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He recoils. ‘You what?’
I exhale and it all just explodes from me. ‘I love you! I’m so in love with you.’ I can’t blame this on caffeine jitters. I promised I’d never lie to him. That I’d never hold back on the whole truth. So there’s no bluffing. No attempt to pretend. There’s just truth. ‘And I don’t want to be in love with you but it’s only getting worse.’
In the next second I can’t believe I told him that. So passionately. So painfully.
The horrified look on his face tells me everything. He’s so gorgeous but beneath that charisma, that charming smile, there’s a man who’s been deeply hurt. Who doesn’t feel worthy of love. Who doesn’t want me to love him. Who doesn’t believe me.
‘You’re so in love with me you’re trying to enable my cheating on you?’ He’s bitterly sardonic. ‘You’re so in love with me you can barely take a thing from me?’
‘I don’t care about your money. I never have. I only care about you.’ I see the flicker in his eyes. ‘You’re more than money. If you had none you’d still be fascinating to me.’
He shoots me a cynical look that’s devastating.
‘You don’t believe that I’m in love with you.’ It appals me to realise he doesn’t feel valuable.
‘Words versus actions, Talia. You have to admit you’ve a very weird way of showing your supposed love.’
I grit my teeth. ‘I want to leave you enough space so you can live your life fully however you want to.’
‘You mean so I can sleep around.’
‘I mean be free.’
‘That’s what you want for yourself,’ he says sharply. ‘You’re trying to give me what it is that you actually want. You want to be free of me.’
He’s right. I do. Because I don’t want this pain—I can’t live with it now and it’s only been an hour since I really realised. It’s only going to grow. From the look on his face I know I’m doing the right thing. He doesn’t believe that I’m in love with him or that I want what’s best for him.
Maybe he thinks I’m trying to manipulate him in some way and maybe this is coming out of the blue for him, but it only reinforces that this is right. What did he think was going to happen? That we would continue to sleep together just casually? Would his interest wane and he just not want me as much any more? I can’t wait around for that to happen. I know he loves Lukas and wants to be in Lukas’s life. Always. And he will be.
So I lift my head and answer with raw honesty. ‘Yes. I do. I want to be free of you.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Dain
IT’S JUST REJECTION. Pure and simple. She says one thing, does the opposite and I’m too stunned to even think. I just respond from my gut. ‘You’ve really had enough.’
‘I—’
‘Fine, go, then.’
Because I don’t want to hear it. I can’t. I’m just...incandescent. I can’t blink away the red mist. I can’t breathe through it. I’ve let her in and I shouldn’t have and I need her gone.
‘Go. Wherever you want. I don’t care. Just go now.’
She looks hurt. What, did she expect me to beg her to stay?
I don’t need to be rejected again. Be told twice that I’m not who or what she wants. No, thanks.
Her eyes fill. I cannot handle tears. I step back jerkily.
‘Dain...’
There is zero point in continuing this conversation a second longer.
‘You want to be free,’ I snap.
People do this. They push you away right when they shouldn’t. When you think everything is finally okay. But it’s never okay. Because they don’t love you. That’s the biggest, cruellest lie of all and for her to use that one on me is unforgivable. And I can’t hold back the bitterness. I shake my head—rejection of my own. ‘You don’t love me and you never should have said that—’
