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She snatched a breath and gripped the railing with both hands again. A quarter turn of her face in his direction. “You might’ve gone over the edge.”
If he moved his hand, not a lot, an adjustment of its placement on the circular steel, he could touch her in a way she might accept. “I was already over the edge about you and I’d just sent you away. I could barely walk from the shock of it.” He moved his hand but before they connected, she took hers away.
“You’ve been missing for half a year. I got on with my life.”
“You did brilliantly. And I’m so pleased for you.” Was she going to tell him there was someone else? He deserved that pain. But if there was someone else and she loved them more, why was she here? “I’ll wait. I’m not going anywhere, unless it’s to follow you.” He needed her eyes to read her soul. “The house needs work. I need work. I need you.”
She slammed her hand on the railing. “That’s insane. You’re a stranger to me.”
“More insane than me living in a cave; than us falling for each other?”
“I can’t trust you. I can’t be with you.”
“Then I’m homeless again, because nowhere I live will ever be a home without you.”
A shudder tripped through her and she lowered her chin so her eyes were on her feet. “I hate you for saying that.”
“You don’t hate me.” She’d have walked away. She’d have torn into him. She’d have made it perfectly clear there was no whiter shade of hope to depend on.
“It might go better for you if you didn’t tell me what to do.” She lifted her face but still angled away from him. “I’m not over you showing up with a car and buying my favourite house yet. I’m not over you full stop and that’s a problem, because I fell in love with a man who lived in a cave and was a terrible dresser. He had no money and shocking secrets. He took me on the worst dates, made me ride the bus for God’s sake, and the absolute shambles of the whole things is, I want that man back because I fitted with him despite how odd that was, how damaged he sometimes seemed, and what a pain in the side he was.”
She could’ve felled him effectively with a clump of seaweed. There was no density to his muscles, no air in his lungs. He was a lump of barely animated meat, but he had hope and it wasn’t flimsy, it was fine, strong silk wrapped around his wrists, connecting him to her.
“But you, with your new house and your big charity deal, you’re altogether different and I don’t know if I can fit with you. If I’d even want to.”
He was going to shake apart if she didn’t look at him. “I want you to live in that house with me. You’re not over me. Look at me, Foley. Oh God, please look at me.”
She turned her head. But her eyes were down.
“Let me show you who I am.” He unbuttoned his shirt. Shit, so many buttons. Her eyes came up as he pulled the fabric away from his side. She gasped when she saw it. Blue on blue, on sand. Four distinct puzzle pieces formed around an empty centre shaped like an F. Shaped like the day he acknowledged he’d fallen in love with her, in the wind, when she’d challenged him, when he’d seen her vitality and her tenacity, and they’d touched him to his core.
She turned. Her hand shot out and she traced the tattoo, fingers warm and delightfully curious. “You have the colours, the shape exactly right.” Her eyes came up to his face and locked on. “You saw this once.”
“I saw every part of you that night and every part I loved and memorised. I never stopped thinking about you, worrying about you, wanting you.”
She pulled her hand away as if it pained to touch him, but they were tethered now by anticipation and promise, by trial and the chance to build something triumphant.
She shook her head. “I don’t know, I don’t …” It wasn’t an idle protest; all her doubts brimmed in her eyes.
“We fit, Foley. We might never have met. We should never have fallen for each other, but against everything sensible, we fit, and I’ll do anything to help you see that, to win your trust again.”
“How can I love you and be wary of you at the same time?”
“How can you not? I’ve made you that way.”
“We’d need to do something about that. We’d need a more,” her hands flapped as she searched for the word. “I don’t know—traditional courtship. I’m not sure what normal for us would mean.”
It meant the chance to make remake his life, to make a home, to be extraordinary together. “It’s running on the beach. It’s dodging storms. It’s eating together, and talking and sleeping together.” It was everything they’d already tried out and so much more. “It would be love.”
She took a shuddering breath. “You never said you loved me until today, and you put me in a mood not to listen.”
She wouldn’t be here if she didn’t think it was love binding them through all the thin
gs that kept them separated. “I’ll make a mantra of it and say it obsessively. I love you, I love you, I love you. However you need me to, wherever you need me to.”
“And if I wanted you simply for a friend?”
Oh no, that wasn’t happening. “Then I lied.”
