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‘You’re wrong.’ He gritted his teeth. ‘Mistaken. Whatever you’re feeling right now, it isn’t...that.’
He’d silenced the rage inside him for all these years—because love wasn’t something that had ever been crafted for him. Yet right here, right now, the rage was nothing compared to that part of him that ached to be able to say those three simple words back to her. That wished he wasn’t so damaged.
It didn’t help that Talia somehow looked both stunned and defiant at her unexpected confession.
‘First you tell me that I don’t know what I mean when I ask you to stay,’ she retorted, an echo of their earlier conversation. But, just like then, he heard the tremor in her voice. ‘Now you’re saying I know what I feel.’
‘That’s exactly what I’m saying.’
‘Well, I dare say I know better than you do, given that these are my emotions. And given that you can’t even bring yourself to utter the word.’
‘Emotions aren’t real. And at best, love...’ He paused for a fraction of a second, that one word—four simple letters—taking an age to fall off his tongue. Then he regrouped. ‘It’s like temporary inebriation after the brain has had a cocktail shot of norepinephrine, dopamine, phenylethylamine.’
He stopped, terribly afraid it wasn’t the sound of the word he hated as much as his inability to really understand all it stood for. If their earlier conversation had thrown him, he didn’t want to think how this one might go.
Which was all the more reason to end it. Now. He told Talia as much.
‘Liam, do you know what you sound like?’ she asked gently, almost pityingly.
And he thought that was what he hated most of all. That, and the growing suspicion that she might be right.
Yet he forged on anyway.
‘At worst, it’s a weapon that the cruellest of humans use to wield against the people they claim to care for the most.’
Too late, he realised he was giving away too much. Exposing his own vulnerabilities by revealing how his father, his grandmother, even Talia herself had managed to hurt him.
‘I’m sorry.’ She shook her head, leaving him in no doubt that she was sorrier for him than actually sorry for what she’d said. ‘I know you don’t believe in it, and believe me that I never meant to say it.’
‘So you’re taking it back?’ he demanded.
It struck him suddenly that he didn’t even know whether he wanted her to take it back or not. But, worse, he knew he would accept it if she did. Take it at face value, and continue where they’d left off barely a few minutes before.
The way he had after their last conversation. So what did it mean that he would readily pretend she’d never uttered the words?
Instead, Talia seemed to sit up straighter on the bed, proud and strong. And looking almost ethereal.
‘I don’t take it back, Liam.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I didn’t mean to say it, granted, but it’s true all the same. I love you. That’s why I suggested you stay on St Victoria before. Why I still want you to stay now.’
Something sat on his chest, squashing the air out of him. He fought to surface.
‘I don’t accept that.’
‘Because you fear it.’ She held her hands up as if to soothe him.
As if he was some wounded wild animal who couldn’t understand anything else. The worst of it was that was partly how he felt.
‘I don’t fear it,’ he denied angrily. ‘I just don’t believe in it.’
‘After everything your father put you through as a child, that’s understandable. As is your desire never to have children, for fear of putting them through the same. But can’t you see that will never happen?’
He heard the plea in her voice and, for a moment, he almost went to her. Because the truth of it was that he wanted nothing more than to believe her. But he’d had this dream before, three years ago, when she had told him the same thing. A few days later she’d left him.
He’d thought he’d been setting her free by letting her leave and not chasing her down and now, despite everything that had happened between them this past month, he knew that if he still wanted her to be free, this time he was going to have to be the one to walk away.
Because he only ever wrecked things.
‘You’re letting your dreadful father win again, can’t you see that?’ Talia begged softly.
