She nodded, but the movement felt jerky and unbalanced. “Yes. And thank God he did, for it seems you never would have. But that’s what your best at, isn’t it, Simon? Withholding.”
He flinched at the accusation and she could see that he wanted to move toward her. He didn’t, of course. It seemed he was patently incapable of doing so.
“I wasn’t trying to withhold something from you, Meg,” he said softly. “Ididn’tleave, so I wasn’t certain there was any point in telling you that it was my initial plan.”
She moved toward him, hands clenched at her sides. “Do you wish you had?”
“Told you or left?”
“Left!” she cried. “Do you wish you had left?”
He bent his head. “If I had, I wouldn’t have hurt anyone.”
She drew in a sharp, hard breath and staggered away, recoiling just as she would have if he struck her. In some ways, it felt as though he had, for the truth of him…ofthem…now hung between them in a way she had been trying to hide from. Avoid. Pretend she could repair.
It was clear now that she had been a fool.
“You would have hurtme,” she said, her voice hardly carrying.
He lifted his gaze slowly. “What?”
“Damn it, don’t pretend that you don’t know how I feel for you,” she said with a violent shake of her head. “Don’t pretend you didn’t know all along. You and I have had a connection that went deeper than friendship, deeper than lust, for years. Webothfelt it. And you know that if you had ridden off with Robert and I had married Graham, that it would have hurtme. The fact that it was only some night you regret that kept you from doing it…well, that hurts me almost as much.”
“The situation was…complicated,” he said softly.
“Of course it was,” she said, throwing up her hands. “I was in love with one of my brother’s best friends and marrying the other. You think that hasn’t torn me apart for years? That seeing you and wanting to be near you and wanting totouchyou hasn’t broken my heart and my spirit?”
His eyes went wide. “You love me.”
“If you don’t know that, then you are blind as well as a coward,” she whispered. “Because I have never been very good at hiding it. Especially not when we were alone together.”
“Meg—” he began.
She shook her head. “No. No! I know you, Simon. You’re going to start reciting all these reasons why we arewrongand what we did waswrongand how we don’t deserve to be happy. Thatyoudon’t deserve it. But that is a pile of…well, it’s a pile of something I’m not supposed to say as a lady. And you know it.”
“I was never trying—”
“You were nevertryingat all!” She realized she was shouting. And she didn’t care. She wanted to shout. She wanted to scream because she had been silent for so long.
“Do you think Iwantedto walk away?” he snapped.
She folded her arms. “You were going to, so in this situation I suppose it doesn’t matter what your intention was.”
He stared at her, his mouth opening and shutting.
She shook her head. “Simon, I know you’ve cared for me as long as I’ve cared for you. But you were never willing to fight for me. And I’ve been fighting. I’ve beenfightingsince we were caught together that night in the cottage and it was clear we would be forced to marry. I knew that we could be happy, that we could be…right. But now I see I was a fool.”
She stared at him, at his beautiful face. She saw his pain. But she also saw his hesitation. And that was what broke her, for it proved to her what she already knew.
He wasn’t willing to overcome the obstacles between them. She wasn’t worth it to him. And like Emma, she realized she didn’t want to live a life like that. She couldn’t love this man and have him incapable of allowing himself to feel the same in return.
She’d rather be alone.
She backed away, forcing a wall down between them just as he had done so many times before. “I’m leaving.”
His eyes went wide. “Leaving?”
She nodded slowly. “I need time. I need to think. I’ll go to James and Emma’s. I just need…to not be here.”
