The Lie(26)

I thank him for the beer and try to figure out how much I should tell him. “I, uh, made some mistakes in the past,” I say carefully. “Some things I haven’t been able to get over. I hurt someone who was once very dear to me, and now that person is back in my life, whether I want them to be or not. Karma has come to bite me on the arse.”

“You gave me some advice, so I’m going to give you some,” Keir says after a gulp of beer. He wipes his lips with the back of his hand. “You ready?” I nod. “There’s no such thing as karma. That only exists in a fair world, and we both know the world is anything but fair.”

“That’s not really advice, Keir.”

He shrugs. “It just means you aren’t being punished. Try and make it right, and if you can’t, that’s on them, not you. Forgiveness shouldn’t be stockpiled by anyone. It should be given freely.”

I stew on that for a moment. If Natasha never responds to my email, or if she does and wants nothing to do with me, I’m going to have to let her go.

Again.

Without closure.

I clear my throat.

“What a bunch of sad sacks we are,” Keir says with a disapproving scoff. “Friday night and we’re sobbing into our drinks. I’m going to get us a round of shots before we turn into women.”

“Just one round,” I tell him, raising my finger in warning. “I’ve got to get back to my dog. He’s probably torn my place to shreds and shit in my shoes.”

Keir gives me his trademark smirk. That’s more like the cousin I remember. “He’s shit in your shoes, aye?”

“More than once,” I say with a sigh. “And pissed on my pillow.”

That one was a nasty surprise.

“Seems Lachlan is rubbing off on you,” Keir says when he comes back with the shots of Jameson. “I didn’t know you had a dog.”

“Just in the last year.”

I explain to him how Winter came about, which then turns our conversation to Lachlan and Kayla, my parents, to Moneypenny, my vintage Aston Martin I never get to drive anymore since the tube is so convenient. With all the heavy stuff out of the way, it feels good to just drink and shoot the shit.

Sounds sad for a grown man to say, but I really ought to make some friends in this city.

Unfortunately, Keir says he’s going back up to Edinburgh when he’s done here to figure out what his next steps in life are. With the army behind him and his service done, he’s starting over.

I wish I could tell him it will be easy.

But I could never lie about that.





CHAPTER EIGHT

Natasha

Edinburgh

Four Years Ago



August in Edinburgh is sublime.

The sun is warm, and even hot some days, sitting high in the sky in the evenings.

People are smiling, biking around the city in droves. Kilted buskers play on street corners. Sometimes there are fire eaters and contortionists just for the hell of it. The ongoing Fringe Festival seems to bring out the free spirits, the wild cards, the crazies.

I feel like I’m one of them.

Because I too have turned into the wild card.

Doing something I never thought I would do.

I’ve fallen in love.

And I’ve fallen in love with someone that I can’t have.

It’s both the most exhilarating and destructive feeling to have ever possessed my body.

And I do mean possessed.

Brigs is all I can think about, all I can see. It’s like every part of him, from the crinkles at the corners of his eyes when he smiles, to the suits he wears, to the way he makes me laugh, makes every cell in my body pull toward his. When he looks at me or talks to me, he makes me feel like at that moment I’m the most important woman in the world to him.

And that’s the other thing. He makes me feel like a woman. Not a girl, not a student. Like I’m something greater than I’ve figured out. Like I’m a light that’s been waiting her whole life to be switched on and now I’m blinding him and everything around me.

Including my morals.

Including the rules.

Well no, I shouldn’t say that.

I may be in love with Professor Blue Eyes, but I’m not going to do anything about it. We’ve been working together for months, and though I know he’s terribly unhappy with Miranda, it’s not my style to intrude on a marriage, or any relationship for that matter. I don’t ever want to be the other woman. While I feel guilty for my feelings, I won’t bend my morals to indulge them.

Love isn’t a choice. I can’t control how I feel about him any more than I can control the sun in the sky. But what I can do is control what I do with those feelings.

Around Brigs I bottle it up.

It’s not so hard.

Okay, that’s a lie.

It’s terribly hard.

But he’s not one to give me an opportunity.

God help me if he ever does.

I’m also lucky that I don’t really know anyone in Edinburgh. There’s my Vietnamese flatmate, Hang, that I’m rooming with short term, and though we’re cordial with each other, we’re not exactly chummy.

There’s no one to spill my secrets to. I haven’t even told my friend Melissa back in London the truth: that I’m in love with not only the professor, who is paying me to be his research assistant, but a married man at that.