William frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“She was standing there, and her eyes were… She was trying not to cry. I could see that she had been crying before I arrived, and it was…” James shook his head. “It was because of me. All of it. Because I went to London and basically shut her out, and Caroline Pembley appeared in a gossip column, and every fear she has ever had about love and what it does to people was standing there, looking at me from her face.” He paused. “I had the words. I really had them. I came home specifically to say them. I even arrived early because I could not wait until a reasonable hour to come home and see them. Then I looked at her and thought…”
“Thought what?” William prompted, less sharply now.
“I thought about what you said.” James looked at him. “In the study. About the slow hurting. The one where you don’t decide anything and you move at a careful distance until she’s given you more than you were willing to give back.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I thought about my father. About the kind of man he raised. About every person I have encountered and left exactly as I found them because I did not know how to do anything differently.”
He paused. “And I looked at her crying because of me, and I thought, what if I say it and she stays and I am still that manunderneath it all? What if two years from now she is sitting across a breakfast table and I have become the thing she was most afraid of and she has become her mother?”
The room was very quiet.
William’s expression had shifted. It did not soften, exactly, but it was different.
“James,” he said.
“I know.”
“You arrogant idiot. That is the most…” William shook his head. “You decided what was best for her without giving her the chance to decide for herself.”
James closed his eyes. “Yes.”
“You thought loving her meant leaving.”
“Yes…”
“Did it never occur to you that she might have preferred to make her own choice?”
“I don’t know, William.”
“You let her leave because you were afraid of eventually hurting her,” William said, with careful slowness, “and in doing so, you hurt her immensely.”
“Yes.” James looked at the window. “I am aware of the irony.”
“It is not irony. It is the thing I warned you about. The thing I sat in this chair and said?—”
“I know what you said.”
“Then why?—”
“Because I looked at her and believed it.” James looked back at him. “I believed that I was genuinely capable of becoming the worst version of what she fears, and that the kindest thing I could do was remove myself from the equation before it got that far.” He rubbed his jaw. “Which I now understand was the most spectacular act of self-deception I have committed in thirty-one years—and that is, as you know, a competitive field.”
William looked at him for a long moment. Then he finally sat down.
“Do you know…” He exhaled. “I came here intending to hit you.”
James looked up. “That seems deserved.”
“It was.” A pause. “Several times.”
Despite everything, the corner of James’s mouth twitched.
William pointed a finger at him. “Don’t smile.”
“I’m trying not to.”
“Good.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “Blast you, you make it exceedingly difficult to remain angry.”
James managed a tired smile. “I assure you I’m still angry with myself.”
