Finally, when he meets my eyes, I put him out of his misery. “You want me to be your Beryl Kendric.”
His beautiful eyes darken with worry. “What does that mean?”
Oh, Osian.
“It means I’m going to leave Kendric Park.” I push my chair back and start to get up.
“No.” The word bursts from him like a yelp. He leans across and grabs my wrist in his strong hand and doesn’t let me pull away. “I don’t want you to go. I won’t let you.”
After a few more tugs to try and free myself, I settle back in my chair. He keeps his hold on my wrist.
“Evie. I wish…” His face twists with a difficult emotion; his eyes stay fixed on the vice-like grip he has on my wrist. “I wish we’d had that date back in school. Maybe I’d have fallen in love with you, then. We might have ended up together.” His gaze travels up and locks on my face. “A different life, a different world.”
We both hold our breaths for an instant.
“But,” he finally says, “we’re not in a different world, we’re here. And I cannot change who I am or the life I’ve had.”
I wish he’d stop talking. Every word is like a slash with sharp secateurs. Every time he draws breath to speak, I want to hold up my arms to ward off the next slash.
“It’s not that you don’t deserve to be loved.” He squeezes my hand as if begging me to believe him. “Please understand,just because I don’t feel about you the way I felt about Kirsten doesn’t mean you’re not special to me.”
Ouch.
“Evie, I’m asking you to be my dear friend, the bringer of good news who let joy and light back into my life. Please stay, and I promise to give you my friendship, my loyalty, my support. Always.”
Ouch. Ouch.
When he says ‘always’, it sounds like a life sentence. My fate if I accept his friendship.
“Osian, why would you wish to hurt me?”
He looks appalled. “Never! Don’t ever think that.”
“You want me to stay—”
“Of course,” he interrupts me.
But I go on, speaking over him. “To work side by side with you, all the time loving you, wanting you, but not allowed to touch you. You want me living next door, lying in bed trying not to hear if you have a woman in there.”
“I’d never do that. Not here.” His eyes burn with such passionate conviction. “Christ, Evie, is that what you think of me?”
I press on because even a tiny distraction would derail me and melt my resolution. “I’d watch you, looking out for signs of sex. Watching out for unexplained disappearances. Always wondering if you’re really visiting your sister or in bed with someone off Tinder. Growing paranoid when women like Nora make a play for you.” I have to stop for a second and breathe through the memory of my sleepless nights when she was here.
The future has many more women falling for him. Even now, unshaven, hair messy from sleep, early sunlight catching the blond highlights near his temples, he still looks amazing.
“You’d ask me to live here for the rest of my life being tormented by this? Is that what you want for me?”
Osian’s Adam’s apple jerks up and down with every difficult swallow. He stares at me, opens his mouth as if about to offer a solution. Then his eyes slide away from mine, across my face then out towards the sky behind me. His brows scrunch together and stay that way for a long time.
When several minutes pass without answer, I pull my wrist away. His fingers loosen, and he lets me go.
Chapter Forty-five
Packing my things is quick and easy. Finding a short-term place to rent is also easy. What is bad is saying goodbye to people in Kendric House.
Evan refuses to accept my resignation; he even threatens me with legal action. I don’t know how much he’s guessed about me and Osian; he doesn’t mention it. But he offers me a change of accommodation. I can have any room, any apartment, anywhere in Kendric House. A different wing. The cottage in Darling Wood. A caravan parked on the grounds somewhere.
He makes it so hard to refuse that I’m forced to pretend that I’m going to think about it.
