“It’s a thousand times different, and you know it.”
“How?”
“What does marriage mean to you?” she volleyed back.
“It’s a commitment,” he said firmly. “But no commitment is greater than having a child together.”
“You don’t want to marry me,” she disputed. “Not for the baby. Or you would have proposed as soon as you found out I was pregnant.”
“I had obvious reasons for avoiding that.”
“And what’s changed?” she challenged.
“I got to know you,” he said, simply.
Her lips parted and his eyes dropped to them of their own volition, his gut twisting with recognition of something he couldn’t quite comprehend.
“What does that mean?”
“You’re not her.”
She closed her eyes, but not before he’d seen hurt there. A hurt he didn’t understand, but nonetheless wanted to erase.
“We don’t have to have a big wedding,” he said, changing his approach. “We can do it here, in the UK. Have a lunch somewhere with just your parents. No one else need know.”
“God, Raf,” she groaned, shaking her head. “How can you even suggest that?”
Frustration coloured his voice. “What is wrong with what I’m offering?”
“You’re not offering,” she responded quickly, leaning forward and knocking on the glass. “Let’s go, Raul.”
Raf opened his mouth to contradict that, but something held him silent. A feeling that if he fought with Elodie over that, he’d lose the bigger argument. The car pulled back onto the country road, and gradually built up speed.
“You’re not offering,” she said, stiffly, every part of her held in a tense line, hands clasped in her lap. “Not willingly.”
“Do you think I am the kind of man who would ever do anything, against his will?”
Her lower lip trembled so slightly he thought he might have imagined it. “Yes, Raf. I think you’re just the kind of decent guy who will always do what he thinks is right, even when it’s not what he wants.”
He heard her comment and saw it for what it was: praise. A compliment. So why did it feel as though her description was also an indictment?
“I don’t want to marry you because you feel forced into it. I don’t want to marryanyone,” she corrected. “Unless it’s out of the deepest, most real kind of love there is. I might be pregnant with your baby, but that doesn’t mean I have to give up on the fairytale.”
And with that, the car turned into a small drive, so he knew they were running out of time. But he couldn’t make his brain work. He couldn’t break down her statement, beyond the very obvious fact that regardless of what was happening between them, Elodie Finch still hoped, one day, to find a man she loved and marry him.
How had he been so stupid? How had he missed the possibility of that? He’d thought living together would mean they were raising their child as a family—with or withoutmarriage. But why should Elodie settle for a shadow of the life she deserved? Why shouldn’t she also have the love she so clearly sought?
And then what? Their child would have a stepfather? Someone who Raf didn’t know, couldn’t necessarily trust. Someone else to spend their time with.
Or was his harsh, negative reaction about Elodie spendinghertime with that unknown man? Elodie being made love to by someone else, made to laugh by someone else, sharing that secret, knowing smile with another man?
It was as though he’d been punched hard in the gut, all of the air knocking completely out of his lungs, leaving him with blobs of light against his eyelids. Leaving him furious and desperate, at the exact same moment he needed to get his shit together and convince her parents that Elodie being pregnant with his baby was a reason to celebrate. It was the last thing he felt like doing.
CHAPTER 16
ELODIE WOULD HAVE GIVEN just about anything to have a few moments alone, to calm her rioting nerves, before having to see her parents. But no sooner had the car drawn to a stop and Raul stepped out from behind the wheel than her parents were at the front door, moving onto the path that was lined with lavender bushes on either side, grim expressions on their faces.
Expressions of acceptance and disappointment.
