‘Aye. Of course.’ He manoeuvred himself on the pillows so that I could climb onto the bed beside him, resting my head on his chest. ‘You sure you’re all right?’
‘Yes. I’m fine, honestly.’
My tears told another story as I lay, cradled in my father’s arms, and wept.
25
Cooper
After the crowd had dispersed, and most of the guests began making their way home, Cooper found Ben sitting in the cluster of chairs Emma had arranged off to one side for her dad and a couple of his friends. The otherwise empty chairs were now occupied by Sam, and Sam’s foot, his leg still held straight by a heavy-duty brace, along with Moses and Paolo.
Paolo picked a bottle of beer out of a cool box and held it out. Cooper hesitated for only a second before accepting it, a wary glance suggesting that Paolo knew nothing about what had happened earlier.
Not that anything had happened.
Not really.
Only it had felt like something.
Cooper knew Bridget. He knew her happy, sad, stressed, excited. He could read her body language, interpret her moods and pick up on her hints. He hadn’t known what to make of the woman he’d just spent the day with.
She’d been polite. Pleasant. Distant. Distracted. There was definitely something going on, and he knew it involved him.
But then the way that she’d looked at him when not long ago any kind of look at all had the power to send his head spinning, that look had been… too much. It had knocked him off-balance. Awoken old memories, old feelings, that really, really, needed to remain asleep. Or, preferably, to die once and for all.
Bridget had looked at him like, well, like he used to want to look at her.
And now he couldn’t look her fiancé in the eye.
Crap.
He needed to stop kidding himself that the Bridget issue would simply fizzle away the longer he was with Emma.
He probably needed to find another job, for starters.
For now, he had to start acting remotely normal so that Ben stopped eyeing him suspiciously and he could join in with the conversation.
‘Things are all sweet now with you and Orla?’ Paolo was asking Sam.
Sam shrugged. ‘Not sure you can move past something like that overnight, but we’re getting there.’
‘And you never said anything to that Jim bloke?’
‘Nah. Can’t see how that would help. Other than giving Orla another reason to be angry with me, and feel sympathy for him. She’s left the gym, cut off all contact. He was a side-effect. We’re working on the root of the problem.’
‘Man, not sure I could be so forgiving if it was some guy and Bridget.’ Paolo shook his head. He glanced at Cooper, flicking his eyebrows in a way that made Cooper nearly choke on his beer.
‘Don’t get me wrong. If I hear he’s tried to get in touch with her, I’ll be paying him a visit.’ Sam grimaced, shifting his injured leg between the chairs. ‘Or I’ll send some people who can walk there unaided to do it for me.’ He took another sip of his drink. ‘But what happened is best left in the past. There’s no undoing our mistakes. We can only learn from them, keep loving each other and keep moving forwards, make sure our family ends up stronger because of it.’
‘Wow.’ Ben sat back in his chair. ‘I mean, I don’t know all the facts here, but how do you move forwards from your wife messing about with another man and end up stronger, rather than a total wreck?’
The other men looked at him, as if trying to place who he was and why he was even part of this conversation.
‘I’m serious. I genuinelywant to know. Because I’ve seen a lot of mistakes made in a lot of marriages, and I’ve never seen how anyone comes back from them with anything more than pain and bitterness. If you genuinely know how to work past that, without empty platitudes and twisted acts of revenge and a secret drinking problem, I might reconsider my sworn commitment to avoid all commitment.’
Sam looked at Paolo and Moses, as if they had the answers. He blew out a sigh. ‘Probably best to ask me that in another eleven years. I might have an answer by then. All I know is I love her, she’s it for me. I didn’t marry her on the condition she was perfect. So we’d better figure out a way to be happy, or else it’s going to be a long, miserable life.’
‘It does help when some of the finest women to walk this earth decided for some unfathomable reason to pick us.’ Moses grinned. ‘As long as we keep remembering that, and remembering to show them that we haven’t forgotten it, it’s all good.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Well, mostly good.’
