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“I don’t need his wealth. I have my own, from my record sales.”
I nodded as that resonated within me. “My father was plowing through my mother’s money,” I told him. “I was in the process of cutting him off with my solicitor’s help, which is what led to the disastrous attempt to tie to me Alistair.”
Nash, still on his heels, grabbed more rocks. His shoulders were stiff, and he emanated menace.
I winced under his hot glare.
“I realize now that when I left after my mother died, I was doing the same thing to you that your parents did to each other. But you have to understand, at the time, I thought you’d intentionally shamed me. That you broke up with me that way. I had more grief than I could manage.” Tears built in my eyes.
“And we’re back to that,” he said on a sigh.
My heart slammed against my ribs. My palms grew damp, and my head began to buzz. “If I can’t… I lose you. I know we can’t exist here forever. We have to move forward or call it quits.”
He dropped the last stone and turned to face me. “Our past, all the pain there, it’s suffocating me—more now than it did before,” he said. “I used to separate myself from those emotions, but now I feel like I’m drowning in them.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed hard. “I can’t do it on my own. We have to do it together. If you can’t commit to that, you have to tell me.”
My face numbed, my ears rang. “N-now?”
His turbulent eyes delved into mine. “Yes. Now. I can’t… You’ll break me, Aya. I’m fucking done.”
I licked my lips. “I…”
I knew I didn’t want a life without Nash, but those years of anger, of shame—their impact on me hadn’t changed. I’d still lived them, and in a life with him, I was likely to experience something like that again. I’d already tasted how rabid the media would be about me.
Accepting Nash was accepting less privacy and more criticism. But I wanted Nash. Always. Forever. What came with him, though… I needed time to prepare—evidently time I didn’t have. I looked up into Nash’s eyes and panted, suddenly unable to fill my lungs.
“Nash.” I reached for him, a hard scrabble of my nails against the smooth warmth of his skin. I burrowed close, then pulled him tighter. “Don’t…”
Panic spiked, and I whimpered.
“What’s going on?”
Kate’s voice.
I heard it from a distance. As if through a tunnel.
“Aya’s having a panic attack,” Nash said, tone grim.
He lifted me in his arms. Then, cool water seeped through my jeans and onto my legs. I focused on the sensation, the gurgle of the stream, the shifting pebbles under my feet. I opened my eyes to find Nash squatted next to me, eyes troubled, face set.
“You okay?”
“I…I don’t know.”
“That ever happen before?”
I shook my head, my cheeks heating.
“I’m sorry.” He sighed. “This is my fault. I shouldn’t have dropped that stupid ultimatum on you. Do you want me to go?”
I dove out of the water, my arms circling his neck and causing him to fall back on his butt against the grass-covered bank.
“All right, pretty girl. I’m here.”
He pressed a kiss to the top of my head. I felt shaky, sweaty, weak, and wet. But I was in Nash’s arms. We could work this out. We had to.
And I had work to do, because he was right. Unless I managed to work through my feelings, my fears, my insecurities, they’d always be there—between us, wedging us apart. I gripped his shirt as tears burned my eyes and rolled down my cheeks. Deep down, I knew I’d come here to be with him. I’d committed to him on one level, but not with my trust.
