Page 103 of You, As You Are

She was about to apologise and backtrack, but Iain said sombrely, “She’ll always be a part of me, Maisie. I can’t erase the years we had together.”

Maisie’s pulse thrummed more anxiously in her chest. Again she found herself needing to know if the reason why he’d said he couldn’t commit to a woman yet was because he was still in love withher.On Valentine’s Day he’d said that he was in love enough to have let her go, but that could mean anything, right?

She couldn’thave feelings for a man who was in love with someone else – her heart couldn’t take it.

“I … I just don’t think you’ve let her go,” she said, twisting the duvet between her fingers.

Creases were sure to have deepened beside Iain’s eyes. “I’m not stillin lovewith her, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

Relief shouldn’t have made Maisie’s body loosen. “You’re just not ready to move on? Be with someone … new?”

One of Iain’s throaty rumbles entered the darkness. “I’ve disappointed enough women.”

Maisie turned her head. The vaguest line of silver silhouetted him staring at the ceiling. How could he not see that he’d done everything right? It wasn’t his fault that his ex-fiancé wanted something different than what she’d told him at the start. His humility for taking himself out of the equation and sacrificing the ending he’d wanted so thatshecould go and live her dream wasn’t disappointing at all.

Maisie’s heart yearned to be loved like that.

She whispered, “You’ve never disappointed me.”

Calm quiet fell, as if the world had stopped so that Iain could hear her. His cheek slowly fell to his pillow. The glint in his eyes from the moonlight peeking through the crack of the curtains landed on hers, and Maisie’s breath hitched at the sight so near.

She anticipated he would argue, something self-deprecating along the lines ofnot yetorI will do.But he only stared at her, his features softening.

Maisie wanted so desperately to comb her fingers through his curls of deep-brown hair and cuddle him to her chest, let him feel what it felt like to have someone believe in him. And in that moment as their eyes held, her heart collided up with the stars and her map overlapped to align with his.

Maisie knew then what she wanted. Her heart beat so fast the rush brought tears to the corners of her eyes, because thefakeness of her feelings ended here.

Her lips parted and her inhale shook, words rushing to her tongue with thoughts of how he’d started to mean more to her than she had planned.

But of course?—

Iain exhaled. “Your turn,” he said briskly, turning his face back to the ceiling.

The rush in Maisie came crashing down. What had they been talking about originally? Ah, yes, their respective lack of sex.

Maisie scoffed hollowly to distract from the disappointment of how he’d shifted their conversation. “Half of Aberystwyth already knows how long I’ve been single.”

“That doesn’t mean you’ve been alone all this time.”

“For me it does,” she said.

Curiosity filled the silent space that Iain left for her to explain.

What was it about their meetings after the sun went down that made Maisie want to confess everything from her past? This conversation happened every single time she let a new man into her life, and it never got less uncomfortable to say. Iain might as well know too.

Since they were being vulnerable again, Maisie closed her eyes and just let the words flow out into the darkness. “I struggle with being … intimate,” she confessed, flattening the duvet over her stomach. “My last few attempts at boyfriends haven’t been entirely patient with that. They didn’t seem to understand that I can’t just …”Get turned on at the drop of a hat.“I need a little bit of mental prep to relax. I can’t rush, and that’s a turn off apparently.”

“Then you’ve been datingboys,” Iain told her, his voice that same no-nonsense firmness as when he’d said that if he was going to kiss her, he’d do it right. “Any man would take the time to make sure you were comfortable before he thought of himself.”

Maisie fizzed with warmth. No man had ever said that to her before or even showed her that they could treat her that way before they got bored.“What you just said about knowing your value – I saw that in you the first day that we met. Don’t ever lose it.”What Iain had told her meant more to her than he could know.

Of course it would have to be the one man who didn’t want her who said those things.

“Things start out like that,” she said, thinking of those usual first few honeymoon-sweet weeks of dating someone, “but then after a time I think they see me as too much work.” Now, with every guy she met and got to know, she treated them like a bad joke: going along with things though all the while waiting for the punchline she’d heard a hundred times before.

“You’re notwork, Maisie. You’re you.” Iain’s voice held so much promise, making her eyes burn in response.

“Why am I telling you this?” Maisie asked herself, rolling away to her side as if that’d help her not be seen in pitch darkness. She had to shift the duvet around her hips and shove some of it back to Iain’s side.

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