‘You could do everything you suggested, move here, be a part of the boys’ lives, but you could buy your own house and live there,’ she said, twisting her fingers together, finding it hard to believe she wasn’t throwing herself into his arms and kissing his face.
Angus looked as if he couldn’t believe it either and he was starting to realise that she wasn’t blown away by his suggestion. Thadie caught the confusion in his eyes, tinged with a hint of what-the-hell?
‘Are you saying that you don’t want me to move in?’ Angus demanded, confusion deepening his Scottish accent.
‘I’d love you to move in, Angus—’
‘Then why are we dancing around this? Why aren’t we using the precious moments before I have to leave to work out the future instead of having this crazy conversation that I don’t completely understand?’
She bit her lip, wishing he’d wise up.
Angus threw his hands up in the air. ‘Do you or do you not want me to move in, Thadie?’ he asked, making an obvious effort to keep his tone reasonable.
‘I do, but not because of the reasons you stated.’
He pushed both his hands into his hair and tugged. ‘I thought youwanteda two-parent family, a father for your boys. You were prepared to marry someone you didn’t love to give them that but when I offer it to you, you are baulking.’
Yes, she was. ‘I am.’
‘Why?’
Okay, it was time to put her heart on the line. ‘Because I didn’t love Clyde, Angus. He couldn’t hurt or disappoint me. He didn’t touch my emotions. You...well, you touch all of them.’
‘I...what?’
She released a laugh that held no amusement. ‘I am so in love with you, Angus. I tried not to be, but I didn’t succeed. And I thought I could do the part-time relationship with you, having you drop into my life, turn it upside down and then leave. But I’ve been fooling myself. I don’t think I can. I think I’d eventually begin to resent that you couldn’t spend more time with me, be with me more.’
‘I’m offering to do that!’
‘But you are not offering me commitment, Angus. Or love.’
‘It’s too early to talk love, even if I understood what it means! But I do understand friendship, sexual heat, liking each other.’ He shrugged, looking bewildered. ‘But if you need me to marry you, I suppose I’ll have to.’
Her heart cracked, splintered in two and dropped to her toes, as heavy as a steel ingot.
‘I don’t want you to offer to marry me because you think it’s whatIwant, Angus.’
She took two paces, stopped, and took two more, needing to work out some of the energy building up inside her. ‘I’ve realised that I don’t need to marry anyone, that I can do life on my own, if I have to,’ she explained.
‘I am a complete person with or without a man. I’d only marry or live with a man if I knew, with every fibre of my being, that the man in question adored me, was head-over-heels, crazy in love with me, someone who couldn’t live his life without me.’
She waited for him to say something, anything, but he just stared at her, his eyes more blue than green, dejected and annoyed. He hated this emotional stuff, hated that it wasn’t regimented, that there weren’t rules and regs that defined it. To him it was simple, they enjoyed each other in and out of bed, and they wanted the best for their sons, which was a two-parent, present family.
But living with a man who didn’t love her would make her miserable. And, even if they could go back to simply sleeping together again, she knew this conversation had changed the dynamic between them.
She wanted more, he couldn’t give it...
Yes, she was hurt, gutted, but at least he’d disappointed her early, and she hadn’t had the earth beneath her entirely washed away. She’d be okay...no, that was a stretch. She’d find a way to function.
She was a mum, she had no choice.
It took all her guts, but she said the words, words that would hurt her but would, ultimately, protect their friendship and the boys.
‘We need to call it, Angus, to stop sleeping together, to find another way forward,’ she said. ‘Our boys should be our highest priority, our only priority.’
‘I don’t understand this, any of this,’ Angus muttered, his voice growly with banked-down emotion. ‘I have done everything possible to show you that I care about you. I’ve criss-crossed goddamn continents for you. I gave up something I loved for you! Are you saying no?’
Gave up something he loved? What did he mean by that? She could ask for an explanation, and then they’d argue some more. They could go back and forth, slicing at each other with words as sharp as rapiers, but nothing would change the fact that she loved, and he didn’t.