‘But you don’t know, Lara. Because if you did know how much that hurt me, you would never have done it.’ This time, she reached for his hands, both of them, and he had to take a step away.
‘I’ve apologised for that. I want to make it right.’
‘But this isn’t something that you can make right. Because it’s not about what you did; it’s about how I reacted. There’s something wrong with me, and I’ve accepted that.’
Her face was suddenly so full of pity that he had to look away. ‘You can’t believe that, Jannes. Please. There’s nothing wrong with you.’
He shook his head. ‘There is. I promise you. I felt something physically break when you walked away from me. And I understand why you did it—you were upset and hurting, it was a completely normal way for someone to behave in that situation. I’m not angry with you. But none of that changes how I felt watching you leave.
‘There’s only so many times I can do that to myself, Lara. And I know what will happen—I know who I am. If I’m scared of you leaving me, I’ll leave instead. I won’t want to, and I’ll tell myself that this time it’ll be different, but I’ll find excuses to be away longer and longer and eventually just never come home. And it will be everything you’ve ever feared coming true. Just like yesterday was for me.’
She dragged him over to a bench and sat looking at him until he was uncomfortable under her scrutiny. ‘I don’t think you’d do that to me,’ she said, her voice so sincere that he nearly believed her.
‘I know that I will.’
‘Well, I know you better than anyone else on this planet and I say that you’re wrong. And I’m not saying this because I want to be with you. I’m putting that aside and being completely objective here.’
He had to laugh at that; whether it was true or not, it was a bold claim.
‘I appreciate your faith in me, Lara, but you can’t know me better than I know myself.’
‘I can trust you more than you trust yourself. That much is clear. I already do.’
She folded her arms, and he knew that he wasn’t going to persuade her that she was wrong. Well, that was fine. He didn’t need to persuade her. A relationship didn’t exist without both parties being in it, and he had already decided he was out.
‘I’m not negotiating here, Lara. I’m telling you. I’m sorry to be blunt, but I think we both need that. No more fake dating. No more fake engagement.’
‘And your sponsorship? Spencer?’ Of course her first thought was his career.
‘They’ve already signed the contract; the launch is in a month. They can’t take it back now. I’ll be a disappointment to them, of course, but that can’t be helped.’
Her expression turned hard, determined. ‘You are not a disappointment, Jannes,’ she said. ‘I’m going to the launch. You can pretend to date me or marry me or not to know me, if you want, but I’m going to be there to support you either way.’
* * *
‘I want us to still be friends,’ he said, and Lara nodded, because what else could she do? She didn’t want to lose him completely, but she knew that their friendship was never going back to what it had been before. How could it possibly, when her feelings had changed so much?
‘I can’t not have you in my life, Lara. I can’t look at you and wonder what will happen if I mess up. If you want something and I’m not able to give it to you and you walk away again. You mean too much to me to take a risk like that.’
‘But think about if it worked, Jannes. I can’t promise that it will. We both know that. But just...what if it did? Because I love you—that’s not a secret, and I know that you love me too. But there are all these other ways of loving each other that we’ve only just begun to explore, and I think that if we were brave, and decided to go for it, there’s something really special there. Something that I don’t know if we would ever find with anyone else.’
‘I’m not saying no because I think I’m going to find something better with someone else.’
‘But you are saying no?’
‘I’m saying that I feel the same way. But the risks are too great, Lara. These last couple of days with things not being right between us—it’s been awful. I don’t want to go through that again.’
‘So we make a commitment to each other—we promise that, whatever happens, we stay in one another’s lives.’
‘And what happens when we can’t keep our promises?’ Jannes asked, his voice gravelly.
She didn’t have an answer to that and, honestly, she didn’t know whether she was relieved or sad. Because he had made up his mind, that much was clear. And she had only just started to sort through her own issues, the things that had been stopping her from committing. She couldn’t solve Jannes’s problems as well.
She squeezed his hand for a second, before letting it drop. Just for a minute there, she’d been able to imagine her life if this had all worked out, and it was something shining and brilliant, and now completely out of reach.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
JANNES SAT ON the deck of his yacht, the water calm as a millpond around him. If there had been even a breath of wind then there would be something for him to do, but still and calm like this, there was nothing to do for now but sit and think.