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‘You aren’t listening to me,’ he growled, but far from backing off she looked all the more caring.
‘On the contrary, I’ve heard everything you said.’
He glowered at her for a long, long moment, but she didn’t budge. She didn’t even blink. It finally became clear to him that she wasn’t going to relent. And, to his shock, he found himself capitulating instead.
‘There’s been no one.’ His tone tried to show her how little that mattered to him.
‘Then that’s truly sad,’ she told him simply, her eyes conveying so much more than he thought he could bear. ‘I can’t imagine how difficult that must be. I always had my parents, and if I hadn’t had them then I could at least go to my gramma.’
‘So now do you understand why I can’t allow you to lose all of that for me? A man who they hate?’
‘They would come to accept it once they saw that I was happy,’ she argued fiercely. ‘I would make them.’
And it didn’t help that what she wanted was the same thing he wanted too. Deep down—where he’d tried to bury it. But even if he couldn’t give her that, he could give her something better. He could give Talia her freedom.
‘But I’m not the one to make you happy, Talia,’ he ground out. ‘So even if you brought them round, it would change nothing. Nothing at all.’
It felt like an eternity passed as they remained face to face, with her on the bed and him in his towel. And his stone-of-a-heart was more leaden than he’d ever known it.
His case load was clear, and his main-case, little Lucy Wells would soon be able to be discharged. It had yet to be decided whether he would fly to Los Angeles—where Lucy and Violet lived—or whether Isak would take over the post-op follow-ups now that the man was back, but either way Liam would be leaving St Victoria in a few days. And he wouldn’t return.
He would be alone. Just like always.
Just as he preferred.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
TALIA FELT AS though she was in mourning.
Liam had said that he couldn’t lose what he’d never had to begin with, but she didn’t agree. She’d never had Liam, not really; and yet that was exactly how she felt—as though she was losing him.
It was as though the freer, less-constrained Liam she’d been getting to know over the course of the past couple of weeks was at war with the man loaded down with assumed responsibilities and unrealistic expectations she’d known back in North Carolina.
Only now she understood him better. This clever, funny but detached man who had evidently been
told how little he was worth his entire life, right from the cradle. Hated by the very person who should have loved his infant son the most, the person who should have protected his baby boy the most fiercely. But he hadn’t. He’d blame an innocent baby for a tragedy that Liam could have no more understood back then than prevented.
But all that had turned Liam into the driven, focussed man he was now. So what was she supposed to do about it? She couldn’t change who he was or what he believed, and she’d already tried being there for him and showing that she loved him.
Hadn’t she?
‘You accused me of leaving three years ago without even a note, and I never explained myself. The truth is that I didn’t leave because of something you said, or did, I left because of what you couldn’t say.’
‘And you were right to,’ Liam said. It was more of a statement than a question, and without a hint of censure in his tone. As though there was nothing left to say.
Talia couldn’t breathe. Desperation wound through her, lending sudden urgency. It felt like she’d only just found Liam after all these years. He’d finally let her in yet now she was about to lose this last precious opportunity.
‘You aren’t the only one with scars, Liam,’ she choked out.
It was like a band tightening around her; the truth, squatting on her chest with a weight that she didn’t think she could stand any longer. She wanted to tell him. To show him her own wounds. She pushed gently back from him and when she spoke, her voice was little more than a whisper.
‘I knew.’
Liam didn’t answer. In some ways she was grateful for that.
‘I knew something was wrong long before that final call from my father.’
It was almost unbearable—hanging in the air, almost acrid. At least to her.
