Page 21 of Fletch

“I don’t care.”

“She’s got a great life. Perfect.”

Fletch sighs heavily. “Yah know one thing I’ve learned, Snap? Those who portray a perfect life are usually talking shit. No one’s life is perfect.” I’ve often thought the same. Kate is all smiles and fabricated chatter whenever I see her, not that I see her often as I avoid her at all costs. “How does it work, especially at Christmas time?” asks Fletch with a slight grin. “Like get-togethers with the family must be weird, right?”

“Pete’s mum adores her, as they all do. She’s the centre of attention whenever they’re together. I, however, well . . . I’m just the deranged cop who lured poor Pete into a bad relationship.” I scoff before adding, “If only they knew.”

“So, why’d yah stay so long if it wasn’t a happy relationship?”

I shrug. “Fear of the unknown . . . proving his family wrong . . . proving my father wrong . . .” I trail off, wondering why the hell I’m talking to Fletch about things I never really talk about at all.

He sits straighter. “So, everyone in his family and yours were waiting for your relationship to fail?”

“Pretty much.”

“And you stuck it out because you wanted to prove a point?” He looks amused again.

“I don’t like failure,” I admit, picking at the material of the sheets.

“Sometimes things just have to fail so you can progress.”

“Is that why we failed?” I ask, again wincing inside because I’m being way too open and forward.

He thinks over my question before pushing to stand and making his way over to the bed. He lowers carefully onto the edge and takes my hand. “I was a young lad, Snap. I thought with my dick . . . most of the time, I still do. I wish I could take back what I did, and you have every right to be pissed about it, but it was nothing you did. I was just a prick.”

I bite my lower lip and lower my gaze. “I hate that I let you hurt me.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I am truly sorry.”

“She laughed when I confronted her.”

“Kate was a piece of work. She was always jealous of you.”

“Did she pursue you?”

He sighs, dropping my hand. “Snap, you seriously want to go over all this, fourteen years on?”

“I need to,” I admit. “Maybe what you did is setting up a pathway of destructive relationships because I . . .” I blink away tears. “I really loved you, and you broke my heart. I haven’t been able to move past it.”

When I raise my eyes to his, he looks guilty. “I’ve never had to face up to shit like this,” he tells me, shifting until he’s sitting beside me. “I’ll be honest, Snap, I don’t like it.” He gives a small laugh. “Kate was easy. I was horny. It was as simple as that. She was there. It’s a shit reason, but she made it clear she was interested, and I stupidly took the bait. She knew you were gonna turn up to hers, Gem. It was a setup.”

“If I hadn’t have turned up, I probably would never have known.”

He gives a nod. “Maybe.”

“You wouldn’t have told me?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. Probably not. But we would have come to an end anyway.”

“Why?”

“You were embarrassed of me.”

I twist so I’m looking at him. “What?”

“We were hiding our relationship from your family, Gemma. We were sneaking around like what we were doing was bad.”

“But you know what my father was like—he’d have ruined it.”

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