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‘Someone has to expect more,’ he said roughly. ‘How else can I be the king that Isavere was promised? That was the king that my father brought me up to be. That my mothergave her lifefor. If I’m not hard on myself, if I stop trying...’ He tried to keep hold of the anger that kept welling up inside him, a hot, depthless rage he couldn’t contain. ‘Then what good am I?’
Freddie took an abrupt step forward and put her hands on his chest, a deep compassion in her eyes. ‘You don’t need to be good. You don’t need to be anything at all. You just need to be you, Augustine.’
‘Yes, me.’ He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘A man who can’t do what a six-year-old child can do. A king who can’t read or write. Who can’t even control his own emotions. My father would be spinning in his grave if he knew what I’d become, and my mother—’ He stopped, biting down hard on the words so they wouldn’t reveal the depths of his own self-loathing.
‘Your mother loved you. She gave up her life for youbecauseshe loved you.’ Freddie’s eyes glowed with a sudden, fierce light. ‘And she’d love you no matter what you are. Don’t you understand that? And so would your father.’
‘How would you know?’ he said harshly. ‘You never met either of them.’
‘No, but I’m going to be a mother soon and I know that all I care about is that my child grows up happy. That’sall.’ She stared up at him, the force of her conviction burning in her expression. ‘Tell me. If you were your father or your mother, would you be disappointed with the man you’ve become? Or would they think that you were brave and strong, and amazing for battling such terrible things and coming out the end still alive. Still a king. Still a man to be proud of.’
No, he couldn’t think of those things. He couldn’t. Because how would they be proud of the man he’d become when he wasn’t? And he wasn’t.
He had nothing but the dogged intent to try and keep trying.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘None of it matters. And none of it changes anything. I’m still the man that I am and that’s all I’ll ever be.’
‘Yes,’ she said insistently. ‘And that’s the man I fell in love with, don’t you see? I don’t want you to be another man. I want the one standing in front of me.’
He didn’t understand what more she wanted from him. He’d told her what he could give her and that was it. There was nothing more. ‘And you have him,’ he said roughly. ‘It’s not my fault you want more than I can give.’
A bright, sharp ripple of pain crossed her features, and he could feel it in himself too. As if he’d stabbed a knife into his own heart.
Her hands dropped from his chest and she took a step back from him. Her chin lifted, a steely determination hardening her expression. ‘It’s not your fault, no. But I still want it. And I’m tired of pretending. I’m tired of pretending I don’t feel what I feel. That I don’t love you with every part of me. And I’m tired of pretending that I don’t want more too.’ There was no softness in her dark eyes now, they were sharp as obsidian. ‘Which means I can’t marry you, Augustine. I don’t want that to be my life. And I don’t want that to be yours either.’
The pressure inside him mounted, a crushing, agonising weight. ‘What does my life matter? Surely what matters is that our child has their mother and their father. You can’t deny them that, Freddie.’
‘I’m not denying them that. You’ll still have your child, Augustine, I promise. But I can’t marry you. I don’t want a marriage where you end up resenting me and I end up resenting you, because that’s what will happen. And I don’t want a marriage based on a lie either. That’s not good for us and it’s not good for our child.’
Every part of him was tense, his muscles aching, the pressure in his head getting worse.
She’s right. You know she is.
She was. And he couldn’t force her to marry him if she didn’t want to. He was supposed to make her happy, after all. Except...it felt as if he was losing something he didn’t know he wanted, and he didn’t know how to hold on to it.
He couldn’t love her back. He couldn’t.
Love was the burden he couldn’t bear, not when he was carrying so many other things already. It would crush him. It would make his anger more intense, his fear even more extreme. His emotions were already in as tight a grip as he could have on them, and love... Love made everything worse.
‘I can’t,’ he forced out, because she deserved the truth from him at least. Even if it was a truth she didn’t want. ‘I can’t give you what you want. My emotions are already hard for me to contain and love... It would make everything a thousand times harder. The mood swings, the expectations... Everything, Freddie. I can’t do it. I just can’t.’
Her gaze was sharp and yet there were tears in her eyes, too, he could see them gleaming, and one escaped, sliding down her cheek, glittering like a tiny diamond. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I know.’ She half lifted a hand as if to touch him, then dropped it back at her side. ‘I’m sorry, Augustine. I didn’t want to put this on you. But I just don’t see how we can make each other happy. And more than anything, I want happiness for you.’
There was a tight feeling in his chest. So tight it was as if he couldn’t breathe. ‘Marrying you would make me happy,’ he forced out.
‘Not like this it wouldn’t.’ She stepped forward abruptly, went up on her toes and brushed her mouth over his. And he knew it was goodbye. He knew it. His hands almost went to her hips to hold her, grip her tightly against him and never let her go.
But he didn’t. Because she was right, wasn’t she?
She loved him and he wouldn’t love her back, and that would only make her unhappy. And she’d had so much unhappiness in her life already, she didn’t need any more.
So he didn’t reach for her.
He let her step back and slowly turn and walk away.
And he kept on standing there under the lights as the food on the blanket slowly went cold, the ice in the bucket turning to water.
As his heart went cold inside his chest, and eventually froze over entirely.
