‘Nia—’ He caught her wrist. ‘Don’t go. Please. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that—’
Except he did.
It was always the same whenever he thought about his family. The same fear—the fear that wrapped itself around him and turned his words into sharp, jagged rocks in his throat so that speaking them was impossible.
Only if he didn’t say something now Nia would leave, and more than anything he didn’t want her to leave.
‘Please. Don’t go, Nia,’ he repeated. ‘It’s just difficult talking about it…about them.’
She was looking at him warily, but she had stopped moving, and he felt a surge of relief. He hadn’t pushed her too far.
‘Why is it difficult?’
The dining room was awash with afternoon sun, and her face was illuminated in the soft golden light. He felt his stomach clench. She was still angry, but more than that she was worried about him.
‘I haven’t talked about them for a bit,’ he said. Make that ever, he corrected silently. ‘And when I do I get lost in it—I let it get out of control in my head.’
The need to talk to her, to tell the truth, was pressing down on him. But how could he explain the threadbare patchwork of his childhood?
The Elgins ticked every box. They were rich and titled and Nia could trace her ancestors back nearly four hundred years.
‘My family is not like yours, Nia. It’s messy and complicated—’
Her fingers tightened around his. ‘All families are messy and complicated.’
He shook his head, his mouth twisting. She had no idea, and he didn’t want her to know either.
Okay, her parents were difficult, snobbish people, but the only time she had experienced the random cruelty that life could throw at people had been thanks to him.
He wasn’t about to make his pain part of her life.
He couldn’t do that to her.
‘Not yours. Your family is perfect.’
There was a longer pause.
‘It’s not. It’s not perfect.’ She took a breath. ‘That’s why I broke up with you. I panicked. I thought anything was better than—’
‘Than what?’
For a moment she seemed to be fumbling with something inside her head, and he knew she was deciding what to say and what to conceal, balancing an equation. He knew because he did it himself, and the fact that he and Nia should have that in common wrenched at him.
‘My aunt and uncle. They were exactly the ages we were when we first met when they got married. They were so in love.’
Her mouth curved up into a smile at the memory.
‘I was thirteen—just at that age when you start to question things, to look at life with your own eyes, and they seemed perfect to me. Catherine was so pretty, and Richard was an artist. A really good one. But he wasn’t making any money so he gave it up.’
She breathed out unsteadily.
‘They used to argue all the time, but now they just lead separate lives. I think sometimes they hate each other…’ Her voice stumbled. ‘I didn’t want that for us. Only I didn’t know how to explain without betraying them.’
So it hadn’t just been a generic fear about their mismatched backgrounds. She had already seen first-hand what happened when two people put their dreams on hold…when fantasy met reality head-on. She had witnessed her aunt and uncle’s slow, tortuous falling out of love.
‘Are they still together?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘They live in Dubai.’