Page 149 of You, As You Are

Maisie’s breaths stuttered like a flag in the wind as she tried and failed to not release more tears.“I can’t go through that again.”Did that mean hedidwant something deeper with her but was simply anxious? Iain wouldn’t be so concerned that way if she was just a fling to him, surely?

“I already lost everything once.” His voice tightened in her silence as she tried to wrap her head around his words. It was clear without any more explanation that Iain’s mind was stuck on the way his almost-marriage had fallen apart. He believed he was part of a losing cycle that couldn’t be broken. An endless planting of a tree and uprooting it before it was ready. Well Maisie wasn’t going to do that to him.

She curled her fingers into his fleece. “You lost a lot,” she told him, “but you didn’t loseeverything. You gained Ted, new friends, a new home, new hobbies.”

“I lostmyself. It’s taken me two years to get even a glance of him back – and when you walked into my life, I couldn’t stop myself from feeling like you were someone I was going to risk everything for again.” Something changed in Iain’s voice– it darkened, bruised, contrasting the heart-aching confession like night and day. His eyes yearned for something he wouldn’t name. “I can’t restart my life again like I’ve had to do already. I just can’t.”

Maisie wasn’t asking him to. She wasn’t asking for him to take a risk when this affection that she felt for him was such a sure thing. She didn’t have any doubt in her feelings at all that if they allowed it, she could very much fall in love even more than she already had.

Because that’s what this was for her.Love.It had come in the most unexpected of ways at the most unexpected of times – when she’d never been looking for it. It wasn’t something instant or cataclysmic. It was the campfire that they’d been building one spark of ember and placed log at a time.

Maisie didn’t want to walk along any wilderness path without Iain or sit on the sea wall of her favourite beach with anyone else. She wanted rainy days at rugby matches and cheering him on, to be the loudest voice that called out his name. She couldn’t imagine anyone else’s arms around her, holding her as tightly as he did – as wholly as she’d craved her entire life for. She didn’t want to wake up and see a different pair of eyes or a different face giving her the tired, adoring, half-smirk that Iain did.

Realising that the risk of feeling the same was just too great for him to take, pieces of Maisie’s hope crushed one by one as they sank down through her chest.

Her fingers slipped from Iain’s fleece. She swallowed, but it did nothing to dissolve the whirr of her pulse that thrummed in her ears. “So you … you don’t want anything more than just sex?”

Iain didn’t need words to answer. His stillness beneath her was confirmation enough. Maisie’s vision of her fireplace blurred. The arm around her pulled away, and Iain extricated himself to his feet as if space from her would make the words he said next hurt any less.

“My heart and my brain are at war, Maisie, don’t ask me to decide.” He turned his back on her, pacing without the courage to even look her in the eye.

How hard could the decision possibly be? He either wanted to be in a relationship with her, or he didn’t. There was no middle ground – not for Maisie.

“I don’t want to be strung along,” she said, her eyes beginning to sting again for a reason she hadn’t seen coming today. Their fake dating might not have been real butthiswas, and he was pushing it away.

“I don’t want that either.” Iain swivelled, hands firmly set on his hips. “I’m trying to save you the pain of another man letting you down,” he uttered. “Your stay here is only supposed to be temporary.”

Was that supposed to mean thatshewas too? Like a holiday fling – good while it lasted, then dead in the water.

“What if it wasn’t?” She looked up at him, shifting forwards to the edge of her seat. “What if I stayed?”

“We both know that’s not what you planned.”

But it’s the decision she’d already made. Somewhere, somehow, it had happened.

“Plans change.” Maisie watched Iain shift like two halves of him tugged back and forth, each attempting to force his mind in a different direction, and all of a sudden all she could think to do was fight for him. To be thefirstperson to fight for him.

“I didn’t expect to meet people who I didn’t want to say goodbye to,” she said. “I didn’t expect to find a little community for myself when I came here.” Her chest hitched around the shock of realising for the first time: “I didn’t expect to findyou.”

Iain stopped his motions and stared at her, his breaths laboured, shaking his head. So many weeks with so many trials, and she’d never seen him physically so unsettled as this.

He exhaled a heavy sound. “Can you honestly tell me you won’t run away to London – to yourfriends– when you miss them too much?”

“Yes,” Maisie stated clearly with all her heart. “If I had a home here –peoplehere – then yes. I would stay. I would stay to be withyou, Iain.” She rose to her feet and reached out for him, catching only his waist as he raised his chin high and looked down at her. “I know committing terrifies you, but I am not your ex. I’m not going to change my mind on falling in love with you because I already have.”

Iain practically stumbled backwards, panic fresh and clear in his eyes. “Don’t fall in love with me, Daffy.”

“Why?” She reached out again?—

“I don’t have anything to give to you!” His voice rang through the flat, and Maisie’s stomach sank, threads attached to her heart pulling it down too. “My life is a mess. There’s nothing for me to bring to the table.”

“Well what if I just wantyou?That’s enough for me. You, as you are, is always enough for me.” She didn’t care about what house he lived in or where he worked or what kind of car he drove.

Yet Iain’s eyes still disagreed.

How much would it actually take? How much pleading and confessing and promising would satisfy the demon on his shoulder that told him he didn’t deserve to be loved? In all of this, he was automatically assuming that their relationship would fail.

“What is it that you can’t give me?” Maisie challenged, stepping forward through the distance between them. “What is this ‘nothing’ you don’t have, hm?” Iain’s nostrils flared indignantly. “You don’t have an answer because it’s not the truth.”

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