Finding Katie

Chapter 28

Katie

From the very first time my heart had thumped a happy rhythm because Ben had smiled at me, and no matter how hard I'd hoped for different, I'd known deep down that this moment would come.

That didn't make it hurt less.

I'd tried to prepare myself. I'd tried to tell myself that Ben was just a brief encounter, a task I had to get done. That no matter how many wonderful dreams I conjured up, he and what I'd imagined we could be wasn't for me. But the pain in my heart, in my entire body, when I walked out of Ben's flat, out of his building and out of his life, was not something anyone could ever have prepared for.

It was a pain more raw than I'd ever experienced. Not even my mother's stroke and death had clawed at me with this fierceness that made it hard to breathe.

But the blinding pain also cleared my mind. Of foolish hopes and silly dreams, and any doubts as to what I should do now.

The moment Ben's lip had curled into that contemptuous sneer, I'd known what I had to do.

What I should have done a long time ago. What I should have done the moment I had recognized those cold eyes from my past staring at me across the crowded common room at the centre.

My choices that night had caused this to happen, my actions. It was me who had hurt Ben. I had brought this down on myself and on him, but there was one other person who shared my blame, and I wasn't going to let him harm Ben anymore.

That, at least, was one wrong I could right.

With no façade to uphold any longer, I took a taxi back to my rented flat. I was there only long enough to write a letter and pack my suitcase, and to stand for a moment in the middle of the flat that had never been home, before I turned to leave. Rolling my suitcase over the threshold, I closed the door behind me and put the keys through the letterbox.

Then went down to the waiting taxi and told the driver, "Heathrow, please."