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“No.” Her head snapped up, her eyes bleak. “I’m going away. To Europe. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while and I think now is a good time.”
She was running away, like he had years earlier.
Maybe she was scared of how fast their reunion happened, maybe she didn’t fully trust him yet, but she was running nonetheless.
“I think you’re using the kid issue as an excuse,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “But if you need to go away, take some time to think things through, go ahead.”
“I don’t need to do any more thinking.”
Her whisper had him dropping him to his haunches to hear her, to be near her, to touch her in a world dangerously close to spiralling out of his control.
“Don’t do this, Cam.” He touched her leg, his heart sinking when she flinched.
“I have to. It’s the only way.”
She’d tugged so hard on her plait it unravelled and her hair fell forward, shielding her face from him. But he didn’t need to see her expression. He could hear how much she was hurting, could see it in the defeated slump of her shoulders.
“Why are you really doing this?” He had to ask, had to get answers to the questions swirling around his brain, no matter how much he wouldn’t like her response. “I need to know.”
Slowly, she lifted her head, and pushed her hair back with a shaky hand. “I can’t be the wife you want me to be.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
She shook her head, trying to hide the shimmer of tears, but he’d already seen them, already felt them like a kick in the guts.
“I’m going away so you can get on with your life.”
He wouldn’t give up on them, not when every word she uttered, every anguished line of her body, told him she didn’t want to do this.
“You are my life, Cam. It’s as simple as that.”
Bundling her into his arms, he didn’t let go, not when she stiffened, not when she tried to push him away. Instead, he cradled her close, gently shushing as the tears tumbled down her cheeks and drenched his T-shirt, rocking her back and forth until her sobs subsided.
When she’d finally quietened he leaned back and tilted her face up.
“I’m not a fool. I know you don’t trust me enough to believe me when I say kids aren’t an issue as long as I have you. I know you’re pushing me away out of some misplaced idea I’ll be happier. But I won’t be, not unless you’re with me.”
His jaw jutted, as if challenging her to argue with him. He expected it, would take great delight in shooting down each and every crazy argument she threw his way.
To his surprise, her face softened. “Want to know why I brought you here?”
He didn’t need her to tell him. He remembered every twig, every rock, every leaf of this place. It was where they’d first made love, where he’d asked her to marry him.
It was a special place,theirplace, a place made for magic, a place where anything could happen.
“Tell me,” he said, strumming her back, knowing every dip and curve intimately.
The small smile he’d glimpsed playing about her mouth while she’d darted a glance around the riverbank vanished.
“Because this is the place it all started. And this is where it has to end.”
“Cam—”
“No, let me finish.” She placed her palm against his lips, dropping it quickly when he kissed it. “I believed you when you came back into my life and told me why you’d walked out on us. You said you’d put my dreams ahead of your own. Well, I’m returning the favor.”
“But that’s crazy. My dream is you.”
She shook her head, her bereft expression cleaving his heart in two. “I’m a part of it, but your real dream is for a family, a family as great as your own, a family filled with kids and love and laughter and I want that for you. I want it for you so badly.”
