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Slowly, I brought my gaze back to him until our eyes met.
“Ellie, I am madly in love with you.”
I inhaled sharply as his words hit me, and my heart beat so hard that I could feel and hear my pulse thundering in my ears.
He was in love with me.
Me.
“And you have to know that I would never ask you to do something that would compromise your dreams. I know how you feel about getting married and having children and how important those things are to you.” His throat bobbed. “The easy thing would have been to let you leave tomorrow without telling you how I feel about you.”
“So why didn’t you just do it?” I asked, my voice thickening with every word I spoke. “Why couldn’t you? Why couldn’t you just take me back to the lodge and let me leave tomorrow? Why did you have to just say…that… to me?”
“The night I told you about my parents… I wasn’t lying when I told you that I would like to have kids. I wouldloveto have kids.”
I stared at him.
“I had…have… a lot of feelings that need to be worked through.” He dipped his head for a moment, showing a weakness I’d only seen in him once or twice. “In those few days when we didn’t speak, I realised a lot of things. One of them being the fact I never allowed myself to truly accept what happened to my parents, at least not after I found out the truth.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but he jerked his head in what seemed to be a silent request for me not to speak.
So I didn’t.
“And I realised that if I didn’t do something about that, I was going to lose another person I loved.”
Tears pricked at my eyes, and I had to look away from him. If I didn’t, I was going to burst into tears.
“Since then I’ve spoken to someone. Mostly about the anger I still hold towards my father and how it’s impacting my relationships today.”
“You spoke to someone?” I asked on a whisper. “Like a therapist?”
“Not like a therapist. A therapist.” He ran his tongue over his lips, daring to crack the tiniest of smiles. “Online. Apparently, it’s quite hard to see someone in person, but online? Not so much.” He rubbed his hand over his jaw. “I grieved my mum, but I didn’t grieve for Dad, not after I found out what really happened. My anger was too strong. Is. I’m not sure anymore.”
I slowly forced my gaze back to him, meeting his at the barest of glimpses.
“I’m not there yet,” he continued. “It’s going to take a long time for me to work through everything that I feel about their deaths, but I do know that everything I thought I wanted was nothing more than a coping mechanism. It was another thing I could blame him for. Another thing I could hold him responsible for, because the angrier I was with him, the less chance there was of allowing myself to grieve him.”
God. I wanted to hug him so bad.
“What are you saying?” I asked softly.
“All those things I didn’t think I wanted? Marriage? Kids? I do. I want them, Ellie. I want them with you.” His bright blue eyes shone with such thick, fervent emotion that every part of my body hummed with his reality. “I can’t imagine wanting them with anyone other than you. There’s no possible way for there to be someone else on this Earth who I could ever love the way I love you.”
The lump in my throat was big and heavy and chunky and somehow, I managed to swallow it back down.
“You are the only person I can see myself marrying and having children with. One, two, three of them, running around here with your hair and my eyes.”
Oh, my God.
No.
Not that.
He stopped and took a deep breath. “But that’s in time. I have to work through a lot of things before I can be a parent. Maybe even a good partner. I don’t know. But I do know that I’m willing to give it everything I’ve got and then some.”
I flexed my toes inside my shoes just to feel something—move something, because if I didn’t my legs were going to give out from under me and I was going to drop to the ground.
“I know that’s the opposite from everything I’ve ever said to you, and it probably sounds like I’m just saying it to make you stay in Windermere, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t believe me. I wouldn’t blame you in the slightest, but God, Ellie. If you think for a moment that you could take a risk and waste your time waiting for me to figure my shit out… I… You… You are the only thing I’m sure of.” He took a tentative step forward. “Don’t leave yet. Please. Stay for another day, just twenty-four hours, and think about what I’ve said. I’ll leave you alone and won’t bother you. Especially if you decide that you’re done. I promise that I’ll respect your wishes and never contact you again.”
