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‘But I’m guessing he blames me, too.’
She didn’t answer. What could she say?’
‘And if he feels that way about me,’ Liam forged on, ‘how would he feel if you left St Victoria again? With me?’
‘They would come round,’ she said hesitantly.
The worst of it was that she wasn’t even sure they would.
‘I won’t accept that,’ Liam ground out. ‘I won’t have you lose them. You don’t know what it’s like not to have anyone, Talia. But I do. And I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.’
‘We would have each other,’ she ventured.
‘No. I can’t be that someone for you, Talia. I don’t know how to love. And I certainly can’t take the place of your father, your brothers or your beloved grandmother. Even all the people you know here on this island. People who love you. People like Nyla.’
‘You could try,’ she whispered.
‘I wouldn’t want to,’ he told her flatly, his cloak of indifference now firmly back in place.
She wanted to reach and tear it off him, or at the very least press her palm against his cheek and make him see all the good in himself that she saw. She could wrap her arms around him and pour herself into all the ways she loved him—had once loved him. But she didn’t dare. It might lead to physical proximity but it wouldn’t close that emotional divide between them. Not even an inch.
And she thought that was what destroyed her most of all.
* * *
Liam hated himself.
Talia’s pain was so utterly evident. And knowing he had been the one to cause it made that black thing inside him—the one that might have been a heart in anyone else—splinter and cleave, but he told himself he couldn’t weaken. For Talia’s sake.
He couldn’t bear to see her give up everything she cared for, everyone she loved, for him. A man who was so damaged and irreparable that he couldn’t possibly be good for her.
Yet there was something about her willingness and her ferocity that lodged in his chest. Right there. A tiny ball so hot and bright as the magnificent St Victorian sun that he thought it might, for the rest of his life, light his way and keep him warm in those cold, lonely moments when he returned to North Carolina.
There would never be anyone else for him but Talia—he now knew that for a fact. But she deserved better than him. More than he could ever offer. More than this man who had just broken her.
But he should have known that his feisty, strong, powerful Talia wouldn’t be stay that way for long. He watched transfixed as she appeared to straighten her back and elongate her limbs, still filling his bed in the most tempting way.
She craned her neck to look up at him. Her voice was quiet but true.
‘Will you answer me something?’
He ought to refuse.
‘Anything,’ he bit out instead.
Foolishly.
She flicked her tongue out over her lips, and even though he knew there was nothing sexual in it, it did nothing to stop that spiral of desire from curving its way down his spine.
‘What happened between you and your father?’
Desperation might as well have been a hand reaching into her chest and squeezing. This was not a conversation he cared to have. It wasn’t one he ever had had with anyone. Ever.
Yet he was filled with a surprising need to accommodate her in any way he could.
‘My mother died in childbirth.’ Liam stilled as the atmosphere in the room seemed to change in an instant.
It went from urgent and cold to raw and jagged in what felt like a heartbeat. A shimmering menace skirting around the edges of the clean walls and tasteful décor. But Talia didn’t seem to have noticed, which meant it was all in his head.
