‘What?’ she asked, her eyes never leaving the road.
‘What what?’
‘Why do you keep looking at me?’
He could lie, but what would be the point when she could so clearly read him like a book?
‘Just reflecting on how strange this is. How we got here.’
‘Bad life choices, I suppose,’ she said with a wry grin. ‘And Mormor,’ she added, with a glance at the ring on her finger.
‘Bad life choices and my Swedish grandmother. I wonder how many other people out there can so accurately pinpoint the source of all their problems.’
‘I think mine could be summed up as “daddy issues”,’ Lara said. ‘I hate being a cliché.’
Jannes nodded. It was hard not to agree with that. ‘We should probably have a lot of therapy.’
‘Probably,’ she said, but the humour had gone from her voice.
‘Hey.’ Jannes reached over, his hand just brushing over hers where it rested on the gear stick before she pulled it away. ‘I’m sorry. Too far?’
‘No, it’s fine. I just think you’re probably right.’
‘I am?’
She nodded, her lip caught between her teeth, her eyes fixed ahead. ‘I don’t know, but I’m pretty angry, and some of the things you said maybe make me wonder if I’m letting that old cheating, lying bastard have more influence over my decisions than he deserves.’
‘Decisions like agreeing to this?’ He gestured between them and noted her knuckles were white on the steering wheel.
‘Possibly.’
‘Well, you know I support you, don’t you? I always will.’
Lara glanced over at him and gave him a smile he couldn’t quite interpret. ‘I know. Maybe we should go together. Is fake couple therapy a thing?’
‘I think it’s best to keep to one set of daddy issues per session.’
She gave a wicked smile that for some reason set him on edge. ‘So we are going to talk about how being sent to boarding school at seven is at the root of your commitment issues.’
He shook his head. ‘Nope, we definitely aren’t going to talk about that.’ He threw her a sharp look. ‘What could have given you that idea?’
‘So it’s just me who has to do the soul-searching? God forbid we both work through our issues so we can form healthy adult relationships.’
‘Hey, maybe we should save this conversation for when we’ve had a screaming row with my grandmother,’ Jannes said, letting his head fall back against the headrest.
‘She scares you.’
‘She doesn’t scare me; she’s just...immovable. It’s exhausting.’
‘Exhausting and immovable. I can’t imagine how difficult that must be for you,’ she said pointedly.
He rolled his eyes at the sarcasm in her voice, but had to concede that she had a point. He couldn’t support her decision to get therapy without thinking that he probably needed a healthy dose of it himself. It wasn’t right that he’d torched every relationship that he had been in. It was one thing not to want a romantic relationship. It was another to want one as desperately as he wanted Lara, and be certain that he couldn’t even try without hurting her.
CHAPTER TWELVE
LARA REACHED ACROSS and squeezed his hand as they climbed the steps to Mormor’s apartment building. ‘Remember,’ she said, ‘she can’t actually force us to get married.’
Jannes nodded, and she recognised the tensing of the muscles in his game face. ‘We go in there, explain that she’s out of line. She’s gone too far and she has to stop interfering in our lives like this.’