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My mother taught me that.
Foster homes taught me that.
Run before you’re pushed.
Run before you suffer the pain of rejection.
Run because that is in your control.
‘I’m all of those things, Summer—upset, shocked...disconcerted, even. But it doesn’t change how I feel about you. It doesn’t change the fact that I love you and I always will.’
What blood is left in my face drains completely. My heart tries to fight its way to the surface, tries to cherish his words. To hell with the fear, to protecting myself...
I start to pace, desperate to keep moving, desperate to force it all out...the confusion, the shock, the temptation. ‘You’re upset...you don’t know what you’re saying...you can’t...’
‘I’m forty-two, Summer. Credit me with enough maturity to know my own mind and what is in my own heart. So when I say I love you and I want to marry you, I mean it.’
‘Let’s just pretend this didn’t happen,’ I ramble on, acting as if I haven’t heard him—although I have, every word brands my well-bitten heart. ‘We shouldn’t have started sleeping in the same bed every night. It was bound to blur things...confuse what this is and what it isn’t. Stupid, stupid woman.’
I slap my forehead and he moves to stop me. I leap out of his reach.
‘What the hell were you thinking? You’ve ruined everything!’ I rub my face. It’s damp. And I can’t catch my breath through the sobs racking my body.
‘Summer, stop and breathe. Just breathe.’
I shake my head, shake it more, my eyes wide as I refuse to look at him—not that I can see through the tears.
‘Look at me, Summer. Look at me.’
He reaches out, gently clasps my wrists to pull me round to face him, his expression so earnest, his brown eyes ablaze.
‘You’ve done nothing wrong; we’ve done nothing wrong.’
I wet my lips, but I can’t put words to my deepest fear. My mother’s rejection almost broke me—a wound that Katherine helped to heal. But Edward... Edward’s rejection would tear me in two.
And there’d be no fix for that.
‘Tell me you don’t love me, Summer. Tell me you don’t feel the same.’
‘I can’t do this, Edward,’ I sob out. ‘I can’t.’
He rests his palm against my cheek, his thumb sweeping away the tears that fall.
‘Why? Why can’t you love me?’
‘I just can’t.’ My body shudders as I force it out.
‘The thing is, Summer, you don’t get a say in it. Falling in love isn’t something you can control. It happens to you, and it changes you. It makes you yearn to be with that person, to live your life with that person, shape your life around them. That’s what I want—if you can let yourself want it too.’
I shake my head. Wanting it. Yearning for it. That life...so full, so happy. And so very far to fall...
‘I can’t...’ I whisper, weaker but no less adamant.
‘Why? Because I’m not giving up until you explain it to me in terms that I can understand and get on board with.’
I hold his eye and let my confession fall with the tears. ‘Because the day you stop loving me will crush me.’
The faintest of smiles touches his lips. ‘Oh, baby, who says anything about stopping? I want to love you for the rest of my days—that’s what a real marriage is.’
