I need some time here.
He swore again, refusing to ask how much time. Was she staying the night? Should he go to her? And say what? He hadn’t been built to love anyone, not even himself.
He didn’t even know how to be loved. The few times his father had shown him something like fatherly affection had been around things that measured up in Ted’s estimation of what was important. Did Saint grasp a complex concept? Did he provide a solution that could be monetized? Then yes, Saint was valuable to his father.
As for his mother... Her love had been a needy variety that pulled so hard Saint had never felt like he could possibly be enough to alleviate that emotional chasm inside her.
This was what he had wanted to avoid with Fliss, this sensation of expectations beyond his ability to fulfill. Of not being enough. Of failing.
And he was angry that she’d put this on him. Was she doing it on purpose? Putting herself out of his reach to teach him some sort of lesson? Holding their baby hostage...
He pinched the bridge of his nose, not wanting to believe Fliss would do something like that, but it was the behavior he knew too well from his own upbringing.
Saint and I will be staying at the cottage.
Saint will be coming with me to Texas.
Why don’t you spend more time with me at the stables?
Why are you wasting time at the stables when you should be studying?
As recently as a few days ago, his father had asked him scathingly, Why are you letting that woman distract you? You got what you wanted, so get to work.
She’s pregnant had been his response, but Ted had only snorted with disinterest.
Fliss was more than pregnant. She was carrying their baby.
When Saint had seen those shadows and lines moving on the screen, slowly piecing themselves together into a full picture of the baby Fliss carried, he’d felt it like a punch to the heart. The baby was only the size of a banana, the technician had said, but the magnitude of its effect on him had been world-altering.
He and Fliss had made that baby. He was going to be a father. Why was he distracted? Because all he could think about was them. How he needed both of them close so he could ensure they were safe. He wasn’t so dependent that he needed to be with Fliss every minute of every day, but he damned well liked knowing he was going back to her every night. Anytime he held her, even if it was only her hand, things inside him settled.
And now all he could think about was seeing their baby. Holding him. Watching him explore the world with Fliss’s humor and curiosity.
That was why he’d proposed to her, so they would have that deeper promise to stay together. He wanted her in his life every day. He wanted them to be a unit.
He should have known she would want his heart, though, given how sensitive and emotionally open she was.
Did she not realize his heart was a shriveled raisin of a thing, not worth having?
Frustrated, he paced into the bedroom, noting with relief that she hadn’t taken anything more than her purse today.
She must have done a reading while she’d still been in bed because her cards were on the nightstand, not even tied into their velvet cloth. What had she been asking? he wondered. She had told him she didn’t ask questions she didn’t want the answer to, which was why she hadn’t asked about their relationship.
He didn’t even believe in these things, but it irritated him that she had said that. He interpreted it as distrust. She lacked faith in their relationship and didn’t want her doubts to be confirmed by her cards.
Was his faith in her any better, though? Yes, he had proposed, but when she had told him she loved him, he’d taken it as a personal attack.
From the beginning, he’d known that if he couldn’t give her what she needed emotionally, he might have to let her go. Was that what he was supposed to do? What in hell was coming next for them?
He never touched her cards. She had asked him not to, but with the questions ringing in his mind, he impulsively turned over the top card.
Death.
His phone rang, kick-starting his stalled heart.
CHAPTER TWELVE
FLISS’S MORNING READING had encouraged her to say goodbye today.
She had thought she had understood it, especially when Saint had proposed, then things had ended on that sour note at the car and she’d been thrown into confusion.
Slowly, however, as Mrs. Bhamra promised her a knitted blanket for the baby and Fliss visited Granny at the cemetery, she knew which goodbye was necessary and inevitable.
She told her landlords that movers would come in the next few months. She paid them in advance and packed up a handful of personal items, then said her goodbye.
She said goodbye to the person she’d been when she’d lived here in Nottingham, the one who’d held herself back on so many levels and worried she wasn’t good enough as a designer or wasn’t entitled to live a bigger life.
She said goodbye to thinking that it was impossible for Saint to want her when he could have anyone.
He did want her. He’d said it in thousands of ways. She had kept this flat and all her ties here because she hadn’t wanted to believe in him. In them. It was scary, especially when he hadn’t said I love you back to her.
How many other declarations and guarantees did she need, though? He made her life richer in countless ways. Yes, materially, but he had given her a baby. He made her laugh. He coddled her and supported her dreams and built her confidence in herself. He cared about her very deeply. She knew he did.
He wanted to be her person, her safety net, and he couldn’t be that person for her if she didn’t let him. She had to step off the ledge and have faith that he would catch her. That was how she would learn to trust that he would.
So, even though she was hurt, she was closing out her life here for good so she could make a new one with him.
She had just finished labeling the boxes she wanted shipped to her in New York when he texted.
