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‘Glenrobin.’
It’s all the explanation he needs. He knows I mean the staff. The staff who care about her, care about us, and know Gran’s wishes through and through.
‘I’d wait if I were you,’ Charles says as my hand closes around the handle to his office door.
But I’m done with waiting.
I’ve left it a week, hoping, praying that she’ll change her mind. That she’ll come to me. Well, no more.
‘Sorry, Charles, this needs to be—’
The door handle shifts in my grasp. The heavy oak swings open...
‘Edward!’ She’s standing before me, frozen in place, pale, drawn, and never more beautiful to my Summer-starved gaze. The urge to sweep her up in my arms is painfully acute...sharper for the knowledge that I can’t.
I kick the door shut behind me. ‘We need to talk. I won’t let you do this.’
‘You’re here...?’
‘Yes, I’m here.’ I pace before her startled form, unable to keep still.
‘But why?’
‘To do exactly what you’re trying to do—gift the other half of Glenrobin and walk away.’
Her eyes flicker with some emotion that I can’t identify. ‘I did come here to do that. I did want to move on and leave you the house that I feel belongs to you... I did.’
‘Did. Did. Did...’ The way she keeps stressing it...it’s driving me crazy. ‘Are you trying to hammer the message home, Summer? Isn’t it enough that I already know you don’t want me? That you don’t love me?’
‘I never said that.’
‘You did. Last week you said all that and more. Then tried to give yourself hypothermia in the process of leaving me. Do you know how hard it was not to come after you myself? To send James in my place?’
‘I’m sorry for that, Edward...’
She says it so quietly and it hurts—it really hurts.
‘Don’t say sorry for that. It was my fault, I was the one without any patience, I was the one pushing you before you were ready—’
‘Maybe I needed pushing...’
‘—I shouldn’t have said any of it. I shouldn’t have—hang on.’ I freeze. ‘What did you just say?’
‘I said...’ She steps closer to me, her eyes wary, the nip of her lip warier still. ‘I said maybe I needed pushing because for all I thought I was being brave, I was a coward.’
I frown at her, unable to speak.
‘You’re the brave one, Edward. Your childhood was no better than mine when it comes to parental love. You craved it and Katherine was the one who had to step in and give it to you. And yet you didn’t let that fear of abandonment, of rejection, stop you from loving me. Not then and not now. You confessed your love for me, and out of fear I kept mine from you. I behaved no better than your mother, and for that I am deeply sorry.’
‘Summer...?’
I can’t catch my breath. I can’t believe what I’m hearing...what she’s implying. And I don’t want—I don’t want to feel like I felt a week ago. On a high, so in love, only to have it ripped away with such chilling force.
‘Please, don’t tease me, or beat around whatever bush this is. Because I don’t think my heart can take a repeat of last week.’
‘Good, because this isn’t a repeat, Edward.’
She closes the remaining distance between us and lifts her hand. In it are letters—three if I’m not mistaken.
