CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

IT'SJUSTREJECTION. Pure and simple. She says one thing, does the opposite and I'm too stunned to even think. I just respond from my gut. ‘You've really had enough.'

‘I—'

‘Fine, go, then.'

Because I don't want to hear it. I can't. I'm just...incandescent. I can't blink away the red mist. I can't breathe through it. I've let her in and I shouldn't have and I need her gone.

‘Go. Wherever you want. I don't care. Just go now.'

She looks hurt. What, did she expect me to beg her to stay?

I don't need to be rejected again. Be told twice that I'm not who or what she wants. No, thanks.

Her eyes fill. I cannot handle tears. I step back jerkily.

‘Dain...'

There is zero point in continuing this conversation a second longer.

‘You want to be free,' I snap.

People do this. They push you away right when they shouldn't. When you think everything is finally okay. But it's never okay. Because they don't love you. That's the biggest, cruellest lie of all and for her to use that one on me is unforgivable. And I can't hold back the bitterness. I shake my head—rejection of my own. ‘You don't love me and you never should have said that—'

‘I do.' She stands tall and pale. ‘But you don't believe me. Because you don't trust me.'

‘Do you blame me for that?'

She lies. I know it and she knows I know it.

‘I'm not lying about this,' she says softly. ‘But you can't believe me because you don't feel worthy of love.'

I'm stunned to silence as she stares at me with intensity in her eyes.

In the end I can only mutter weakly, ‘And you do?'

‘I didn't before,' she admits huskily. ‘But I do now. Now I know I should and could have it. So can you. But the thing is, you don't want that from me. And I didn't mean to make things even more awkward for you.'

Awkward. She thinks she's made things awkward. She's made everything utterly unbearable.

I walk out of the room, unable to say anything more. I walk out of the house, unable to stand anything any more. I just walk out and keep walking. I do the one thing I promised I wouldn't. I leave them.

But she's already given up on me. She's decided that this isn't going to work.

I don't like quitting. I don't like failure. But I'm so angry with her. I want to smash something. Instead I storm down the road and head to the river.

I already know relationships don't last but she's ending ours way before time. Why? Because she loves me?

It's laughable. The worst, cruellest joke.

I don't want to think. I can't. It's too painful. But with every step I take away from the house her words echo in my head. She's ripped me open and poured salt onto the wounds.

My parents excelled in playing out their personal issues publicly for point-scoring in their war. They used me over and over in that way. My parents also kept the most important thing secret from me—together with my grandfather they kept his terminal cancer diagnosis from me.

But maybe Talia didn't mean to do that. She looked horrified when I accused her of going public and that was when she pushed me away totally. It was for my benefit, she argued. For my freedom.

I try to remember—try to work out where it went wrong tonight. I stood with her at the start, holding her hand. She was quiet but charming. I believed her capable. I thought I could walk away. I thought she had the security. I was completely wrong.

In that moment at the party with Chloe, Talia was trying to protect herself. She was wounded and she exploded. Which meant she was deep in an emotional storm—like the night she blew up at me when she thought I'd thrown out Lukas's toy rabbit.

I suspected she felt she wasn't a good enough fit for me or my lifestyle—but I thought I'd reassured her. Clearly I failed and something must've happened to upset her.

The crowd. Chloe. Maybe me.

Talia's always wanted to protect her sister—not wanting Ava to feel guilty that she had to work so hard to help her. I have the horrible feeling she's trying to do the same for me. Because apparently she loves me.

I suck in a scalding breath because I know she lies. But the truth is so do I. I keep my true feelings close so they can't be used against me. I don't let many people into my life on an intimate level. It's always seemed pragmatic. Really it's cowardice.

Talia used to be a coward too. She lied most to those she's closest to. To the people she doesn't want to hurt and who she doesn't want to hurt her—her sister especially. But she promised not to lie to me no matter what. She promised not to hold back any part of the truth from me either.

It hurts that she has.

But her declaration of love didn't feel like a lie. It felt like a truth tormenting her. Something she could no longer hold back. And it was that pain that I reacted to—as fundamentally, instinctively, emotionally as I always do. I pushed back on it. Pushed it away. Her away.

In Talia's world she really thought she was doing me a favour but I still can hardly make sense of it. Because if she really loved me, why would she want to walk out on me? How could she? Surely if she loved me she could never leave me? Because I realise now—stupidly and terrifyingly—that I could never leave her.

I stop walking and try to still my racing thoughts because I'm struggling to think straight. I can't ever seem to stop and think straight. Not about her. My rational brain is never bloody involved—only the animal brain is. The lust part. The fearful part. And it's always just pushed me to action—emotionally driven action that I can barely control. Mostly I've been compelled to reach out and touch her. To take her in my arms. I've been possessive as hell from the moment I first saw her.

I want her to be mine. Just as Lukas is mine.

I could never leave him. I love him. But she knows that latter. She understands it. But she doesn't know the first. My heart squeezes and breathing becomes really bloody difficult. Talia's never had stability. Ever. She needs it more than anyone. I thought she needed it to be tangible—the house, the workspace, the life insurance. I tried to let her know that no matter what happens she and Lukas will be okay. They'll always have everything they need. But she wants more. The stability she really craves is emotional.

Talia has long hidden her needs from the people she loves. Hid her problems from everyone as best she could. She tried to manage alone for years—as if she didn't think she had the right to openly ask for help or comfort or anything she really needs.

But that night in the gondola she didn't hide from me. She admitted her fears and she voiced her needs and I gave her what she wanted. What she needed. Which was simply myself. My time. My body. My complete attention.

I'd do it again. I always will. I will give her anything and everything she asks of me. What's mine is hers.

Iam hers.

But tonight she asked and I didn't hear her. She told me she loved me but she didn't want anything else from me. Nothing else. She tried to minimise herself. She shrank in front of me because she didn't think that I could ever offer her the same.

That's not the Talia I want to see. Ever. I want angry Talia. Feisty Talia. Resilient Talia who does what she wants and needs to. She can't shrink. She's my whole world and I do not want her vanishing out of it. Ever.

I want her to say it again. I don't want her keeping anything back from me. I want her to trust me. I ache for that. But admitting that I want her. Need her. That's scary.

But she did things for those she loves too—she helped Ava. She protected Ava by not wanting her to worry.

What she did tonight told me so much—I just needed the space to think it through. She pre-emptively pushed me away because she thinks I don't love her. Because she thinks I'm with her only out of a sense of duty. It isn't duty. It's an undeniable ache that's assuaged only when I'm close to her. When I laugh with her. When I lie in bed with her. When I'm near her.

It's heartache. And I'm in trouble.