All They Need - By Sarah Mayberry Page 0,82
it in her to go further again. The thought of it alone was enough to push her into genuine panic.
She never wanted to feel as weak and helpless as she had during her marriage, and the only way she knew to do that was to protect herself against everyone. Including Flynn, and including herself.
“I know you don’t like talking about your marriage, but you have to know that I would never hurt you, Mel,” he said, his voice gruff with emotion.
“I know. And I trust you. But I have to look after myself. That’s what I learned from my marriage—that I can’t expect anyone else to do that for me.”
They drew apart. Flynn still looked shell-shocked. Maybe even a little shattered. She ached for him, wishing she could find the one thing to say that would make everything okay between them.
“Look, if you need time, I can go. I really don’t mind,” she offered again.
He shook his head. “I just need to get my head around this.” He picked up the bottle and yanked the cork out, but he didn’t pour the wine into the glasses he’d set out. Instead, he looked at the bottle as though he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it.
“I guess what I’m trying to understand is how you see this working between us, if living together and marriage are out of the question,” he said after a moment. “What do you see happening between us?”
His gaze was piercing, searching as it met hers.
“We keep doing what we’ve been doing,” she said. “We spend weekends together, nights during the week. It doesn’t change anything, it doesn’t change what we have together.”
“It changes a lot of things, Mel. What about children, for starters?”
She blinked in surprise.
“Or hadn’t you even gotten that far yet?” He sounded sad.
She shook her head. “I hadn’t. I guess— I hadn’t.”
She hadn’t allowed herself to go there. When she’d first married Owen she’d wanted children, but at a certain point in her marriage she’d become profoundly grateful that she hadn’t gotten pregnant.
But Flynn was not Owen, and if she’d stopped to really think about it she would have anticipated this question because Flynn was a man made for family life. The way he cared for his parents, his bone-deep nurturing instincts… He would make a great father.
“I need to check on the garden. Make sure the timer tap is working…”
It was the feeblest of excuses, but she let him go, watching him walk from the room, his shoulders very square. She let her breath out in a rush and pressed her hands to her stomach.
She felt sick. In protecting herself, she’d hurt a wonderful man. A man she cared for a great deal. A man who had become very important to her very quickly.
You may have lost him. You know that, right?
The possibility reverberated inside her, grim and very real. Flynn had had plans for them, hopes. Expectations. She’d seen it in his eyes. He’d even said it—I want to share my life with you. And she’d fenced off a lot of those hopes and expectations. She’d corralled him into a relationship that operated on her terms, for her protection.
She closed her eyes, thinking about the confusion and hurt she’d seen in his face. He didn’t understand that she had reasons—good reasons—for her decisions. He said he did, but he couldn’t, not really, because she’d never told him the truth about her marriage. She’d been too ashamed. And he’d never asked, because he was too good a man to push her into something he knew she found uncomfortable.
She opened her eyes. Then she walked to the counter and poured herself a glass of wine. She swallowed it in one big gulp. The wine warmed her throat before it hit her stomach. She stared into the glass, thinking about what she needed to do.
After a few seconds she put down the glass and went in search of Flynn.
HE DIDN’T UNDERSTAND. That was the bottom line. Flynn knew Mel was scared and wary, but he hadn’t understood that her resistance to a relationship ran so deep, and he didn’t understand how anyone could close herself off to the future so comprehensively.
Mel had always struck him as being brave and bold. Her laughter, her smile, her earthy sexuality—he’d always thought she was the sort of person who took life by the scruff of the neck and shook it.
Yet she didn’t want to live with him. She didn’t want marriage. And she hadn’t even thought