Page 138 of You, As You Are

With a delicate smile that looked like she tried to tame it, Maisie wiggled closer down into his side. “I never imagined being special enough to be called someone’s love.”

They were nose to nose, Iain’s mind racing whilst Maisie looked like the start of a heartbreak he would never recover from. What unspoken truths she inched them closer towards were too close to home.

He exhaled. “You are so special, Maisie.”

“In general,” she began hesitantly, “or … to you?”

Iain’s attempt to shift the direction of conversation backfired. Yet he said, “Both.” The truth was that he didn’t know anymore.

The line separating his head from his heart had always been clear, and he’d always neglected the latter to keep the first one safe. Words from years ago echoed in his mind:“You’re not enough to make someone happy, Iain.”

But then Maisie had fallen into his arms.Literally.

He hadn’t wanted this whirlwind of a woman to come in and turn his life upside down in all the right ways – make him see that he shouldn’t resign himself to the situation he was stuck in now just because he was too much of a pessimist to think that there was something better out there for him. Maisie made him feel like he didn’t need to change. That he could make something of himself and be proud.Hewas better because of her.

He wanted to be enough.

He wanted to be enough desperately for her.

He wanted to be enough that she would stay.

But he just …wasn’t.

He was one ship passing hers in the night. Maisie could do so much better than him.

Her lower lip ran shallowly between her teeth as her eyes followed the slow path of her finger up and down his back. “Have you … changed your opinions on commitment?”

That question Iain had seen coming since before they’d ever kissed – that’s how long theirfakenesshad been slipping into a different territory. It was mostly the reason why the pulse point at the base of his throat throbbed so quickly.

Now that they’d shared a bed, he knew that he owed her an answer. Maisie Moss wasn’t the type of woman to treat like a fling – she deserved so much more. Something permanent.

He didn’t want this unnamed thing between them to stop, but at the same time he wasn’t the man who could give that toher, was he? So where would that leave them? A situationship was worse than bed-buddies. They were more than friends but less than committed – not ‘no strings attached’ but joined by ones that would sever far too painfully. He’d promised her no games, but this wasn’t about sex or sparks of attraction anymore. And to answer Maisie’s question: well, he was going to disappoint her either way. He hadn’t done it yet, but he would. His mind would find a way – it always did.

He said, “I’ve loved my life since you fell into it, even with all the bad. For the first time in two years I’ve been living.” It was a cop out – the truth, yet still just fodder to skirt around the words that he didn’t want to say – words that would make Maisie look at him as she did right then, like the light in her eyes was being clouded over by a storm.

“But?”

But …

But he had no answer. He was giving off mixed-fucking-signals, and Iain hated it.

It wasn’t about not having feelings, but rather for the first time in almost two years, he had too many. How Maisie had been so overwhelmed in her happiness the other night and how his only instinct was to hold her tighter should have told him just how far he’d gone in the depths of the valley of falling for her that he’d wandered into. He’d lost the map by now, and the trail had turned to dust behind him.

He couldn’t live with a broken heart again, and Iain knew already with her that if it broke, there would be no fixing it. No glueing the pieces back together. The crash from Maisie Moss would shatter more than just his heart.

He never should have let things go this far.

His fingers hadn’t stopped tracing back and forth across her waist – a nervous tick that was new, apparently.

Iain inhaled slowly, buying himself five more seconds of time. “Why don’t we talk once I’ve run you a warm bath and made us the lunch we never got to?”

She’d asked him fortimenot that long ago, and now he would ask for the same. An hour or two to get his head straight.

Maisie’s lips twitched in a small smile that was definitely forced, before she whispered, “Okay.”

“Cach.?*”Iain rubbed at the patch of red on his forehead, muttering to himself. “Fel rhech mewn pot jam. Twmffat?*– what are you looking at?”

Head nestled between his paws over the edge of his bed, Ted stared up at him. The same bland, unimpressed stare he’d had since he was an adolescent terror – a deserved look right then, since Iain had come short of banging his forehead against his fridge door over and over at his own stupidity for the things he’d said upstairs. In the mirror above his fireplace, all he did was make the rest of his forehead redden too.

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