husband has a law firm. Of course, I don’t keep weed in the house.”

“Well, that’s just another reason why you shouldn’t be with him.” She stands from the sofa on wobbly legs. “I’m gonna find another bottle of wine then. I’m staying here tonight, by the way. I’m far too drunk to drive.”

“That’s fine,” I call to her back as she staggers off in search of more wine.

I hear her talking to Duchess as she makes her way through the kitchen. I switch the television to a music channel, sick of seeing Shift’s press conference being played over and over again on the news. Of course, it’s a Shift song playing. I look at Conner on the screen as the camera zooms in on him. The film clip is of a live performance of ‘What If?’ It’s one of their earlier songs. Conner has long hair, much longer than it was the last time I’d seen him in person, and much longer than it was when I saw him today. He stares right into the camera as he sings and plays guitar and I study his face. There’s no denying how beautiful he is. He has dirty blond, almost bronze coloured hair and olive skin. His lips are full, his bottom lip being much plumper than his top and they’ve been on me, those beautiful lips have been all over my body. My heart rate picks up and my skin heats at the thought. But it’s Conner’s eyes that I always found so appealing. They are the strangest colour and look different according to the lighting around him or his mood. They’re a stunning combination of blue-green and grey. Mostly a bluey-greeny colour, but when he was pissed off, that’s when you would notice the grey. He’s gorgeous, there really is no other way to describe him and despite the fact that he’s a man, he really is beautiful.