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not capable of it.’
And this, at least, was the truth.
‘You loved your foster parents. You are capable of it, Lukas. And you have fallen in love with me. Just as I have with you.’
And he felt as though his entire world was imploding because he’d never before known a woman like Oti, who could level him with just one of those looks of hers.
Suddenly, he wished he was a different man. A better man. The kind of man who could say the words that this incredible, huge-hearted woman wanted to hear, and mean it.
But he couldn’t.
He was too damaged. Too set in his ways.
He made himself take a step away from her. Then another. He wasn’t the man she thought she loved. He certainly wasn’t the man he’d pretended to be in South Sudan. Or the month before that, since their wedding. Or even the five months before that, since the first moment he’d talked to her at Sedeshire Hall.
He was a man people feared, and obeyed, and envied, but he wasn’t a man who people loved. That was why no one ever had.
He was as ruthless and unlovable as his own father, but then, that wasn’t a surprise; they were cut from the same damaged cloth.
And no child deserved a father like him.
* * *
For a while back there, she’d thought she’d been getting through to him. She’d felt as though the wall he kept around him had begun to crumble. But then something had changed, and he’d stopped hearing her, and started to push her away again.
She couldn’t put her finger on why, but now he stood apart from her, so intransigent, so distant that he might as well have been a world away, not a few feet. And something cleaved in two inside her chest. She was terribly afraid that it was her heart.
‘You think you understand me, Octavia, but you don’t know me at all.’ It was that crisp, businesslike tone that she found she suddenly abhorred.
‘I spent those weeks with you, night and day, through some pretty stressful situations, saving lives in the middle of South Sudan. I think I know you pretty well.’
‘You see what you want to see,’ he bit out. ‘But you ignore the fact that my whole business—my entire life—has been built on revenge. On taking down the man who threw my mother and me into the gutter like used garbage the moment he found out about me.’
‘You could look at it that way.’ She dipped her head slowly. ‘And perhaps there has been a bit of revenge in the mix, but I don’t believe that is what really spurs you.’
‘And how do you figure that?’ he grated out. But the very fact that he was asking was enough for Oti to feel encouraged.
‘I believe that what really drives you is love, Lukas. Love for your mother. And yes, that means you hated the way your father treated her, but you’ve just been nursing it for so long—ever since you were twelve—that you’ve let it get turned upside down in your head.’
‘You’re wrong.’
‘I don’t think I am,’ she pressed on earnestly, desperate to make him see it from where she stood. ‘You’re trapped in this suit of armour because you made it for yourself when you were a twelve-year-old, and you’d long since outgrown it and moved on, but Rockman shoved you back into it when he went after your company. Just because he could. Because that’s the kind of ignoble man that he is. Believe me, Lukas, I understand. Your father is no better than mine. But that isn’t who you are. I know that for a fact.’
She needed him to see the man she—and everyone back in that medical camp—saw. Probably the same man that most of his business partners and employees saw, given the way she’d seen him treat them. He knew them all by name. How many times had she heard him ask after their families, always taking the time to really stop and listen to them?
She took a chance and crossed the room again, lifting her arms to press her hands on either side of his face, forcing him to look at her.
‘Lukas, you’re a good man. You show this ruthless side to the world, but you sacrifice yourself for those you care about. That’s how I know you love me, because you sacrificed what you wanted to go out to Sudan with me, just because you wanted to understand why I love my work so much.’
‘I was curious.’
‘You cared,’ she corrected. ‘You always care. And that’s what will make you a good father. Because you’ll put your child first in a way that neither of our fathers ever put us—or their other kids—first. You are your own man, Lukas. You’re not Rockman. You never were.’
All she could hear was their breathing—shallow and slightly fast. He was silent for so long after that, but he didn’t remove her hands. Slowly, so slowly, he dropped his forehead so that it was almost touching hers.
And then, abruptly, he straightened up again.
‘You’re describing the man you want me to be, Oti. An idealistic version of me. But that isn’t who I am.’ The agony in his voice made her heart ache. ‘I’m damaged and damaging. He once said that I would ruin you, just as he ruined my mother. And he’s right. How could I be anything other when I have Rockman blood running through my veins?’
