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d propose marriage.’
She swallows; I still can’t speak.
‘But I can’t spend another week with you, sharing my life—my body—with you, knowing that you’ll never be able to give me the one thing I really want.’ She pauses for a second, her cheeks growing pink. ‘I’m sorry to deprive you of a week of sex, but I have no doubt you can find someone else to fill your bed until you leave.’
My ears are filled with a screeching noise and everything in the room is too white, too bright, as if it’s been overexposed or something.
‘What?’
Fuck. That’s not right. Focus. Concentrate. Say something better.
She shakes her head sadly and panic surges in my chest. ‘Imogen, you know...’ I groan, drag a hand through my hair. ‘It’s not you.’
‘But it is me. And it’s the fact I fell in love with you, and you don’t love me, and if I stay with you another night, I’m going to feel... I’m going to feel...a thousand things, and none of them good.’
‘Love was never on my radar.’ It’s a stupid thing to say but I’m grappling with her statement, desperately trying to make sense of it.
Her eyes spit fire. ‘Do you think it was on mine?’
‘No.’ My own frustration comes through in the word.
‘Damn straight. I love that we had rules and boundaries and that this was—in theory—simple fun. But it’s different now, everything’s different, and I would hate myself if I didn’t admit that. To myself, and to you.’
Her eyes close for a moment and I feel as if the ground has just swallowed me up. I’m falling and beneath me are the very fires of hell.
I hate hurting her. The realisation is like a punch in my gut. I’m hurting Imogen and this was always about helping her. About pleasuring her. And now I’ve hurt her and I can’t believe that.
I need to make it better. I have to make her understand.
‘You are incredible. Some guy, some day, is going to win the lottery when you fall for him.’
‘But not you,’ she murmurs, her eyes huge in her face. My chest kicks.
‘Not me.’
She nods, but, God, her lip is trembling and I feel like a monster.
‘Once, I believed in love, and it was a disaster.’ I move closer, needing her to feel the sincerity of my words. ‘I honestly believed I loved Saffy and when we broke up, it was like being woken from a dream I’ll never find my way back to again. I don’t want to find my way back there. I don’t want to feel like that. I don’t want to think I love someone. I don’t want to give anyone else that power over me.’ I lift a hand to her cheek and almost swear when she flinches out of my reach, as if I’ve shocked her with raw electricity.
‘You are your own,’ she says, but archly, with a hint of anger that I’m ridiculously glad about—I much prefer anger to the brokenness that confronted me a minute ago.
‘Yes.’ I am relieved. ‘I’m my own, I belong only to myself, and that’s the way I like it. I’m sorry, Imogen. I’m sorry if I did anything to make you hope for a future here. I thought I was clear—’
‘Oh, you were.’ The words are weary. ‘Which just shows what an idiot I am.’
‘No, Imogen...’ But what can I say? She’s right. Any woman who would fall in love with me needs her head examined. I try again. ‘I think we should forget I suggested this.’ I clench my jaw. ‘I’ll go back to England, as planned. I’m sorry. I didn’t want this—I didn’t have any idea you were developing feelings for me or I would have ended it sooner. I’m sorry,’ I say again. Though it’s manifestly insufficient, I have no idea what else I can say.
Silence wraps around us, a prickly, angry silence like the icy morning after a winter’s storm.
‘You are a goddamned coward, Lord Rothsmore.’ She bites my future title out with disgust. Her statement crashes around me and I don’t speak, because she needs to get this off her chest and I’m okay with that. I have to be—I’m breaking her heart. She finishes her coffee, placing the cup down hard on the bench top.
‘You’re too scared to let yourself feel this.’ Her eyes lance me. ‘You think you’re the only person to be hurt? You think that means you need to put yourself in emotional stasis for the rest of your life? How is that even going to work? You’re going to go home and make a sensible marriage and what? Feel nothing for your wife?’
I don’t want to talk to Imogen about my future. Suddenly, the plans I’ve set in place chasm before me like an awful void. I grind my teeth together, trying to focus, trying to work out what I can say that will make this better.
I have to fix this.
‘That’s how it works,’ I say quietly, calmly, even when I’m not calm.
