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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
HE WASN’T WORTH IT.
She’d given him the answer that he’d dreaded hearing since they had started this journey. Well, he didn’t know much about her experiences with men and relationships, but he knew that he’d had a lot of women over the years and not one of them had made him question the way he was living his life. And then he’d met her. He might not be worth fighting for, but she was—and he wasn’t giving up yet.
There was something special between them. Something rare and precious. There had to be. It was something he didn’t want to lose. And if she didn’t feel that way too she wouldn’t have gone to bed with him last night.
He took a couple of steps towards her, until he was standing close enough to touch her if she’d let him, one foot either side of hers. She didn’t move—not towards him or away—and he could read the indecision on her face. She wanted this. She wanted him. But she wasn’t going to let that be enough.
He placed a hand beside one of hers on the edge of the worktop and with the knuckles of his other hand gently stroked her cheek. He moved slowly, not wanting to spook her. Not wanting to push her to do anything she didn’t want to. He pulled her towards him, resting his forehead against hers.
‘This is different,’ he said, hoping above all that he was right about this one thing. Hoping that she felt something when they touched that she hadn’t felt before. He was betting everything on it. ‘Did it feel like this before?’ he asked, letting his body sink towards her, his stomach pressing on her bump, feeling their baby growing there between them. ‘With him? Or is this different? Am I different?’
Elspeth sighed. He felt the breath leave her body in a long, resigned wave, and for a moment he thought that was it. He was wrong. This wasn’t different for her. But then she turned her cheek into his hand—just a fraction. A movement so subtle he might have missed it if he hadn’t been desperately looking for any sign that she was still with him on this.
‘It’s not going to work, Fraser.’
‘That’s not what I asked.’ Fraser allowed himself a tiny glimmer of hope that this wasn’t a hard no, that she had evaded rather than answered his question. ‘I asked if I’m different.’
She paused again, and tensed slightly beneath him.
‘You are,’ she conceded, glancing up and briefly meeting his gaze.
‘And you feel different,’ Fraser prompted, building on her concession, moving her towards what he was sure was true. ‘You feel different from how you felt with Alex.’
She held her breath and he could practically hear her looking for the get-out. For a way of denying what they were both realising had to be true.
‘Yes.’
The word was barely more than a breath, but to Fraser it was everything. It was hope. It was life. It was all he needed to know to keep going. She had pushed him and pushed him to face up to his past, to address the problems with his father that he had carried into every adult relationship he had ever made. And now he was going to do the same for her. He was going to make her see that she could do this. She could be enough. She could be everything she needed to be to her family, and whatever was left for her to offer him he would take it.
‘Then we’re going to try.’ His voice rang with the certainty that he felt. ‘This isn’t the same. You don’t have to be the person you were when you were with Alex. I’m not asking you to tear yourself in different directions. All I’m asking—all I’m asking—is that you don’t write this off.’
He softened his hand and stroked her cheek with his thumb, trying with everything he had not to rush her. To give her time to think. To stop himself from breaching those last few centimetres between his lips and hers. To give her space to come to him when she was ready.
‘I can’t live at Ballanross,’ she said, and he pulled back, surprised.
Of all the responses he’d thought she might give, that one had never occurred to him.
‘I can’t even live in your new apartment.’
‘I never asked you to,’ he reminded her.
‘But I couldn’t. I won’t. And you would want to. Not now, perhaps. But eventually you’ll want to go back to Ballanross.’
How many hypotheticals was she going to run through? How many times was she going to assume the worst of him? This relationship was never going to move forward if she couldn’t see that this wasn’t her last relationship. That he wasn’t Alex.
‘I’d like to spend time there, yes. If that’s something that we can do,’ Fraser said, keeping his cool even as Elspeth was losing hers. ‘And there’s plenty of room for your mum and your sister, if we ever want to live there. If that’s what we all choose. But I don’t need to.’
He realised the truth of what he was saying as the words left his mouth. ‘I would choose you, Elspeth, if it came to it.’
The realisation that he meant it hit him like a truck. All these years he’d dreamed of going back to his home. All this time the castle had loomed large in his memory. But it had only been a symbol of what he had lost. Of what he was missing. It had never been about the castle. And he wasn’t going to choose a symbol over the woman he loved. He would be wherever she was. For ever. If she would let him.
‘I’m not asking—’ Elspeth started to say.
He cut her off, because she didn’t need to say it. ‘I know you’re not. Because you’re not the sort of idiot who gives ultimatums to the people you love. But it’s true anyway. I can live with never going back there. But I couldn’t live without you. Without our baby. I want us to be a family—together—and I’ll do that in the city if that’s what it takes to make you agree. To make you happy.’
* * *
