The Hidden Beach - Karen Swan Page 0,148

come back. She didn’t want this after all – she had been doing just fine. Fine-ish.

‘Bell –’

She looked back at him, her heart aching with the pain that came from just looking at him. ‘You know, you could have just emailed. You didn’t need to get on a plane and fly for a day and a half. In economy.’

He hesitated, seeing her agitation. ‘Well, apparently it’s good for me. Although my back would disagree.’

They were getting soaked, but neither of them appeared to notice. He took a step closer to her but she instinctively stepped back.

‘Bell, I’m not here because we want you back as our nanny,’ he said, reading her with an expert eye. ‘Nor am I here because I’ve caved in to Linus’s daily pleas that we come to see you. I am a strict father these days. I have boundaries.’ He arched an eyebrow slightly, sounding rather like his sister. ‘I also have a very strict pocket-money policy, much to Linus’s dismay.’

She watched him, sensing his attempt at levity. Brightness. ‘Does he still believe he owns a boat?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Well, that sounds positive.’

‘He didn’t think so.’

A small smile escaped her, but she flattened it down again. ‘Look, Emil—’

‘I know you probably won’t believe this,’ he said quickly, cutting her off, hearing her tone. ‘But there are a lot of things that are positive now. Things that might have seemed impossible in the summer.’

‘. . . Good. I’m glad.’

‘Max nearly dying clarified everything. Suddenly none of it mattered. It was just ego and fear and half-memories, I know that now. Hanna and I – we went to couples counselling.’

She frowned. ‘Couples counselling? But—’

‘We did it to “devolve our relationship and try to build a new platform for our relationship going forward”.’ He gave speech-mark fingers, an almost-smile in his eyes.

‘Oh.’ It all sounded very Gwyneth Paltrow. ‘Did it work?’

He blinked. ‘Yes. We do brunch.’ That wry tone he shared with Nina hovered in the corners of his words.

‘Okay.’

‘And we talk about you. A lot. What we did, dragging you into something so toxic. We wanted to make it up to you, but didn’t know where you’d gone.’

‘I couldn’t stay.’

‘I know. I also thought I knew what loss was – until you disappeared.’

The words stripped back her defences, peeling back the layers she had worked so hard to close. ‘Emil –’

‘I had to basically beg your friends to tell me where you were. When they wouldn’t, I resorted to bribery.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s not the sort of thing the New Me would condone, but I was desperate. Tove calls me her stalker although I actually think she’s quite pleased to have one . . .’

It was a quip, but she couldn’t smile. Her emotions were rushing through her like floodwaters, and the smile in his eyes faded too. ‘When they said you were with Mats.’

‘Not like that.’

‘I know that now.’ His eyes burned. ‘But I wouldn’t have blamed you if it had been like that. The way I treated you . . . rejecting you, pushing you away, trying to pretend you meant nothing when in reality, you were everything. I was chasing an idea, something that, deep down, I knew I didn’t want – but it was all I knew . . .’ He took a step in again, but this time she didn’t retreat. ‘I felt so alone after I woke up properly. I didn’t remember the meeting with Linus at all and I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t come. I knew something was wrong but I didn’t know what. Hanna kept making excuses, saying I needed to get better first, so I channelled everything into that. Getting back to my family, becoming well enough that they would see me again . . . It became my entire life. My only focus. It was absolutely impossible for me to imagine that there might be another path. And even when you were right there, showing me . . . I couldn’t trust in it.’ He swallowed. ‘Not until it was too late, and I’d ruined it all.’

Rivulets of rain ran down the planes of his cheeks and she knew what he was leading up to.

‘Emil, I get it, really,’ she said sadly. ‘I understood it then, too. But even if you and Max and Hanna are all good now, it’s still too complicated for me to go back to. Hanna was my boss. Linus was the child in my care. I can’t . . . step out of being the nanny to them.’

‘You can.’

‘No.’

‘Yes, they already know—’ he blurted. ‘I told Hanna. About us. About how I felt about you.’

Bell’s mouth parted. ‘You did what?’ she gasped. ‘Why would you do that?’ She glanced across at Linus, seeing him watch them closely from the safety of the awnings.

‘Well, for one thing, I had to account for why Linus and I wanted to cross the world to find you. For another, I thought she should have fair warning before I did everything in my considerable power to bring you back.’

It was seemingly another joke, something to buy time as she absorbed the news that Hanna knew. Hanna knew. She ran her hands over her – wet – face. ‘Shit – oh my God, what was her reaction?’ she winced, wanting and not wanting to know all at once.

He inhaled slowly. ‘Shocked at first, naturally. But then . . .’ He shrugged. ‘After a while, she said she could see it.’

‘See it?’ she repeated, dumbfounded, peering at him through her fingers.

‘Us. Together. She thinks we’d be good for each other. She knows you won’t stand for my bad behaviour, for one thing. And she knows that Nina likes you, which is little short of a miracle because she really does abhor most humans. And she knows that you love Linus, of course.’

‘Well, of course. But –’

‘And that Linus and I both love you.’

It was such a simple statement, and yet it contained a world within its words. She stared at him in stunned silence, oblivious to the rain pouring down her neck as he stepped in to her, closing the gap between them finally. They loved her? He loved her?

He hooked his finger and trailed it lightly over her cheek. ‘Bell, I know I’m no catch. I’m never going to be perfect. I was a flawed man before the accident and I’m always going to be, no matter how much therapy I have. I don’t deserve you but I will do everything in my power to try to deserve you.’ He shrugged. ‘Can’t you take a chance on me?’

Could she? she wondered, staring into his remarkable eyes. He wasn’t the easy option by any stretch. He was difficult and stubborn and had no filter. But she’d felt something on that Midsommar night, when his hand had cupped her head and his lips had first kissed hers – she had understood in that moment of perfect stillness, that since Jack’s death her heart had been like a frightened bird beating its wings frantically against a cage, and he, he had been a warm pair of hands around her. He had woken her up again and they were both awake now.

‘Hey,’ she said quietly, realizing something else.

‘What?’

‘You’re speaking in English.’

A smile curled his beautiful mouth, enlivening his eyes. Those eyes. ‘Impressed yet?’

She took off his cap, pressed her hands to his cheeks and kissed him; she kissed him though the rain was dripping off their noses and eyelashes, and running in sheets over their cheeks. She kissed him though she knew this was a point of no return for her heart. There would be no turning back. ‘I love you both too,’ she whispered, seeing how his eyes burned and his fingers clutched against her waist, the flame between them flickering and beginning to dance again.

Linus darted out from the safety of the awning, cheering with pumping fists, and they both jumped, having forgotten him momentarily. ‘Dad wants you to be his girlfriend but he told me not to say anything!’

She laughed. ‘You did very well to keep it a secret. I never would have guessed.’

Emil reached for him, hugging Linus into them both in a happy huddle. A little family. He looked up at the cascading sky, closing his eyes and feeling the rain on his face. ‘You know what?’

‘What?’ she smiled.

‘. . . I think we should go for a walk.’

‘In the rain?’ Linus gasped, eyes shining at the contrariness of it.

‘Of course – this is the very best time,’ he said, cupping her head and kissing her again. He pulled away, his eyes burning brightly. Fiercely. ‘It reminds you you’re alive.’