She glanced away, wanting to hide from the inevitability of affection fading from his face when he understood the reality. But the thing about Niall was that, even without seeing him, even without touching him, he was all over her. This magnetic connection between them was still there even when her eyelids dropped and the scene faded to black. His strength surrounded her, his energy thrummed a beat through her body and his love – was it love? – made her not sure whether to be encouraged or terrified.
‘I find this so hard to vocalise.’ She turned back but fixed on Niall’s chest rather than anything more confronting. The solid, warm place she wanted to fall in to and sink to safety but wasn’t sure she would be able to call hers to do so. ‘It terrifies me.’ Saying even that was frightening because it opened the floor to questions about why.
‘Try,’ Niall said. ‘Please.’
The need in his voice triggered something in her. More than any man who’d gone before, he had to hear this, because he was more important than any of them. And although that meant that she risked more, there was no getting away from it now. The door had been unlocked and she had to walk through it.
‘I guess you’ve an idea what my condition involves,symptom wise, since you’ve googled it. So, I’ll tell you the stuff you didn’t read online.’ Carli ventured into an explanation, letting the words guide her. She would do her best to tell him the truth without putting herself down because she was done with that. She’d tell him how it was, but she’d be damned if she was knocking herself down.
‘The thing you need to know,’ she continued, ‘is that Fibro might make me physically stuffed and I can’t run marathons or fuck like no one’s watching, or whatever, but it has made me stronger than I ever was. The way I have to navigate the world now, a world that doesn’t see what I experience, has been so difficult, difficult in that you can either crumble or build resilience. And I loathe how toughness is equated only with physical fitness or other more recognisable illnesses or getting over the death of a loved one. People would say I was strong for coping with losing my mum, but no one ever says that about the Fibro because if they recognise anything at all – which they don’t because I hide it well – it’s the deficit: the Carli that can’t come out to play or goes to bed at nine or winces with pain when she breathes the wrong way. But coping with that every day without being seen and having to find your own support is hard. You have to be tough. So tough. And I am. And it galls me that I can’t be valued for that.’ Carli noticed her pulse was racing at admitting all this to Niall. She wanted to get up off the chair and avoid facing him, but he was right there in front of her, watching her with such intense admiration and concern that it pinned her to the seat.
‘Oh, Cass. Of course you’re valued.’ Niall rubbed her hands. ‘You were strong when you lost your mum and that strength carries you through other things in life, no matter what they are. You’re incredible. I haven’t wanted to ask you about it because I wanted you to tell me in your own time,but I understand that you might be in pain a lot of the time, maybe the whole cold thing last night was part of it? The stuff when you first got here?’
Carli nodded, surprised at Niall’s level of insight so far. ‘Yes, pain is always there, fatigue, and a whole funfair of other stuff, including the feeling of being different – difficult.’
‘What? You’re not difficult. How could anyone say you’re difficult?’ He was trying to reassure her, but he’d been back in her world for a glimpse in time.
‘Niall, I’m telling you what it’s like underneath the glaze. Out of holiday mode like we are now. I haven’t met a single man who could cope. Or wanted to cope.’ She challenged him dead on. ‘I have it mild and it’s not easy at all. Guys have ended it because I couldn’t do the things normal girls do like jump out of bed and go surfing or whatever. Sometimes I sit there, breathing for hours, trying to control the pain. When you have to do that, it’s not always possible to go out for a coffee or dance to songs on the kitchen radio or have sex swinging from the chandeliers – or have sex at all. Men imagine they want a life with me, but they get bored of it all. So, now, I head them off at the pass by telling them early on and making sure they know what they’re in for.’
‘But, it’s life withyou. I’d have loved to have had a life with you. I still would.’
Niall talked in phrases that sounded delicious but also like soundbites from movies. This was reality and she couldn’t let herself get drawn into a romantic ideal. Couldn’t let him.
‘It’s like you said to me at the loch about your exes,’ she explained, ‘they soon get tired. You would too. You’re only human. And, to be fair, you have a lot of baggage of yourown. Thinking you…we…can cope with both might be romanticising things.’
‘Or you might be underestimating me.’ He presented her with an alternative truth, which could be right, but he could be getting carried away.
‘Niall, I’m going to ask you something and I need you to be truly honest with me. And with yourself. Really honest. No “love conquers all” bs. Please.’
‘I’ve never uttered those words in my life, but okay.’
‘All the intensity aside, if you hadn’t met me on this trip, would you be ready for a relationship? Honestly. Because there’s being ready for a relationship and being ready for one with someone like me.’
‘Isn’t being ready for a relationship qualified by who you’re going to be in that relationship with?’ Niall threw an unequivocal truth into the ring. ‘I never felt ready until I met you again. You are the only one I want to be in a relationship with.’
‘But you’ve got stuff going on. You’re grieving one man and getting ready to grieve another and I’m not sure you have let go of the ghosts of the past. I would be there for you, but I do worry about that. What’s life like for you on a day-to-day basis?’
At this switch from talking about Carli’s problems to Niall’s, he scraped the footstool across the floor and stood up. Paced a couple of feet across the room, fiddled with an ornament of a seal on the mantelpiece, before rolling it in his palm and turning back to her. As he spoke, he gripped onto the ornament like it was a life preserver.
‘I’m not going to lie, Cass. It comes and goes. Some days, I’m cooking with gas, other days I ask myself how I got this far in life. Since Rafe died I’ve wondered if he was the one that held all the magic. And when I do somethingwrong I still kind of have this argument with myself over whether I’m selfish like Archie or if my brain is fucked up.’
Carli examined him, let his words settle. The seams Niall had been fighting hard to keep sewn up were finally unstitching. And this was about more than an event that had happened seventeen years ago. This was about present day Niall.
‘Oh, Niall.’ She stood and went to him, touched his cheek. ‘You’re not Archie or fucked-up.’
‘Thanks, Cass.’
‘But with my stuff and your stuff combined, if we are to have any chance of anything then you have to sort out the threads in your head that are all tangled: the past and future grief, Archie, Mr McInally. And maybe you need someone to help you do that. Not me. A mental health person.’
‘Oh, jeez! Not mental health, please.’ Niall stepped away from her and her seemingly crazy idea. ‘Everyone and their dog has mental health problems nowadays. I’m not joining that queue.’
‘Come on! Don’t be one of those guys. This isn’t seventeen years ago; things have changed out there for men and their mental health.’
‘I’m getting the ick.’
‘Well bloody get over it.’
He looked away. Had she been too harsh?
