She found a bottle of brandy on the counter and pulled two clean glasses from the dishwasher before filling them both with a generous measure.
‘We really do need to talk, Amber.’
She turned around, unable to stop a sharp intake of breath as she looked at him standing there, dressed only in jeans that hung low on his hips, his hands in his pockets. ‘When did you get so paranoid, Jim? When did you let anyone get in the way of anything you wanted?’
‘You aren’t just anything, Amber. You’re not just a winning football score or some defender I desperately want before the transfer window closes. You’re my whole fucking world, and the thought of you…’ He trailed off, turning his head away for a second. ‘We need to talk.’
She watched as he walked over to her, taking the glass she held out for him and putting it straight back down on the counter.
‘There are reasons why I did what I did. Reasons why I pushed you away.’
‘So, tell me what those reasons are. Help me to understand just what’s going on here, Jim, because, right now, I don’t understand any of it. I don’t get it. None of it makes any sense.’
‘I can’t, Amber. I can’t explain…’ He slowly slid his hand up under the t-shirt she was wearing, causing her to gasp as his fingers touched her skin. ‘I can’t.’ He leaned forward, his lips brushing over her neck and she threw her head back. She let herself fall into him all over again until a glimmer of reality pushed its way forward and she gently pushed him away.
‘Because sex will solve everything, won’t it?’
‘It helps.’
‘I need you, Jim. Because without you I’m a wreck. I can’t think straight, I can’t function, because you not being there, it’s wrong. It’s not how it should be. But if we’re… if we’re even thinking about being together again I need you to be honest with me. For the first time in your life. I need that more than anything.’
He leaned back against the counter beside her, digging his hands back into his pockets, taking the deepest of breaths before he spoke again. ‘Before I came over to the UK, I was… I was involved with… I was involved with someone.’
Amber felt her stomach tighten as he spoke. Was he about to reveal yet another secret he’d kept from her for all these years?
‘We’d met at a party, some awards ceremony a friend of mine had gotten tickets for. She was an up-and-coming country singer, someone the music industry had tipped for the big time, even though she was so young. We both were…’
Amber watched him as he spoke, watched the way his eyes filled with those tears she very rarely saw; a look on his face that scared her, because it was so alien, to see him like this.
‘I was only twenty, she was nineteen… but we fell in love. Hard. We fell in love hard.’
Amber felt her stomach tighten even more now. To watch him talk this way about someone else hurt with a pain she couldn’t explain. And it felt strange, almost as if she was listening to someone else completely. Someone she didn’t know. As though the Jim she’d once known had left the room to be replaced with someone more vulnerable. Someone she was having trouble recognising.
‘And for almost five years we were happy. We were so happy. My soccer career was taking off, and her music was going places, we had it all. We had everything. We had a future…’
Amber took a deep breath, wanting to reach out and take his hand but not knowing if that was the right thing to do. Did he want her intruding on something that was obviously so emotional for him?
‘But somebody made sure that future was never gonna happen.’
Amber was willing him to look at her now. She wanted to see his eyes, to feel what he was feeling because she could tell it was breaking his heart. Whatever he was about to tell her, it was breaking his heart.
He turned his head, his eyes finally locking onto hers. ‘She died, Amber. She was on her way back from a gig in L.A., and there was an accident. Her van collided with a car that was speeding. It had cut the lights, swerved out of control…’
Amber reached out and took his hand, her fingers tightening around his, and he responded, clinging onto her as tears started streaming down his face.
‘I was in New York. I’d been playing in some soccer tournament and they didn’t tell me until… until it was over. For some reason. I don’t know why they left it. I just remember this numbness taking over, a pain so intense it cancelled out anything else I might be feeling. My whole world shut down that night. She was gone. She was my world, and she was gone.’
He turned away from her again, and Amber didn’t know what to do. Watching him fall apart right there in front of her was something she’d never seen before, and it scared her. Jim Allen was strong. Jim Allen was always in control. Jim Allen didn’t break down.
‘I changed that night.’ His voice was quiet, but there was a tougher edge to it now. ‘The person I’d been before, he was gone.’
‘Jim, baby, look at me. Please.’
His eyes met hers, tears still streaming down his face and she couldn’t help but reach out and brush them away with her thumb. ‘I couldn’t fall in love again, not like that. I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t let myself. So I changed. I threw myself into my career, made the decision to play football over in the UK. It was the only way I could deal with it all. And I… I vowed never to fall in love again, because the pain you feel when your world is suddenly ripped away from you and you know you can never get it back… nobody deserves to feel that.’ His fingers tightened around hers once more, their eyes locked together. ‘But then came you. Beautiful, sixteen-year-old Amber Sullivan. From the very first second I saw you I knew. I knew I had to have you. I had to. And maybe I should have walked away, because you were so young, too young. But there was something telling me…’ He stopped talking, turning his head away for another brief second, causing another wave of confusion to wash over Amber. ‘The reason I spent all those years acting the way I did; the reason why I kept pushing you away.’ He turned back to face her, his eyes boring deep into hers. ‘I loved you too much, Amber. It was … it was like Carrie all over again, those same, uncontrollable feelings that I knew I couldn’t ignore. They were back, and they were real, and they scared the hell out of me. I wanted to be with you so much it hurt, but I couldn’t let myself get too close because that fear of losing you was just too great. Too overwhelming. And I know I hurt you, I know that, and I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, because we wasted so much time.’
Amber felt her own heart start to break as she watched him wipe those still-falling tears away, once more turning his head so he wasn’t looking at her.
‘I thought I’d be able to handle it better, you know? When I took the Red Star job. When I came back up here. All those years apart, but I still couldn’t get you out of my head. I couldn’t forget you. I was still so much in fucking love with you, Amber.’ He looked at her again. ‘You know I took the manager’s job at Newcastle Red Star because I needed to be near you again. You know that. And I thought I’d be able to handle it better after all that time away, I really did. I was wrong. Because I didn’t bank on Ryan Fisher. I didn’t bank on you still hurting so much because of what I’d done to you…’
‘Jim.’
He bowed his head, his hand still clinging onto hers. ‘We almost had it, Amber. You and me. We almost had that future I wanted. We were together, you were my wife…’ As his eyes met hers again she felt her heart beat so fast she almost couldn’t breathe. ‘And still I pushed you away. Because that fear of losing someone I loved so much just wouldn’t leave me. I couldn’t forget how losing Carrie almost broke me, I couldn’t let that go. So I had to push you away. I had to pretend I didn’t care about you when you’re the only thing I care about. The only thing. And I