He shifted in his seat, guilt tightening his shoulders.
It was his fault. All of it.
He’d come back to Scotland believing he could press the reset button and move on.
Walking into the drawing room at Lamington on Burns Night he’d been full of anger and resentment. He’d wanted to throw his success in Nia’s face, to exorcise the ghost of the woman who had cast him aside but never left his thoughts.
Or his heart.
Only of course it had never once occurred to him during the last seven years that he still loved her.
And she loved him. Unconditionally.
He knew that for a fact.
The tension in his shoulders was spilling down his back now.
His heart was suddenly pounding so hard it was blocking out the sound of the rotors.
For so long he had held everything in. Directing his life as though it was a movie, treating his past like something that could be edited or touched up or just left on the cutting room floor.
Yesterday he had told Nia the ugly, shocking details of his life and afterwards she hadn’t pushed him away.
She had only held him closer.
Grimacing, he stretched out his neck. His back felt as if it was on a rack. He needed to stop, move around, shift this tension.
Thankfully he’d checked out a couple of helipads en-route and called ahead. The nearest was only around ten minutes away, and twelve minutes later, he brought the helicopter down onto the landing pad with textbook smoothness.
Switching off the rotors, he unbuckled and climbed out of the cockpit. A light wind was blowing, and the sun felt warm on his face.
He had stopped to stretch his body, to release his mind, but inexorably his thoughts returned to that moment when he’d told Nia about his childhood.
Seven years ago he’d pushed her to prove her love, demanding that she leave everything and everyone behind for him. And then when, quite understandably, she had panicked, he hadn’t bothered to listen or stay around long enough to talk about her reasons.
He had run away.
That had been understandable too, given how many people had made him feel he only had a walk-on part in his own life.
But yesterday Nia had offered her love unprompted.
And he was still running.
Still running—only this time he was running from a rejection that hadn’t happened. It had been a hypothetical rejection of their future.
That didn’t just make no sense. It was crazy.
He swore softly. He was such an idiot.
There were multiple awards back at his house in LA. As an award-winning film director he was supposed to be all-seeing. And yet he had been so focused on outrunning his fears that he’d missed the obvious, glaring truth.
He didn’t need to outrun them.
It was light that drove out the darkness—not more darkness.
Remembering Cam’s face at the Picture Palace, he felt his eyes blur.
Love blotted out rage and resentment.