Page 43 of Stuck

I paused at the front door to the flat and took a deep breath. I knew Jane was inside, because she’d worked from home today. What I didn’t know was what state I was going to find her in. When she’d burst through the door in the middle of the night after a huge relationship-threatening row with Bingley, she’d been inconsolable. Before I’d left for work this morning, she’d still been asleep, exhausted after a night of crying. On the phone at lunchtime, she’d sounded withdrawn and teary. I’d picked her up some Haribo on the way home—her go-to comfort food—but I knew a couple of gummy bears weren’t going to be enough to fix this.

I let myself in quietly in case she was asleep, but when I got into the living room, she was in the armchair, looking at her phone. She wasn’t crying, but it was obvious she had been.

“How are you doing?” I asked, coming around the sofa to sit down.

Her bottom lip wobbled and her red-rimmed eyes teared up again as she shrugged. “Did you speak to him?”

“He was in meetings all day. It was probably for the best anyway. If we’d crossed paths, I might have done something that got me sacked. And maybe arrested.”

Jane didn’t smile, but that was perhaps because she knew I wasn’t entirely joking. I was definitely angry enough for violence.

“Have you spoken to him?” I asked.

“No. He’s been texting me all day, asking me to, but I haven’t replied. What is there to say?”

“That depends what he wrote in his texts.”

“That Caroline didn’t mean it the way I took it, that I’d misconstrued what she said, and could I please try to understand.”

I had to take a breath before I replied, indignation stealing my words for a moment. I didn’t think Bingley was the sort to deliberately gaslight somebody, so I had to hope he didn’t realise that’s what he was doing. “He hasn’t apologised?”

“I don’t know that he’s the one who needs to—” Jane started, but I interrupted.

“He bloody well does! Jane, his sister might have said it, but he didn’t contradict her. He let you walk out of his house, possibly out of his life, believing you weren’t good enough for him or his family. You can’t sugarcoat that—I won’t let you.”

The argument, as far as I’d been able to glean from Jane’s distraught accounting at two a.m., had revolved around a Bingley family gathering, from which she had been explicitly excluded. She hadn’t met any of his relations yet, and it seemed she wouldn’t anytime soon, either, because Caroline, the eldest of Bingley’s two sisters, didn’t approve of her. Our family’s history of divorced parents, homelessness, and, as far as I could tell, generally not being rich, meant Jane was unsuitable in her eyes. To all this, Bingley had added insult to injury by seeming to side with his sister.

Jane hung her head and spoke into her lap. “I’m not trying to excuse him, but I do understand to some extent. I might not have liked what Caroline said, but was she really wrong? Bingley has exclusively dated the sort of women you see in magazines. The ones with money and big names.”

“Yes, and look where that got him!”

“Maybe. But there’s no denying that I come from a very different world. I don’t expect him to apologise for the truth.” She lifted her chin to meet my gaze, and the sadness in her eyes broke my heart. “That doesn’t mean I can live with it any more easily. I can’t bear the thought of him coming to resent me down the line because I’m not more like those other women. I can’t help thinking it would be better to end it now, before I fall any more in love with him.”

“Oh, Jane, you’re in love with him?”

She nodded. “I have been for a while, I think.”

The admission brought on the renewal of her tears, and I jumped up, squishing myself into the armchair next to her and wrapping her in a tight hug.

“You are a successful, independent, kind, and—need I add—beautiful woman. No man in his right mind could resent you. Especially not Bingley. Much though I hate to defend him at the moment, it’s obvious that he’s head over heels for you too.”

“How can he be if he’s ashamed of me?”

I didn’t have an answer for that. The muppet had royally screwed this up. I stayed silent and held her as she cried.

Much like Darcy had held me while I cried yesterday, in this very room. That had truly been… something. Certainly nothing I’d forget in a hurry, if ever. I’d been completely taken aback when he first put his arms around me—he was so austere, usually, that physical affection was the last thing I would have expected from him. But my goodness, the man gave good hugs.

It was more than merely his arms and chest being solid and warm; more than the way his hands covered most of my back; more than the fact that he’d smelled incredible—though all those things made his embrace a spectacularly nice place to be. It was that I’d felt so reassured, so unexpectedly safe. Rather than awkward or embarrassing—which was absolutely what being held by the broody billionaire shareholder of my boss-slash-fake-boyfriend’s company while I sobbed about my alcoholic dad should have been—it had felt like the most natural thing in the world. Who’d’ve thunk?

Jane sniffed quietly and gave my leg a poke. “You’d better start getting ready, or you’ll be late.”

I pulled away from her to better let her see my incredulity. “If you think I’m still going to that poxy gala to pretend to be Bingley’s girlfriend after this, you’re insane.”

“You have to go,” she said softly. “I don’t want him to lose the investment because of me.”

“It wouldn’t be because of you, Jane. And he wouldn’t lose the investment anyway—he’d just have to work harder to convince them of his good character. Let’s face it, he could do with the practice.”

“I don’t want to be petty about it, Lizzy.”