Page 136 of Only Ever You

How had they gotten here?

This was his own fault, of course, most things usually were in his life. He’d pushed her for too much too soon. Maybe if she wasn’t leaving, like she’d said, they’d spend the next year on the same page and a marriage proposal wouldn’t have had the same response. Where Bash wanted these grand plans that he’d cooked up for months on end, Faye just wanted to havehim.

He didn’tthink.And that was his downfall which blustered in and blew them off course.

Bash swallowed over the lump in his throat, clearing it. “So … a few dates and the odd sleepover, that’s what you want?”

Faye shrank like the shell she protected herself with was too big for her. “I didn’t want to get your hopes up, Bash. I’m sorry.”

Passing his hand across his mouth and over his jaw, his eyes turned from her, landing on the box of jumbled, forgotten things of people’s lives.

She’d never be apologising like that if he’d just kept his mouth shut.

“No, it’s my fault,” he said tersely, pulling on his ear. “I should’ve … ”

Faye shifted, burning a hole into his skin with her gaze. “Should have what?”

Bash’s chest twisted with an ugly old feeling.

“I should have stayed quiet.”

Silence hung for a beat.

Then Faye reached for him, pity lining her whisper of his name, but Bash slipped back and knocked the chair again into the packing boxes with a clatter. His impending spiral struck a warning in his sternum and he tried to keep a hold of it before it unspooled too large.

“Always rushing into things, me. Too impulsive.” His eyes bounced around the office, fingers digging into his hips.

“I like that you go for what you want and don’t hold back.”

“I held back fromyou.” Bash silenced Faye with his clipped tone. Thinking of how many happy years they could already have shared together as more than friends.

Her lips parted, eyes alert and devastating, her voice like holding her hands up to a raging bull.His chainsaw.“And now you have me.”

He didn’t though, did he? Not if she was putting this wedge between them.

“Yeah. And I know you inside and out.” Emotion clogged like peanut butter in Bash’s throat. “We’ve lived together, we’ve shared beds. You’ve let me inside. We’ve been the most intimate I haveeverbeen with someone.

“I know the exact colours of your eyes on a paint swatch. I know exactly when you’re going to get your period because you start craving dark chocolate the day before, when you normally hate it. I know you like jazz because your teacher at primary school used to play it in class, and that her classroom was the one place where you didn’t have to worry about guarding what you said when you talked about your parents to someone else. I’ve memorised a million things about you.” Faye’s eyes softened on him and Bash shrugged. “What else is there to get to know?”

“Who we are as acouple.”

Rain slashed heavier upon the windows outside.

That last word whipped like lightning through the room. Faye appeared just as stunned into silence by herself as Bash was. Maybe he was delusional about how close they’d been for a third of their lives, because when they’d gotten together the only thing that had changed for him was that he could kiss her and touch her and hold her at night like she should be held.

He hadn’t slowed down to think of Faye. Of her vulnerabilities about marriage she'd shared with him over the years. Bash liked her parents but he hated how they’d left her with the mindset that something good was destined to fail. She’d beenfour –too young to be broken in two.

A couple of Faye’s comparatively tiny strides brought her to him as he looked at her,reallylooked at her. Through her words to feel them sink and settle within him.

Oh god.He’d been an idiot to ignore how she would feel about this. He didn’t deserve how forgivingly she looked up at him. How she peeled his hand away from rubbing at his chest and helped him mellow at the warmth of her touch.

Her voice slowed like taming a wild animal, “I’m not breaking up with you, Bash. Idowant the rest of my life with you, pact or no pact.”

Bash’s mind went round in circles.

“But you just sprangmarriageupon me,” Faye said evenly, “and I’m not ready for that yet.”

He held his tongue on saying it wasn’t as if they’d be married by this time tomorrow. Engagements could take a year, two, three, more. Maybe just beingengagedwas enough of a promise to suit them both and they wouldn’t ever get married; they could still have all of the things they wanted together.

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