‘Good.’ He reached out and took her hand in his, pulling her close so that she had to sit on the bed. ‘I’m sorry for what I said yesterday. It was stupid and cruel.’
‘I shouldn’t have said what I said either. I’m sorry.’
He shook his head, his gaze never leaving hers. ‘You were right. I have been clinging to the past. To the ghost of the future I thought I would have with Anna.’ He paused, thumb brushing over her hand, circling, stroking. ‘I just didn’t know how to cope without it.’
She took a deep breath. If she wasn’t going to hide her love away, she couldn’t hide her concern away either. ‘Everyone was so worried about you, Flynn. They’ve been so worried.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘I know you never meant to worry them, that you’ve been trying to protect them, but it doesn’t work that way. If you really want to not worry them, you have to get help. You suffered a serious trauma and you’ve never got over it. You’ve been so strong, but sometimes, strength isn’t enough.’
‘I know.’
His quietly spoken words made her snap her mouth shut on what she was going to say. ‘You do?’
He looked at their joined hands, thumb stroking, stroking. ‘I thought I had to deal with it alone. Thought it was just my weakness and that I had to do better. Live up to what I had built in my head about Anna and our relationship and her expectations of me.’ He smiled, the smile sad, mixed with chagrin. ‘You know, I had twisted the last moment with her in my head until I made myself believe she’d asked me to never replace her, and I have never wanted to. Until you.’
Prita sucked in a breath. ‘Did she ask you that?’
He glanced up at her. ‘No. She would never have asked me that.’
She didn’t realise she’d been holding her breath until she let it all out in a rush.
He didn’t seem to notice though as he continued. ‘It wasn’t until last night, when I woke a number of times and you were sitting there and I watched you dozing, so determined to look after me and care for me despite what I had said to you, how I’d used you and then pushed you away, and I remembered how Anna had been the same. And then I thought about what you said and that you weren’t asking me to forget my love for Anna. You would never do that, and neither would she. She would never have asked me to give up my happiness in some kind of twisted shrine to her, to our love. I was doing her such a disservice by thinking that she’d asked me that, turning her last words to me into that.’
‘Why did you?’
‘Fear. Just like you said when you were talking to yourself earlier.’
‘I said that out loud?’ Oh god. Why couldn’t she stop saying her personal thoughts aloud? She waited for the heat of embarrassment to flood through her, but instead, all that happened was a sense of waiting, of expectation, because he was smiling, not looking like he wanted to run far away. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were awake?’
‘I wanted to hear what you had to say. You owned up to your fear and I realised then, I needed to do the same. If I don’t, I don’t deserve your love. And I do. Want to deserve it.’
Oh, he’d heard everything. She didn’t know what to say to that. There were no words. She’d already, apparently, spoken them. He knew everything about her. She’d laid herself bare. And it was fine. And good. And wonderful. She leaned down and kissed him, the sweetest kiss, lips lingering, soft, and hopeful. A kiss that hit her in her chest and thrilled through her entire body. Before she let it deepen though, she pulled away—he was recovering from heat stroke after all. But he pulled her back down, hands holding her face, lips searching for hers, and there was no pulling back, no denying. She didn’t have the strength to resist him as he pulled her down to lie against him and kissed and kissed and kissed.
He was trembling against her, just as she was against him, but not from weakness. From wanting. From giving. From the exhilarating thrill of giving up control and trusting completely that what you offered was to be treasured and returned. She’d never imagined it would be like this. Scary and yet so wonderful, she never wanted to come down from the high of it.
His hand slid under her top and she wanted more, wanted all, but was aware of the noises that said Diarmuid wasn’t the only one up. Their sons might run in at any moment. Not to mention he was recovering and needed to rest. She pulled back, smiled when he groaned and tried to pull her back to him, let him kiss her once, twice, three times more, but then, exerting the will that had got her through so much in her life, pulled away from him. Not so far that he’d think she was denying him, but enough to look down at him, so that she could stroke his silken hair back from his forehead. ‘You need a haircut,’ she said, smiling in a way she was certain looked goofy.
‘If you get my clippers, I’ll shave it off.’
‘You don’t go to the barber at Wilson’s Bend?’
‘No, why would I when I have a perfectly good set of clippers?’
She smiled. ‘No reason.’ Although it explained a lot about his hairstyle choice of going from super short to it growing out curly and unruly until he did an almost buzz cut again. It was so him, that complete lack of self-consciousness about how he looked. Haircuts were just for getting hair
