Everything inside of Raf clenched up, as he waited for her response.
“I’d like that,” Elodie murmured, from his left. He didn’t look at her. He didn’t trust himself to be able to, without showing what he was feeling—and he didn’t halfway understand that. “But we won’t have time today.”
Raf stood then, his body running hot and cold. He wasn’t sure how he got through the next few minutes, but the secondthey were back in his car, he let out a breath he hadn’t even realised he’d been holding. Suddenly, he missed his old life. He missed the ease and clarity of being a complete loner. Of doing whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. He missed knowing there was no one he cared about, no one else he had to think of. Because when he thought of Elodie, he had the strangest feeling that his body was being clamped in a vice; he wanted, desperately, to be free of it.
It was verystrange being back in his Mayfair home, after all that had happened. Last time they were here, she’d told him she was pregnant. Now? So much had shifted between them, and yet, it felt almost like a dream. As though the time they’d shared in Tuscany had happened to two other people.
Perhaps it was their conversation in his car, his strange and hurtful marriage proposal, but Elodie just needed some space away from him. To think and breathe.
No sooner had they returned to his place, than she said, “I think I’ll go for a walk.”
He’d nodded. “If you give me five minutes, I’ll come with you.”
“No,” she rejected quickly, tried to smile to tamp down on the harshness of her word. She needed to clear her head, and that was impossible with Raf shadowing her. “I think I’d rather be alone.”
His brow furrowed. “I’ll have Raul come?—,”
“No,” she said, again. “I want to be alone.”
“Elodie, you know it’s not safe.”
“Come on, Raf. That’s not true. No one outside of your family and mine knows about the baby. I’m not going to be bundled off the street.”
His lips compressed in a grim line, but he nodded once. “Keep your phone on you.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m not a child.”
“Elodie—,”
“Okay, fine,” she said, because she couldn’t bear to stand toe to toe with him, arguing about something so inconsequential. “I’ll be back soon.” She turned on her heel and left, quickly, closing her eyes as soon as she stepped out of his front door, needing a moment to orient herself to this life she’d found herself living.
Mayfair wasone of her favourite areas of London, though she’d only ever come into this part of town for a specific purpose. So it was, despite the turmoil of the afternoon, a balm to her soul to walk the streets, admiring the old, Georgian houses, the big, plane trees, the fenced off private gardens.
She walked for a long time, in the late afternoon heat, dovetailing through side alleys rather than getting too close to the hustle and bustle of Oxford Street, before her phone began to ring.
She knew it would be Raf even without looking at the screen. Whatever else there might have been between them, his original statement that the baby made her ‘his responsibility’ was shown, time and time again, to be something he believed.
“I won’t be much longer,” she said, curtly, though she couldn’t even articulate why she was so annoyed at him. Getting married because she was pregnant wasn’t a terrible idea. Lots of people might choose that path—she knew it would be her parents’ preference. And before she’d gotten to know Raf so well, she might have even considered some kind of on-paper arrangement, to streamline things for their child. But now?
She stopped walking and squeezed her eyes closed against a wave of hopelessness. The spectre of his offer was there, before her, an offensive shadow of what she wanted. It was like being offered fat-free, dairy-free, sugar-free chocolate, when the real thing was right in front of you, covered in glass. She could see what she wanted, but it was beyond reach. A tear slid down her cheek, catching her off guard. She dashed at it quickly, blaming pregnancy emotions.
“Ellie, are you talking to me?”
She frowned, pulling the phone from her ear and staring at the screen, then stifling a curse.Thiswas the last thing she needed.
“Aaron,” she said, pulling it back to her ear. “I thought you were someone else.”
Silence crackled down the phone line.
“Look, Ellie,” he said on a sigh. “I spoke to your mother.”
Elodie felt a spark of disbelief. Had her mother really phoned Aaron after they’d left? She knew they were close. Aaron was like a son to her parents; she understood that. But they were stillherparents. Their loyalty should have been to her. “She called you?”
“No. She mentioned, the other day, that you were coming home. I…called. To see how you were.”
Elodie closed her eyes on a wave of emotions too complex to navigate. “You could have called me.”
“I didn’t know if you’d answer.”
