Page 138 of Off the Pitch

“What would you like?” I said. I snuggled into him as another spray of water landed on our arms.

“I don’t mind. As long as you’re happy,mon coeur, I’m happy.”

The band around my chest tightened, my stomach squeezing, my whole body turning inside out. How was he so perfect? How could he single handedly make me feel more loved, accepted, and whole than anyone I’d ever met? It was utterly crazy to think that this man had completely inverted my universe without even realising what he was doing.

I’d thought I was happy or at least content with my life, but now I knew just how lonely I’d been, how afraid I’d been that I would spend the rest of my life as an unwanted weirdo holed up in my room. Because surely nobody would want me the way I was—eccentric and strange and a little mad.

My parents certainly hadn’t wanted me, not the way I was, anyway, and neither had any of my previous boyfriends. Although I was now hesitant to call them that because they hadn’t exactly done anything to deserve that title. They’d been more like strange parasites who’d just hung around in the faintest hope that I’d give them what they wanted without them actually having to put in any effort.

Hugo had changed everything just by wanting me for me, eccentricities and all.

“I want you to be happy too though,” I said. “You do so much for me that I really don’t think I deserve, and I hardly do anything for you.”

“You deserve everything,” Hugo said, then pressed a kiss to my temple. “And you do a lot for me just by being you.” He was quiet for a moment, staring out across the open water, watching the ruins of the castle come into view in the distance. “After everything that happened with Hélène and my leg, I felt so low and so lost because I was pushing thirty and I’d lost everything in my life. Everything just felt pointless. For years I’d fought for a relationship neither of us wanted because I stubbornly thought giving up would be failing. No matter how hard I tried, it didn’t work. Now I know it’s because we were two very different people, and we were never going to make each other happy no matter how much we tried. And then breaking my leg and being forced to step back from the one thing that was keeping me going? It felt like the end of the world, and I couldn’t see how it was going to get any better. I refused to believe it could get any better.” He shook his head, a smile curling his lips, and I wanted to squeeze him tightly because, for the first time, I realised we’d both been stuck in different versions of the same place.

“But then I met you,” Hugo continued, looking down at me, something warm and unfamiliar on his face. “And you were a ray of sunshine I didn’t know I’d been missing. You lit up my life from the moment I saw you, and I’m so happy Christian made me leave the house that day.”

“Me too,” I said. “I mean, I didn’t really know anyone, and I was so tempted not to come because it would have just been easier. But David said that if I didn’t come, he’d send Lily around to my house to drag me out.” I chuckled, remembering the time she’d arrived at my house during David and Christian’s brief breakup to drag David from his pit of despair. “And frankly that’s a terrifying thought because I’ve seen her do it before and that woman does not take no for an answer.”

“I can believe it.” There was a comfortable pause, the two of us just standing together, enjoying the moment.

“So that’s why I don’t need anything from you,” Hugo said quietly. “You give me so much just by existing. You make every single day of my life better just by being yourself. And besides, I like spoiling you. You deserve to be spoilt because… because you’re amazing.”

Those words didn’t feel like they belonged at the end of that sentence. It was like they were taking the place of others, as if Hugo was afraid to say them or couldn’t work out how to get them off his tongue. But it didn’t matter because I knew what he meant.

You deserve to be spoilt because I love you.

I love you.

Three words I’d never thought anyone would associate with me, at least not romantically. David told me he loved me all the time, but that felt different. His ‘I love yous’ felt like the sort your parents were supposed to say, the ones that make you feel warm and safe, like a little reminder that even though you drive each other crazy, it’s out of love because you want that other person to be happy.

This was different. This was the sort of love that poets talked about, that great writers had made their livings trying to describe and artists had used all the colours of the rainbow trying to capture on a canvas. The life-altering, bone-shaking, all-encompassing love that swept you away and turned your entire world inside out and upside down. The kind of love that I’d secretly dreamt about but never, ever dared hope that I’d experience because that sort of love was for other people.

And yet, when I looked at Hugo, I felt it, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I loved him more than anything else in the world. Scratch that, the entire universe.

I loved him more than all the stars in all the galaxies in all the universes that could ever or would ever exist.

The force of that realisation threatened to sweep me off my feet because how had I not realised it before? How had I not seen it? When Hugo looked at me with that new, unfamiliar warmth in his eyes, how had I not seen it as love?

A tidal wave of emotions swept through me, engulfing me, and I gasped at the force of them.

“Are you okay?” Hugo said, his eyes awash with concern.

“Yes,” I said and gave him a smile. “Just thinking about something.”

“Something interesting?”

“Perhaps.” I wondered whether I should tell him what I’d just experienced, but a part of me wanted to keep it a secret, for just a little while longer, so I could tell him when it was just the two of us. I had a sneaking suspicion I might cry when I told him, and crying in public wasn’t something I was sure I could handle right now. Especially because I didn’t have any tissues.

“Care to share? Is it part of your plan to lure Nessie out of hiding so you can take her home?”

“Oh, I already know how I’d do that. I just need some bacon. Nobody can resist bacon.”

“What if Nessie is vegetarian?”

“She lives in a giant lake. She’s at least got to eat fish,” I said with a laugh. “I’m sure I can make some sort of tuna bacon.”

Hugo snorted, shaking his head and pulling me in for a kiss that sent shivers all the way down my spine and made my toes curl. “You’re adorable.”

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