Settling into the chair next to her, I studied her profile since she still refused to look at me. My gaze caressed the curve of her cheek, the tip of her cute nose that turned up ever so slightly, and the plush fullness of her lower lip. That lip used to drive me mad and apparently still did. Taran might not have been my first kiss, but she was my first everything else. She owned pieces of me I’d never get back, and I was content with that.
Done tiptoeing around her, I blurted, “I’m just going to say this because there’s no easy way to bring up the subject.”
She turned to me now. Her dark eyes were big and angled upward at the corners, making her lashes look dramatic. I loved her eyes. There had been nothing better than staring into Taran Macbeth’s eyes as I moved inside her, seeing her love for me shine out of them.
There was nothing worse than seeing hatred burn from them.
Today, however, there was no hatred. Just wary curiosity.
“I don’t think your mum told you, but the kids and I used to visit her once a month for Sunday dinner.”
Taran frowned, her lips parting on an exhalation of surprise. “No. No, Mum didn’t tell me that.”
“Heather and Angus were really fond of Isla.”
She blinked rapidly, glancing away. “She didn’t tell me.”
“I think she didn’t want any hurt feelings.”
“Aye, that sounds like Mum.” Taran took a sip of coffee, and I noted her fingers trembled ever so slightly.
Fuck.
Before I could apologize, she spoke. “Your kids are funny. Though Heather seems a bit angry with you.”
“We’ve sorted that out. It turns out I’m good at solving other people’s problems but not so good at admitting my own out loud.” I studied her, searching for even the smallest reaction. Taran’s expression remained perfectly blank. “Heather … it turned out she just needed to talk to me. So, we talked and things are good between us. She’s wiser than her years, that one.”
“Aye?” Taran gave me a polite smile.
“You know what she said to me? Verbatim: ‘Me and Angus don’t need you to be perfect. We need you to teach us that it’s okay to be imperfect.’”
My ex’s eyebrows rose. “Wow. Powerful words.”
“What is your perspective on our breakup, Taran?”
She reared back like I’d hit her. “Excuse me?”
I winced at my bluntness, but I pushed through the fear that she might get up and walk out. “Seriously. I mean it. I want to hear your side of the story.”
Her glower could have singed a lesser man’s beard off. “What is the point in going over ancient history?”
“Because it’s not history for me,” I confessed gruffly.
Taran’s features slackened, but she didn’t respond.
I persevered. “Fine. Here’s what I know. I feel like you went to Glasgow and you started to push me away and sabotage our relationship. Maybe to make it easier for me in the breakup. I thought it was done for you. That you’d fallen out of love with me. I never expected you to come back and tell me you still loved me.”
The words hung heavy between us.
So heavy, disappointment crept in. Taran didn’t want to talk about it.
But then …
She looked at me, and I saw an ember of the hatred she’d had in her eyes our last day together in my flat. It hit me like a physical burn. “You’re right.” She nodded. “I’ve had years tothink back on that time and why I messed you around my first year at uni. Because I did mess with your feelings, and I own that. But you acted so unimpressed and resentful of me being there thatthatmessed withmyfeelings?—”
“I was insecure as fuck,” I admitted, angry as if it was eighteen years ago all over again. “You left me behind and barely called, didn’t come home, and when I did visit, you wanted to hang with your new friends, and you always left me out of the conversation. I wasn’t unimpressed, Taran. I was hurt and scared shitless I was losing you.”
“But you didn’t tell me the last part about being scared to lose me,” she hissed. “You just berated me for my new friends and my uni life. God, Quinn … I look back and realized that you never talked about how you felt when we were kids. I was left stumbling in the dark, trying to figure you out, and it led me to falling over a goddamn cliff.”
