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“We’re not in the world either.” She watched his hand to avoid his eyes. This conversation scared her more than Will’s dark moods did. She knew he cared for her, knew he loved her, but not what that meant to him. Maybe not what it meant to her.
He gave up on the knee and stretched his leg out, hooking it around her, using it to pull her and the sheet towards him. “Keep talking.”
She kept her hands away from him, clasped in her lap, an attempt to centre her feelings when they were already on the run. “I’m foolishly, irrevocably, poisonously in love with you. I want you in my life, and I don’t know if that’s what you want too, or if this is some kind of game to you still.”
“Ah gorgeous, it’s no game.” Will put his hand, to hers; the broken one, plaster-free since his swim, but paler than the rest of him, with a new scar from a pin inserted in his middle knuckle. “I’m not sure what I can give you.”
“You’ve already given me so much.”
He gave a bitter laugh and squeezed her hand. “Yeah, I got you sacked, threatened, and for a variation on that theme, threatened with the sack. I’m fucking brilliant boyfriend material.”
“Stop.” She brought their clasped hands to her chest.
He leant in closer. “Darcy, listen to me. I am hopelessly, irretrievably, indefinitely in love with you too.” Her breath caught. This made it real like his other signals, however strong, had failed to. “I’ve never known a woman as strong, insightful and dangerous to my health.” He put his other hand over her mouth to stop a protest. “I mean that in a good way.” He took his hand away. “My health isn’t good without you.” He grimaced in frustration. “I’m not explaining myself well.” He cupped her check. “You’re essential to me.”
She wanted to dissolve. To wrap her arms and legs around him and meld her skin with his.
“But I don’t know what I can give you. I have responsibilities I’ve been neglecting. I don’t want you waiting on me. You have a career you care about, you’re a big deal, and your life is out in the world.”
She closed her eyes as her vision of happiness broke apart. “You’re dumping me?”
He took her by the shoulders and gave her a little shake. “What part of hopelessly, irretrievably and indefinitely didn’t you get? What I don’t have is availability.”
Oh. Relief was a soothing glue. “You’re going back to Shanghai. It’s not that far and we could meet in the middle.”
“Would you be satisfied with a long distance affair?”
Long distance meant time apart, but if it that’s what it would take to have him in her life, she’d take separation for togetherness. But she didn’t get a chance to respond.
“I couldn’t be. If I commit it’s for the whole box and dice. I want the woman I’m with to harass me about working too long, and lose it with me for not paying her enough attention. I want her to resent me for being hard to live with, and keep me on my toes to make her happy. I’m arrogant enough to want all that and I want a shot at a family of my own, despite my bloody lousy beginnings. And you don’t.”
Oh God.
“You told me in Pudong you believed in the next headline, not forever, and you didn’t see a picket fence and little pattering feet in your future.”
“I...” With all that’d happened, he’d remembered that.
“You told me you didn’t want to be judged for being a daughter or a sister or a mother, and I surmise from that—a wife.”
Oh God, oh God. In that cold room with that hot, challenging stranger she’d been trying to hold on to her identity. “And if I remember rightly you told me I was a selfish cow, and you seduced me.”
He grinned. “And I’d do it again, but with better room temperature. Do you still believe those things?”
Did she? That felt like a different time, a different woman. She wrapped her arms around his neck, rested her forehead on his. “You’re going to break my heart, aren’t you, Will?”
He nudged against her nose. “Not if you break mine first.”
“I’m confused.”
“No you’re not. You know who you are and what’s important to you and we’ll see each other again.”
“You want me to do the interview?”
“Darcy, I want you to be the woman I love.”
Her tea was cold, his hands were warm. His words were seared on her skin, a form of tattoo. He wouldn’t be the boyfriend you lazed around on Sundays with the paper, and argued with over the stacking the dishwasher. But however, wherever, some way—he was going to be in her life. They’d work it out, like they’d worked out how to irritate and please each other, how to challenge and save each other.
When she left him looking sleep-tousled on the verandah next morning, before the heat of the day came on, she wasn’t frightened of their future any more. They’d make it up as they went along.
