The Innocent Behind The Scandal - Abby Green Page 0,65

her. She did love him. She’d loved him from the moment she’d trusted him enough to let him make love to her.

Still, something stubborn inside her made her resist taking the final leap of faith. She said, ‘It’s just the baby.’

Maks shook his head. ‘No, you don’t get to use the baby as an excuse not to trust me, Zoe.’

‘But how can we do this after everything we’ve been through? I’m scared, Maks. Scared to allow myself to love you or to feel happy. Because I know how quickly it can be snatched away.’

And because she didn’t deserve it.

Maks raised a brow. ‘Is that a good enough excuse to half-live your life? In a perpetual state of fear and misplaced guilt?’

She looked up at Maks, but before she could respond he said, ‘There’s something else you need to know. I meant to tell you earlier...but you distracted me.’

‘What?’

‘You’ve never looked up anything about the crash in the press, have you?’

Zoe shuddered at the thought. ‘No, why would I?’

‘So you’ve never known that the reason your father crashed wasn’t because he was distracted. It was because a couple of joy-riding kids had stolen a car and were driving on the wrong side of the road...’

Zoe searched Maks’s face for signs that he was just making this up. But the faintest glimmer of a memory was coming back to her. People talking in hushed voices as they looked at her with pity. She’d blocked out so much of that time, and she’d been so young...and then she’d never wanted to think about it.

That moment when her father had looked back at her just before the crash had been crystallised in her mind, but maybe...

‘Zoe, even if he’d had his eyes on the road he wouldn’t have had a chance. It was too narrow to escape them. You need to know that. It wasn’t your fault.’

This was huge. Too huge to take in fully right now. But even as she thought that she felt something shift inside her, like a knot loosening.

Maks said, ‘We’re different, Zoe. Things can be different for us. I’m willing to take the risk if you are.’

Could she do it? Hand herself over to this man whom she loved but didn’t have the guts to say it out loud to yet?

And then it hit her. She simply didn’t have a choice except to move forward. For the sake of their baby as much as for her own sake. That was why she’d come back here. That was why she’d never contemplated anything but having her baby.

Maks turned her around to face the water and wrapped one arm around her while pointing out to sea with the other. The clouds were parting to reveal blue sky. And a rainbow.

He said, close to her ear, ‘We can’t do anything but trust in each other and weather whatever comes our way, but I wouldn’t want to do it with anyone else. I love you.’

The rainbow shimmered and glistened, beckoning her to put her trust in this man. She had a sense of her family around her, urging her on. Urging her to finally let go of the guilt that had dogged her whole life. The guilt that she’d used like a shield to stop herself from getting hurt.

It hadn’t been her fault.

Zoe felt a sense of peace wash over her. Acceptance. And a rush of love so intense that she turned around, rose up on her toes and wrapped her arms around Maks’s neck.

She’d thought it would be hard to say the words, but in the end it was the easiest thing in the world. ‘I love you, Maks.’

‘Say that again.’

‘I love you.’

Joy flooded her being when she saw the awe she felt reflected in Maks’s eyes.

He said, ‘Will you marry me? Not for the baby or for any other reason except that I know I want to spend the rest of my life with you and I want everyone to know you’re mine. And because I love you.’

Zoe bit her lip, scarcely believing what she was hearing. Slivers of lingering fear and guilt—for wanting what her parents had had and hoping that her life could be different—that it wouldn’t be cut so tragically short-threatened to rise and drown her again.

But Maks brushed her hair back and said, ‘I know, Zoe. I get it. I’m scared too—believe me. I only saw meanness and selfishness. I’m afraid I don’t know how to be a good father. But I know I wouldn’t want to