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‘What is your point?’ he asked after a moment.
‘Fighting this is futile. You won’t win. I love you, and I’m almost certain you love me too. You’re going to be miserable if you let me go.’
His lips tightened into something like a grimace. ‘I’m used to that.’
She shook her head sadly. ‘So you’re going to use what you feel to punish yourself some more? Denying us both what we want in life because you’re so hell-bent on this prison sentence you’ve created?’
‘I told you from the beginning—’
‘But everything’s changed since then! Hasn’t it?’
He stared at her for several beats.
‘Answer me.’
He expelled a rough sigh. ‘Some things have changed. Some things haven’t. I can’t click my fingers and alter my past. I can’t change the fabric of who I am.’
‘I’m not asking you to.’
‘Yes. You are.’ He ground out the words with frustration. ‘You don’t get it. I don’t want to be loved. I don’t want anyone to love me, to trust me, to put their faith in me.’
‘Because you think you don’t deserve that? Or because you’re worried you’ll do something that will hurt me?’
‘I killed my parents, Lucinda.’
‘It was an accident.’ She lifted up and kissed him again. ‘An accident.’ She whispered the words against the corner of his mouth. ‘An awful, tragic, unforgettable loss, but an accident nonetheless. I can’t promise you that I’ll never get hurt or sick or even die. I know better than anyone how cruel and unpredictable life can be. But I do know I’d rather live every day I possibly can with you. My heart is full of love for you—it always will be—whether I’m here or in England or anywhere in the world.’ She breathed in deeply. ‘I know you’re angry. You have every right to be. You lost so much that night, and you haven’t let yourself feel that loss. Guilt is different from grief. Perhaps it’s better for you to feel guilt as there’s an element of control in it, I don’t know.’
‘Psychoanalysing me doesn’t change a thing,’ he said gruffly.
‘Perhaps not.’ Her smile was a bitter twist of her lips. ‘Only, I wasn’t sure if you knew what you were doing. You think staying here, hiding out from the world, is penance? It’s cowardly. You’re giving in to guilt, rather than facing your grief. You’re hiding from it, instead of learning to walk alongside it. You will miss them every day of your life, but you still deserve to have a life.’
He stared down at her, his expression unmoving. Sadness welled inside her. She’d known this would be his response.
‘I needed you to know how I feel. Before I met you, I was afraid too, Thirio. I was scared of love and loss. I was hiding as well. I avoided friendships and relationships, any closeness that might lead to me being hurt, and I don’t want to live like that any more. You’ve woken me up and now that I’ve seen the beauty of closeness, I want to feel it every day. Even when it makes me achingly vulnerable.’ Her lips twisted to one side. ‘Even when I know that walking away from you will be the hardest thing I’ve ever done.’
‘God, Lucinda. I didn’t ask for this!’
She blinked up at him. ‘Neither of us did, yet here we are. The question is, what are you going to do about it?’
He stared at her for so long, she thought he wasn’t going to answer. And then, slowly, his voice rumbled between them. ‘You’re wrong. I grieved. I was saturated by it for a long time, and, out of that grief, I made a decision that I could live with. I made a choice to sacrifice certain things to fix what I’d broken.’
‘But how does it fix it?’ As she asked the question a blade of lightning cut through the night sky, illuminating his face in shadow.
‘It means I can live with what I did.’
‘By hating yourself?’
‘Yes.’
‘You deserve so much better, Thirio. Your parents would want—’
‘You don’t know them.’
‘I know what you’ve told me. I know what I saw in the photos near your sister’s room. I know Evie, and how she loves you. I know that you are a good, kind, decent man. And I know that I love you.’ She stared at him, willing him to believe her, to say it back. There was only the distant grinding of thunder. ‘But I also know how stubborn you are. If this is truly what you want, I’ll leave.’
She waited, nerves stretched to breaking point.
‘You’ll never hear from me again,’ she promised, saying the words to herself as much as to Thirio.
‘I’m sorry.’ The words were a tortured admission that this pain weighed heavily on him.
‘Don’t apologise to me,’ she said with a tilt of her chin. ‘This hurts like hell right now, but I’m a better person because of what we shared. You changed me in the best possible way. You drew me into the light, Thirio. I just wish I could have done the same for you.’ Her heart cracked into a thousand pieces. ‘Please, never forget that I love you. Whenever you are here, alone, ruminating on the past, know that there’s someone out there who’s seen the parts of you you’re ashamed of, and loves you with all her heart.’
She turned and walked away, head held high, managing to keep her tears at bay until she was alone in her room. Only then did she give in to them, and face the reality of the life she would be returning to. A life without Thirio.
