Page 140 of You, As You Are

* Like a fart in a jam jar (useless). Idiot.

CHAPTER FORTY

MAISIE

She didn’t meanfor this to happen.

“I didn’t know who he was, Iain. I’m sorry.”

His dad.Maisie might’ve figured it out if there had been much of a resemblance at all between them, but there wasn’t, which she supposed Iain approved of. At least, he might do if he stopped scuffing a line back and forth in his hardwood floor.

“Don’t apologise, you’ve done nothing wrong,” he said without looking at her, his angered breathing making more sound than his voice. “It’shim. He has no fucking right to turn up like this. He has no right to talk to you.”

“I don’t think he knew who he was talking to at first,” Maisie replied in an attempt to placate Iain’s furious strides.

She couldn’t pretend to understand the complexities of what had gone on between them in the past, or why Alun’s presence at today’s match was so triggering to cause this reaction in Iain. If Alun was trying to make contact so repeatedly then clearly there was something he wanted to say. Something worthy of turning up on a whim to a rugby game.

Iain’s fingers dug into his hips. “If he wanted to get to me then he should’ve come down from the stands himself,” he snapped, though Maisie knew his bite wasn’t directed at her.

“Would you actually have let him get anywhere near you if he did?”

That made Iain pause his huffing. He flashed a passing glance her way across the room. “Not with you there.”

Maisie’s ear fell to her shoulder in lieu of a sigh. “Iain, he’s your dad. There must be a reason why?—”

“That adage about blood being thicker than water is only half of the story. If he cared, then he would’ve let me leave the farm when I wanted to.”

“Didn’t he?” she said warily. “You’re not there now?—”

“Because I had torun, Maisie.” Iain strode towards her, so devastated and worn down that Maisie’s heart twisted in knots. “In the middle of the night,” he said, “I drove away. I couldn’t live another day on that farm.” He shrugged, yet the loose movement was filled with years of pain. His voice softly broke – “I couldn’t. It would’ve killed me.”

The tightening behind Maisie’s nose and eyes built itself up to make them well with tears for him, for the way he looked both young and old with years of forced away emotion rising to his surface.

His voice cracked as he said, “It got so lonely. The hours were incredibly long, from before dawn to after dusk, and I couldn’t ever see friends, so I lost them all. We never had any money because all of it went to the farm with every flood, every broken machine. So much depended on us – if something went wrong then the whole season could be thrown to shit. And on top of that, there washimthere blaming every inconvenience on me. And now I am exactly what he said I was going to be if I left: a failure.”

Iain’s red-rimmed eyes tugged on a thousand strings within Maisie and cinched them all around her heart. How different their childhoods had been was so unfair, and the realisation made her stomach swim. How could she have complained aboutbeing back here again? to this town that held so many amazing,goodmemories. How could she say she was trapped, when really she knew nothing of being trapped at all.

His beard scratched her palms when she cupped his face, her chin trembling. Iain tried to pull away, to turn his gaze somewhere else, but she wouldn’t let him. For once in his life, he needed these words told to him.

“Someone who stands up for what they want and chooses their own path isn’t a failure, Iain.”

“Feels that way,” he mumbled.

“Well it’s not true.” Maisie hoped he listened to her firm words instead of tossing them aside. “I’ve listened to you telling me about him, about what he put you through with the way he spoke to you, how all of that made you feel worthless, and the way you left and built a new life when that was the hardest choice is something to be proud of, Iain,” she said, brushing her palm lower to cradle his neck. “Iam proud of it.”

Mossy eyes cut to hers, a long inhale expanding Iain’s broad chest. “This should all be enough to make you run away from me,” he uttered, and maybe in his mind he was right. But not to Maisie.

“I learned my lesson on running the first day I met you.”

A sad smile touched the corner of his mouth.

“I’m only encouraging you to see what he wants because … he didn’t lookwell,Iain.”

The crinkles around his eyes deepened when they pinched.“Well?”he repeated, unsure.

Maisie struggled to think of how to put this delicately. “The last time you saw him, did he shake?” Iain’s brow went tense again. “His hands, did they shake?”

“No.”

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