Cherry Girl (Neil & Elaina #1)(33)
Author: Raine Miller

“Why did I tell Neil that my little Nigel belonged to him? That’s a story that you won’t like to hear I’m afraid.”

“Tell me anyway,” I said, numbly. Here it was. The truth behind everything I’d sacrificed on the back of a lie and my fear of losing my heart.

“I’m not proud of what I did to him. Having children of your own changes your perspective on things though. I’ve learned a lot since. But basically it came down to survival.”

“Survival, Cora? Who’s survival?”

“I needed money and Denny Tompkins came along at just the right moment for it. He hated Neil for taking you away from him. I told Denny I was knocked up and without any good prospects, and that you and Neil could just sod off together in lover’s land. He offered me a tidy sum to show my scan to Neil and tell him the baby was his. I did my part and Denny made good on the payment.”

“So, I left Neil over a lie.” It wasn’t a question I was asking. Just greater understanding of what I had done.

Cora was still beside me. No harsh words or gloating, she only shared the bare simple truths.

“Denny didn’t make out so well though. You wouldn’t take him back and a few months later you went away to Spain.”

“Italy…I went to Italy.” Even the sound of my own voice was nearly unrecognizable to my ears.

Cora kept talking. “Wherever you went, you were gone, so Denny didn’t ever get you back. I owed it to Neil to tell him though, and I did that as soon as I could. He even saw us in the market once and gave his regards. It all worked out. Nigel married me and we had little Allison not two years after Nigel Jr., so yeah, it all worked out in the end.”

“It didn’t work out for me,” I said, staring out at all the busy children and parents in the park.

“So, why didn’t you ever ask him about it then? Neil would have told you what I told him, that the baby wasn’t his.” I could tell she was staring at me with a puzzled expression.

So simple a question. Why didn’t I ever ask him? Why didn’t I stay and try to work it out with him? Why didn’t I ever give Neil the chance to tell me what had really happened?

“I don’t know,” I whispered.

I watched it all. I followed her at a distance and surveyed her visit to the park with Cora. I was still trailing her, curious as to where she was off to. It probably made me a sick bastard, but I was stalking Elaina and had no intentions of stopping.

Thank Christ Ian had rang me to say what he thought his sister was up to. She wanted Cora’s address and that meant Elaina was going to confront her.

Observing their exchange in the park surprised me, though. I read their lips through some of the conversation thanks to the high powered lenses I was privy to in my line of work. The surprising part was precisely how non-confrontational their exchange was. No screaming catfight for me to break up. No hair pulling or gloves thrown down. Nothing. They were both very well behaved throughout the whole thing. At the end of it Cora asked her a question about me. I could tell she asked her a question because I got the words why and Neil clearly, through reading her lips.

Elaina answered her very shortly with just a word or two. And then she got up off the bench and left the park. I saw her brush at her eyes a few times. Her head was down in the autumn wind, a long, trailing blue scarf blowing back away from her body as she walked.

She looked to be crying and it was easy to see she was upset, but I left her alone. She would resent what I was doing, and I would’ve too if the tables were turned. We were both private people.

I watched her walk to the nearest Underground station and go down to the trains.

There was no choice but to follow in the Rover and make a guess as to where she might end up. I texted Ian and told him to ring her and find out for me.

I had to be there for her. I was going to be there for her.

There was no place else for me to be.

19

I vowed to never set foot in The Racehorse again. Never. Bad things had happened here. The worst sort of decisions had gone down inside these old walls. I’d lost so much, and gained so little, from encounters in the little Hampstead pub tucked away in the community where I’d grown up.

I gestured to Bert behind the bar for a refill and drank while waiting for him to show up.

It took a bit of time, but eventually he got there. I heard his motorbike pull up first, and that’s how I knew he’d arrived.

The swagger in his step, the self-satisfied smirk on his face, both were very telling of what he thought my invite was all about. What misconceptions poor Denny was under.

“Hey gorgeous, I have to say that getting your text absolutely topped my day.” He buzzed my cheek and sat down beside me at the bar.

I took a gulp of wine and looked him over. “Really. And why’s that?”

He leaned in close to me, his long hair falling over his forehead in a rakish wave, the looks of which helped to serve his bad boy image I suppose. Through all the intervening years since my time with Denny, I could say the whole concept he had going on, did absolutely nothing for me anymore.

I smiled a little…and held myself back from reaching out and squeezing my hands around his neck until he choked.

He spoke low and close. “I’ll take you back to my place and show you if you like.”

“Ahh, an invitation…other girls should be so lucky.”

“You can be, baby. Just like old times.”

“Old times, Denny?”

“Yeah, before you ran away, baby.” He wagged a finger at me. “You should have never run away. You made me pretty lost, when you took off for Europe—”

As Denny blabbed and spewed his twisted notion of me out of his too pretty lips, I felt myself centering. All of my energy and focus boiled together into a white hot rage that had to find an outlet somehow. To hold it inside any longer probably would have killed me. I was able to control the rage initially, waiting for my moment, but once he said those words out loud, You should have never run away, I truly lost my mind.

Denny was right, you see. I should have never run away.

I ran away from Neil when I should have stayed.

An out of body experience is a strange sensation. You feel very detached and the sounds in the room become muted. Your body floats above the ground and you can see everything so clearly. It happened to me at the bar. I knew it was happening and I welcomed the altered state of my reality with open arms.

I watched myself calmly from above as I morphed into something rather animalistic, a demon that resembled me, pounding away on Denny Tompkins. Anywhere on his body where I could make contact was satisfactory. I hit, and slapped, and scratched. I tried to rip his hair out of his scalp. My red wine was thrown along with my purse and whatever else I could get in my hands to hurl at him.