Page 88 of You, As You Are

Their gazes held for a moment, and he looked … different. More open; the openness she’d been craving from him a minute ago. And when he began to talk, he looked as though he actually wanted to speak.

“He had a way with words that beat a young lad down. Pushed me to a limit I shouldn’t have had to reach. My brothers are older, and they never complained, so our dad never treated them the way he treated me. He saw us as workers, not sons. We were all rugged, getting into trouble and petty fights. It’s why he worked us so hard on the farm and put us into the local rugby team so we could work out our frustrations on the field.

“But Rhys and Lewis were always going to stay on the farm and take over from him someday. Me … he liked to knock me down and make me feel as though trying to leave the middle of nowhere was a dead-end dream. I nearly gave up on it so many times.” Iain blinked slowly, his thumb and forefinger going to the outer corners of his eyes and dragging inwards, his hold on her hand staying tender. “It took twenty-six years to leave.”

So much pain …If Maisie could reach out, if she could hold him like he deserved, it wouldn’t make up for those years, but it would be something. There was no doubt now: her shoulder and ear were Iain’s whenever he wanted them,darkest secretsor not.

“And … here you are,” she said.

“Here I am,” he uttered. “Still feeling like that boy in the middle of nowhere.”

“You didn’t deserve that.” His rough skin pressed against Maisie’s palm as she squeezed. “I take it you don’t speak to your dad much either?” Iain’s silence was answer enough. “What about your mum?”

“She’s still there,” he said, threads of guilt in his voice as if he’d wanted for her to escape too. “Miserable. Blaming my dad for pushing me away. The last time I spoke to him …” He shook his head as though urging himself out of deterring that thought. “I walked to your flat that night, right after the phone call.”

Maisie didn’t want to analyse why. “You should’ve knocked.”

Meeting her eyes, he cocked his head with another smile’s ghost passing by. “I didn’t really know you back then.”

“I would’ve opened my door to you anyway,” she said. “I know I can talk a lot, but I like to think I’m good at listening too.”

One degree at a time, his head began to shake. His eyes so …vulnerablein the waxing moonlight. “I don’t think I’ve ever had somebody truly listen to me before you, Maisie.”

And that sentiment broke her heart.

It didn’t make sense at first glance. He was so muchman, so independent – not to mention his gruff demeanour. But he’d proven her right tonight; therewasso much more beneath him that hurt and ached and grieved just like she did.

He confused the hell out of her, and this wholefake datingsituation that she’d thrown them both into didn’t help matters at all. How was she supposed to pretend to be growing close to him withoutactuallygrowing close to him?

The answer didn’t matter. It was too late.

Like her own body propelling down the cliffside, chasing something she never should’ve caught, the ball was in motion towards having feelings she should not have. And the only way it would end was with her being stung in a bed of nettles, yet again.

But even in Iain’s grumpiest of moods, he didn’t scare her off.

“I’m sorry for the way I acted at the bar in Manchester,” he said. “You were being kind, and I shut you down.”

“I’ve noticed how you do that … a lot.”

He mulled on an answer. “I guess when people let you down for all your life, you become an island. Build a wall.”

“Sarn Gynfelyn,”she said.

Iain looked across at her, curiosity in his brow.

“A lost kingdom.”

His mouth twitched in the corner, a shadow of a smile under that thick moustache of his. “I was only trying to say that maybe you don’t know where you fit until you make a home outside of the mould you were cast into.”

The ocean could be up at her feet and Maisie wouldn’t notice for the way that Iain held her entire attention. The bump in his nose and texture to his skin around his beard were so endearing.

“Have you ever found it?” Her voice was scratchy with emotion.

“For a while,” Iain murmured. “Then she broke my mould, and I started again.”

The corner of Maisie’s mouth raised in a sad sort of smile, finding solace in his eyes.

“When you asked if I wanted children,” he said, “what I should have said was that I didn’t want to giveherwhat she wanted and then turn into my father. I wouldn’t … Icouldn’tresent a child because I didn’t want them.”

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