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“I suppose it was ordinary. Happy.” She bit down on her lower lip. “I had my parents’ example to reach for and I thought I’d found it. On a subconscious level, I suppose I always thought I’d be like them.”
“They seem very happy together.”
“They are, but also very complementary. They’re perfectly in synch, full of love and affection, they support each other completely. My childhood was idyllic. They created the most incredible home for us, so naturally I sought to replicate that. Ashton and I moved in together quickly, after only a few months of dating. You’d probably say it was just because he wanted a job in London, and I had a flat in Hampstead,” she said with a grimace.
He lifted one brow. “Would I?”
She rolled her eyes. “Okay, that’s what I would say, now.”
“I see.”
“Our life was – calm. And happy. And ordinary. All the things I thought I wanted, on paper, but it was nothing like my parents’ marriage. We just didn’t love each other like that. We didn’t need each other. Despite that, if he hadn’t walked away from me, we’d still be together.”
“And that’s what you wish had happened?”
She would have said an emphatic ‘yes’ two days ago, before seeing Ashton again. Or was it something else that had shifted her perspective?
“I think it’s better that he realised how he felt about me before things got any more serious.”
“You’d been together for years. You lived together. How much more serious do you mean?”
“Marriage, babies,” she said quietly. “Two things I wanted, with all my heart. Two things that I thought were in my immediate future.”
“So you are mourning these things as well as Ashton.”
“I think I’m mourning them more than Ashton, to be honest. And regretting my own stupidity.”
He looked at her with silent inquiry.
“It’s so obvious now, with the benefit of hindsight, that he was nowhere near as invested in our relationship as I was. It was easy and comfortable for him, but there was no –,” heat stole through her body, darkening her cheeks. “Passion.”
“Yet you are so passionate.”
The rhythm of her heart intensified. “I wouldn’t have agreed with that until…very recently.”
Now the heat was a lightning bolt, a sharp blade of electrical current passing from him to her. She felt it igniting her soul, inch by inch, until she couldn’t believe people weren’t looking at them, because surely flames were visible?
“What are you doing to me, cara?”
“What do you mean?”
“You tempt me with every word, every look.”
She swallowed, unable to form a coherent response to that.
“How come I didn’t realise there was the potential for this?”
She lifted her shoulders. “I don’t know.”
“You were just…Bronte.”
“And now I’m not?”
His eyes flecked with something dark. “No.” He moved his hips more purposefully, taunting her, promising her.
“What am I then?”
“A woman who’s never been kissed as she deserves.”
