Page 59 of A Good Heart is Hard to Find
It was a maelstromof mixed emotions, hard to read, but the surface one seemed to consist of lust. There were blackedges of guilt, desire, worry, and a sort of shamefaced shiftiness too.
I couldn’t feel any love, or even the exasperated affection I read on the only previous occasion I’d done this, and while the guilt wasn’t as strong as Dante’s, it was still more than enough to raise a question mark or two inmy mind …
Maybe I really should take that random reading of several men to see if they all felt guilty?
Max wrenched his hand away and I came back down to earth. ‘Bloody hell, Cassy, you promised never to do that to me!’ he yelled furiously.
‘You promisedmea lot of things, Max, most of them, I now see, out of your power to deliver. Besides, I needed to know what you were feeling.’ I staredat him with knitted brows. ‘What partdidyou play in Rosemary’s death?’
‘How can you ask me that?’ he exclaimed angrily.
‘I read your guilt.’
‘Guilt over the situation, of course, since it was because of me that she was out there in California at all. I swear to you that I had no hand in harming her! It was a tragic accident.’
‘I suppose itcouldbe just that …’ I mused.
‘I was miles away,and I have witnesses to prove it!’
‘So you keep saying. You’re guilty about something, though, I saw that clearly enough. But what I couldn’t see in your mind was any love for me.’
‘If I didn’t love you I wouldn’t be here having this stupid and pointless conversation, would I? And I’d haveshownyou how much I love you if you hadn’t been in this awkward mood! What on earth’s the matter withyou?’
‘Max, sex can be an act of love, but it can also be just sex. I don’t feel loved by you, I feel rejected, used – anything but loved!’
‘I don’t know what’s got into you, but I can see I’ve wasted my time coming over here today,’ he snapped. ‘Are youtrying to tell me you don’t want to see me any more? You want to end it all, now, when the way is clear for us to spend the rest of our livestogether?’
‘I—’ I faltered on the edge of the big step, searching for the words that would admit that I’d damned my soul to hell, cut myself off from my parents, and condemned another woman to suffer the torments of jealousy, all for the love of a vain, self-centred, lying, cheating man, who wasn’t, and never had been, worth the steep price ticket.
What a Sleeping Beauty, dreaming of marryinghim for years, only to wake up and find I didn’t really want to after all! But the habit of loving him – or the man I thought he was – made it hard to say the words that would end it all.
Max couldn’t believe it either. ‘We’ve been together a hell of a long time.’
‘Yes, and I always meant it to be for ever,’ I said sadly. ‘But you’ve been away so long, and now Rosemary’s death has changed everythingand made me see things differently, and I don’t knowwhatI want.’
‘Is there someone else?’ he said with predictable suspicion.
Dante’s face flashed across my mind like a meteorite. ‘No, there isn’t,’ I said firmly, and looked at him, feeling all at once sad and lonely: ‘I just think we’ve grown apart.’
‘Are you telling me you don’t love me?’ He looked incredulous, as though such a thing wereimpossible.
‘I don’t know any more,’ I said, because part of me did still love the man he once was – or the one I thought he was, anyway. ‘And all you’re offering me now is that we carry on as before when you come back, really, isn’t it?’
‘But we can spend time together freely, and I did say we’d discuss having a baby then, too,’ he reminded me.
‘Yes, when it might be too late. The clock’sticking and I feel it’s probably now or never.’
‘Why not now, then?’ he said coolly, and to my complete astonishment tried to take me in his arms again.
He can’t have been listening to a word I was saying, but that Viagra-fired light was in his eyes again, which might account for it: it had to be that, he hadn’t been this frisky for years.
‘Not with that revolting beard,’ I said, fending himoff with revulsion, because suddenly I found the thought of sex with Max quite repugnant, like Rosemary would be in there with us.
‘What’s the matter with my beard?’ he demanded.
‘Everything. You know I’ve always hated beards, and that’s such a silly clipped one. Why don’t you shave it off?’
‘Certainly not!’ he said huffily. ‘It’s plain to me you’re just using it as an excuse. I don’t knowwhat’s the matter with you, but if I’d known you were in this sort of mood I wouldn’t have bothered coming.’
