She watched a seagull rise high before swooping down toward the water then take off again in an elegant glide. She envied it the ability to fly away and escape whenever it wanted to.
She wondered how long it would be before she’d be able to come here and not think of Philip, not miss his arms around her, not wish with all her heart that he was still there.
The hairs on the back of her neck suddenly stood up, and Selina knew he was coming.
He didn’t make a sound, yet she felt it the moment he arrived. And she felt something else, too. A presence. But this wasn’t tortured. There was a sense of relief, a sense of freedom swirling around her mind.
She turned to look at him as he marched across the sand toward where she sat.
He looked severely handsome as ever, the strong winds playing havoc with his chestnut hair.
And yet, Selina sensed a shift in him, in Charlotte.
Something had changed. Something was different.
She rose to her feet as he reached the rocks and began to climb down toward him.
When he reached up a hand to assist her, she hesitated only a moment before grasping it.
And when her feet hit the compact sand beneath her boots, she couldn’t quite bring herself to pull away.
But neither, she noted with a thudding heart, did he.
The silence stretched on as she waited for him to speak but after eons of him just standing there gazing at her, her nerves couldn’t take it anymore.
“Philip, what –“
Before she could finish her question however, he reached out and pulled her against him then captured her lips in a kiss so tender that it splintered her soul.
Chapter 16
Philip broke the kiss far sooner than he would have liked.
But there’d be plenty of time for that. A lifetime, if he got his way.
He watched as her eyes blinked slowly open, a smug masculine pride filling him at the dazed look they contained.
“Wh—“
Before she could ask one of the hundreds of questions she no doubt had, Philip took her by the hand and led her wordlessly to the tall grasses behind the rocks.
There he sat, pulling her gently to sit beside him, both of them facing the vast ocean.
He kept her small hand gripped within his own as he turned his head to look at her.
“I’m sorry,” he began. The words were too simple to convey all his regret about so much of how he’d acted, especially over the last few days.
“I shouldn’t have walked out that morning when you told me about –“ He stumbled slightly but ploughed on, knowing how important this conversation was. For both of them. “About Charlotte,” he finished. “And I shouldn’t have hidden myself away these past few days since then, either.”
Selina shook her head, the breeze catching a lock of hair and plastering it to her face. Philip reached out and grasped the tendril, tucking it behind her ear and smoothing his thumb along her cheek.
“It’s fine,” she said. “I know how difficult these things are. You lost your wife, Philip, Timothy’s mother. It would be hard for anyone to let that go.”
He looked into her eyes, trying to find the right words to say to her. Trying to vocalise his thoughts.
He’d spent days searching his soul, figuring out how to move forward. And he’d decided that the only way for that to happen would be complete honesty. Even if it made him sound like a callous bastard. If nothing else, Selina deserved that from him.
“I’ve mulled over what you said for days now. Agonised would perhaps be a better description.” He smiled ruefully. “At first, I didn’t want to believe that what you’d said was true. That after everything she’d suffered during our marriage, I was still somehow causing Charlotte pain. That the terrors and sleepless nights my boy was suffering were my doing.”
Selina gasped and turned to face him fully, scrambling to her knees.
“No, Philip. I didn’t mean – I would never mean that you were to blame.”
She looked so distressed that he couldn’t help but lean forward and press a soft, reassuring kiss to her lips. He pulled away before the fire that was always waiting to flare between them could ignite past his control.
“I know that’s not what you meant, love.” The endearment slipped out, yet he didn’t regret it.
He’d decided on complete honestly, after all.
“But the truth is, I’ve been living in an agony of guilt for so long, even before