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‘Because I need more than that. You’re asking me to make a major change in my life, to move thousands of miles away from everything I know on what sounds like a whim.’ The emotion clogged in her throat at the look of total confusion on his face.
‘What do you want me to say? That I love you? Is that it?’ The bitter edge in his tone made the traitorous tears she’d refused to shed sting her eyes. ‘If you need me to say the words I will.’
‘This isn’t about words.’ She drew back. ‘It’s about emotions. It’s about you being honest with me about your feelings.’
* * *
Coop stared at Ella’s earnest expression, saw the glitter of tears in those trusting blue eyes and felt the panic that he had kept at bay ever since his mother’s death start to choke him.
He didn’t do emotion, he didn’t even talk about it, because it reminded him too much of the deep, dark, inescapable hole where he’d spent most of his childhood.
‘You don’t know what you’re asking,’ he said, desperately bartering for time, scrambling around for a way to avoid the conversation. ‘I’m not good at that stuff.’
‘I know that, Coop.’ She sighed, the sound weary and so full of despair it cut right through his heart. ‘And I understand. I took a huge knock to my confidence too when Randall rejected me. If I hadn’t, it wouldn’t have taken me so long to tell you all this. But you have to understand. I can’t come and live with you, bring up a child with you and all the time live in some kind of weird limbo where you get to call all the shots because—’ she lifted her fingers to do air quotes ‘—you’re “not good at this stuff”.’ She stood up, brushed her hands down her dress in a nervous gesture he recognised. ‘I need to call a cab.’
She turned to pick up her case from the bed. He dived ahead of her, gripped the handle. ‘You don’t need a cab. You’re not going tonight.’
She blinked, the sheen of tears crucifying him. ‘Yes, I am. I have to go. I’m tired and we both need space, maybe once—’
‘Don’t go.’ His voice cracked on the word. ‘It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it, it’s that I can’t.’
‘Why can’t you?’ she asked, the tone gentle but probing, scraping at the raw wound he’d thought had healed years before.
‘Because I’ll mess it up. Because I’ll say the wrong thing, or I’ll say it in the wrong way. They’re just words—they don’t mean anything. What matters is what we do, not what we say to each other.’
She nodded, but he could see the concern in her gaze, and felt as if she was looking through the veneer of charm and confidence and seeing the frightened little boy cowering beneath. ‘Coop, whatever made you think that there’s a wrong and a right answer?’
She laid a palm on his cheek, but he jerked back. Terrified of being drawn into that dark place again.
‘You say that, but there is a right answer. If there wasn’t I wouldn’t have given her the wrong one. I told her I loved her, that I could look after her, but it didn’t change a thing.’
She watched him, her unwavering gaze so full of the love he knew he wasn’t capable of giving back, all the panic imploded inside him until all that was left was the pain.
‘Who are you talking about, Coop?’
His heart hammered his ribs as he dropped his chin, fisted his fingers to stop them shaking and murmured, ‘My mom.’
* * *
Ella stared, unable to speak around the lump wedged in her throat. She could see the painful shadow of memory in his expression, and wished she could take it away. Reaching for his hand, she folded her fingers around his and held on. ‘Can you tell me about her?’
He cleared his throat, but he didn’t pull his hand out of hers. ‘There’s not a lot to tell. She had an affair with my old man, he gave her the standard line about leaving his wife. And she got pregnant with me, before she figured out he was lying.’
‘He sounds like a very selfish person,’ Ella said, then remembered how he’d once compared himself to his father. ‘And nothing like you.’
‘Thanks.’ He sent her a half-smile, but it did nothing to dispel the shadow in his eyes. ‘Anyway, he wasn’t interested in me, but he carried on screwing my mom from time to time, so she convinced herself he loved her.’ He shrugged, but the movement was stiff and tense, and she knew he was nowhere near as relaxed as the gesture suggested.
She pressed her hand to his chest, desperate to soothe the frantic beats of his heart. ‘You don’t have to tell me any more, if it upsets you. I understand.’ His mother had obviously fallen in love with a man who had used her and carried on using her. Was it any wonder that after witnessing that throughout the years of his childhood, he’d be cynical about love himself? And wary about making any kind of commitment. ‘I shouldn’t have pushed you. It wasn’t fair.’
‘Yeah, you should have.’ He covered her hand. ‘And I don’t think you do get it, Ella.’ He sighed. ‘The thing is, she was so fragile. She wanted something she couldn’t have and she had these dark moods because she couldn’t cope with that. At first, when I was really little, she’d have the odd day when she couldn’t get out of bed, and she’d just cry and want to hug me. But as I got older, it got worse and worse, until she couldn’t hold down a job. I tried to make things better for her. As soon as I was old enough, I got a job. I figured if I could make enough money...’ He stared into the darkness, the hopelessness on his face devastating. ‘But I couldn’t. Whatever I did, whatever I said, it was never the right thing.’
‘Coop,’ she murmured, desperate to try and take the hopelessness away. ‘It sounds as if she suffered from depression. Money can’t cure that.’ Or a child’s devotion.
‘I know, but...’
She leant into him, the love welling up her chest as he looped his arm round her shoulders. ‘What happened to her?’
She heard him swallow, the sound loud in the stillness of the night. ‘I came home from the graveyard shift at the drive-thru one night and found her in the bathroom. She’d taken too many of the pills she used to sleep. I called the p
