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“But Hamish wasn’t the same man. He was in pain. His personality changed. He couldn’t get the kind of job he wanted, we were always short of money, and he needed a lot of help day to day. When we learned Rafe was making it as a composer, Hamish grew bitter.”
He’d trapped her with love and guilt and obligation, with the tyranny of his physical needs. He needed so much of her help and yet he resented it. He became as rigid and inflexible as the wheelchair he had to use at first and as unreasonable as the wasted muscles in his body. At least her father had never been a mean drunk, just a man who couldn’t cope with the death of his wife.
“He stopped loving me, and he started blaming me for what happened to him.”
“I don’t understand how you survived this.” Damon’s voice was edge and point, all his smoothness roughed over by shock. He knew the worst of it now. She could afford to look at his handsome face without his expression triggering tears.
“Jeffrey once tried to teach me Chaos Theory. I didn’t get it until after that night.”
“The butterfly effect. A small change in one state that results in a larger one in another.”
“That’s right. I was the butterfly. I was the party organiser and the cheer squad leader. I was the friend collector and the chief mischief-maker and the fixer of things. Jeffrey was the chaos. Did you know butterflies don’t live very long?”
Damon nodded. “A few days, a month.”
“Jeffrey didn’t stab me but he took my confidence, he taught me to doubt myself, to be fearful, to hesitate. He changed my outlook, my personality, my whole life, because of what he didn’t do to me, and what he did to Hamish because of me. I’m not a butterfly anymore. I don’t have the grace and ease I once had and I never will again.”
“Jesus, Georgia.” Damon flattened both hands on the table in front of him. The hands that’d made her feel alive and young again last night and beautiful this morning, because they’d touched her with desire. She wanted that feeling again. But not at the expense of the truth, and she didn’t think he’d want her when he knew what her disability was.
“I came home to make a fresh start, to learn who I am when I’m not the woman who trusted Jeffrey, who got Hamish hurt. Who stayed too long in a loveless marriage out of obligation. You weren’t supposed to happen.”
She laid her hand alongside Damon’s. She didn’t dare touch him because if he rejected her, the sting might last forever. “I wasn’t supposed to meet a man like you, feel so much for you so quickly.”
“You tried to send me packing.”
She nodded. “I did.” Irresistible was as much a part of Damon’s nature as indecisive was hers, post-Jeffrey, post-Hamish.
“And now?”
“I had to tell you because I needed you to know why I run hot and cold when I’m with you. It has nothing to do with you being blind and everything to do with me being uncertain. I should never have married Hamish. That’s not what either of us needed. His parents tried to talk us out of it, but he needed me and I needed to work through my guilt. We were the perfect wrong fit. When he refused counselling, when he got abusive, I should’ve left him, but I thought I deserved his anger. I know that’s twisted.”
“You didn’t deserve any of this fucked up shit.” Damon scrubbed his face. “Sorry, but I don’t have more eloquent words to give you.”
“I don’t know what it’s like to be in a normal relationship. I don’t know how to love a man without being his nurse and his punching bag. You being blind made alarm bells ring in my head.”
He dropped his hands from his face. “Are they still ringing?”
Yes, but for an entirely different reason. Bells could ring for joy as well as to signal danger.
“You don’t have to be my nurse. You don’t have to love me. We can enjoy each other’s company as friends.”
Could she be his friend and deny how much she wanted his kisses? “Is that what you want?”
“I don’t want to push you into a corner. I don’t want to scare you, rush you or manipulate you, and I’m guilty of all that. I get I’m not who you need.”
“I thought I knew what I needed, and then I met you.”
“You need someone to love you, not for who you once were, not for who you’d like to be, but for who you are right now: shy and sexy, capable and tentative and so very brave. Did you know butterflies can see colour; red, green and yellow?”
Was he offering to love her, to be what she needed? “I didn’t know that. Are you making that up, like sexing a goldfish?” She hoped that might make him smile, but he shook his head as if her attempt at humour was at odds with the whole world.
“It’s true, butterflies see colour like I see you, Georgia.”
He’d see her in blurred fragments that didn’t jigsaw together cleanly because that’s how she saw herself.
“I see the red of your courage, the yellow of your pain. I see the green of your fresh start.”
He stared at her, his hands spread on the table, tension cording his neck. If he could see her he’d know he’d made her tear up with his tender talk of butterflies. She squeezed her eyes shut to stop them falling, to send the tide back out, taking the memories with it like garbage left on the shore.
