Page 164 of The Jealous Girl

Yet somehow his words lacked sincerity. I could hear it now. The doubt. The fear. Marrying me wouldn’t have been about building a life together based on love. It was a way out of the trap he’d been caught up in for his whole life.

‘Did you ever really even love me for me? Or did I just represent all the things you’d never had? Choice? Freedom? Independence?’

‘I loved you for you,’ Ryan insisted. ‘I still love you. We can make this work. I won’t let you down this time.’

I closed my eyes and allowed his words to wash over me. For a moment, I almost believed them. Almost let myself lean into the pull of him. The ache of being cocooned in his arms. The promise of the future we’d planned on balmy summer evenings on the beach in Malta.

It was everything I’d been waiting for. Fighting for.

My obsessive desperation to give us one more try had kept me trapped for two years. Could we make it work next time? That question had haunted me constantly. It had kept me stuck in Dorset, waiting for another chance. It had driven me to stalking Charlotte, determined to destroy her. All because I needed another chance. I needed to know if we could make it work.

But I didn’t need proof now. I already knew.

‘We’ve had two chances,’ I whispered, ‘and it didn’t work.’

‘But that wasn’t because of us. It was outside pressure. Other people interfering. Other⁠—’

‘There will always be outside factors,’ I shrugged. ‘The trick is to keep them outside. And we didn’t.’

‘But this time will be different,’ Ryan pleaded.

The heaviness in my chest didn’t ease.

‘I love you,’ Ryan repeated, as though those three little words were all that mattered.

They had been, once.

‘And you love me too,’ he added firmly.

And he was right. I did. I always had.

But it wasn’t the same kind of love it had once been.

‘It’s no longer enough,’ I said.

There was a difference between loving someone and choosing them.

‘I can change,’ he said quickly. ‘I can be different. I am different. Seeing what my parents did…’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t want to be part of that. Whatever happens to them, I’m leaving Blackwater Stables. Leaving them.’

I hesitated.

It was so tempting to let my guard down, to take him at his word, to give us – give him – another chance.

But I’d been here before. I’d waited on the sidelines, putting him first, hoping there would finally be space in his life for me. And now that there was, I realised it wasn’t a space, it was just a hollow.

It was easy to choose me when he had nothing else. That didn’t make me his priority. It made me his fallback. His safety net to stop him from being alone.

Maybe I couldn’t blame him for that. Could I honestly say I hadn’t done the same? Our relationship had been as much an escape for me in the beginning as it had been for him. I’d needed connection. Acceptance.

But what did I need now?

I took a deep breath. The answer echoed through me – the one I’d known for a long time, the one I’d never wanted to face.

‘I don’t trust you any more,’ I said softly. ‘I don’t trust in us.’

And that was the inescapable truth.

Love without trust would never be enough.