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She didn’t know if she could bear it if it was. Her chest was tight and her palm slipped on the doorknob she still held in her hand.
‘I don’t know if I want to hear it.’
‘Please. Hear me out,’ he said, sounding like a man who’d reached the end of his tether and had nowhere else to go. ‘And then I’ll go if you want. But at least hear what I have to say.’
He was pleading with her, this man who had come into her life ordering her around. And for the first time, Amber caught a glimpse of the child behind the man, a child who’d lost everything and suffered too much and had to grow up too fast. A child who had become a man who’d learned to shun people and relationships because he’d already lost more than one person could bear.
And he was here.
What did that mean? Her heart was tripping in her chest. She was almost afraid to breathe. ‘Tell me,’ she whispered.
He moved then. Finally. Moved towards her at the door until for a second she thought he’d changed his mind and decided to leave after all. But he stopped in front of her and took her hand, holding it almost reverently between his. ‘You once said I had nothing to fear from you and I agreed,’ he said. He looked into her eyes and she could see that he was as tightly wound as she felt. She could feel the tension in his long-fingered hands. ‘I was wrong. I had everything to fear from you.
‘Your smile, your eyes...’ He lifted a hand to her face and ran his finger down the side of her cheek, a touch so featherlight—so missed—that she couldn’t help but sigh as she leaned into it.
‘From that first day in the Spice Market, I was doomed. And I tried to fight it—to fight you. I tried to keep you at a distance, to tell myself it was all duty. But I couldn’t and it wasn’t.
‘And when you left—and when I found out what I’d done to you—it nearly broke me in two.’
She shook her head. ‘And how do you think I felt? You called me a thief! You accused me of stealing my own bracelet!’ Her voice was choking. She could not afford to forget about what he’d done to her, no matter how much her heart leaned towards his words as her face had leaned into his hand.
He dropped his head. ‘I know.’
‘So you don’t have to say nice things now to try to make me feel better.’
He looked up. ‘Is that what you think?’
‘I don’t know what to think, Kadar. You accuse me of being a thief and you take my bracelet and send me away like I’m a criminal, and then you turn up here and admit you were wrong and suddenly everything’s supposed to be okay? No, everything’s not okay.’
He swore under his breath. ‘I am sorry, I am no good at this. What I am trying to say, Amber... What I came to tell you... I love you.’
She squeezed her eyes and her mind shut, refusing to give the tiny flutter in her heart oxygen. The words she’d most wanted to hear—once—before the door had been slammed shut in her face. ‘You say that now.’
He dragged in a breath as he spun around and punched the air with his fist, before turning back to her. ‘Do you have any idea what this was like for me? I wanted to say it before. The day you were leaving. I didn’t want you to go. I wanted you to stay. I thought there might be a chance of us having a future together. I’d never done this before. I’d never thought it possible that I could love anyone. But you weren’t like any other woman I’d ever met. You made me think the impossible was possible.’
She didn’t move. She couldn’t. It was all she could do to blink. And hope.
‘Don’t you understand? I had lost my family. I had defied my father and I had lived where they had died. I didn’t deserve family. And then you came along, and made me wish for things that I had lost all hope of having.’
He sighed, and hung his head, shaking it slowly before he looked up, and the sorrow and regret in his eyes was almost too much for her to bear. ‘I was about to tell you that. I was about to say the one thing I’d never been able to say to anyone in my life.
‘And then I walked into that bedroom and saw you with the bracelet and that part of me that had fought getting close to you all along had found a reason why it could never work. I was furious with you, I know, but I was just even more furious with myself for falling for you.
‘But when I discovered the truth and knew that I had lost you...’ His voice trailed off, his dark, grief-filled eyes pleading with her as he took her hand, intertwining his fingers with hers. ‘I know you have every right to tell me to get the hell out of that door and never come back. But I want to make it up to you. I want to make up for every wrong I committed against you, every day we’re together, and every night.’
