Chapter 124
“This all feels like a dream.” She was no longer talking about the city, or the water, he knew. “One of those dreams where you’ve fallen, and try to surface again, but can’t. And the longer I stay here, the more it seems as if my life back in Nemford is the dream. I don’t know. Maybe everybody feels that way on holiday.”
He reminded himself that it wasn’t his dream they were discussing here. It was hers. And much as he might like to tell himself different, he knew full well that Lexi was running away from her life. Not taking a holiday. And if he was truly her friend, not just the sad sack bloke who’d mooned about after her all these years, he would take himself out of the equation, wouldn’t he?
“I haven’t forgotten what you said when you arrived,” he said, and he had to look at the bridge because if he looked at her, he wasn’t sure what he would do. Or maybe he was sure. And that was the problem. “It sounds to me that you think you’re missing something. That’s the long and the short of it. But if this marriage is really what you want, the way you say it is, then you’re going to have to accept it. All of it. Not just the bits you can rationalize away.”
“I don’t need to rationalize my marriage,” she said, and he ordered himself not to pay too close attention to how cross she sounded. “You and Lily can’t get your heads around it, but you don’t have to. I know what I’m agreeing to.”
“But you haven’t accepted it, have you? Or you wouldn’t be here. Across the world from where you ought to be right now, calling it a holiday when we both know you’re hiding.”
“I just want to know,” she blurted out. She turned toward him then, and then he was turned toward her as well, and so much for his intentions. “I think this is an act of acceptance. Radical acceptance. I fully comprehend what marrying Victor will mean. I want one little thing to bring with me. To hold on to, through whatever comes.”
“A different radical suggestion would be not to marry him.”
Lexi’s eyes searched his face, and she sighed a little, then she shocked the hell out of him by reaching over, and taking one of his hands in hers.
“When my mother died, my father and I were devastated,” she said quietly. “My father has never been a warm man, and never will be. But he loved my mother as much as he was capable. And in the years that followed, when it was only the two of us, he made me promise that I would arrange my life with my head, not my heart.”
His system was going haywire because she was holding his hand like that, between hers and up against her chest, and he couldn’t think. He had to force himself to use his big head.
“That sounds like grief talking,” he said, gruffly.
“Maybe so, but it’s not a grief I want to repeat. That’s the promise I’m keeping, Tyler. To my father, first and foremost. He wants me to be safe, not in a position to shatter.”
And Tyler was only a man, after all. He shifted so he was the one holding her hand in his, and it was a kind of agony, really. Her fingers were long and elegant, and he would never sleep again, thinking of the things she could do with them.
But all he did was hold her hand there. Safely. Sweetly, even.
“That you promised your father is all very well,” he said. “But you and I both know that you’ve always been a romantic.”
She pulled her hand away, and he let her, because he had to let her. Her eyes flashed. “I don’t think I’m romantic at all.”
“Please. When that wanker started writing you love poetry, you cried.”
“It was love poetry, Tyler. You’re supposed to cry.”
“It was dreadful. Embarrassing.”
“It was years ago. It was one poem and you were cruel about it then, too.”
“Because you wanted it to be a romance, and it wasn’t. It was a university swot looking to get a leg over. And using pretty words to get the job done.”
“It’s not you who he was trying to get a leg over, so I don’t know why on earth you would care.”
“I don’t care,” he said, and it was a lie. A very old lie, so he said it with tremendous dignity. “I’m simply pointing out that where anyone else would see a right tosser, you saw a poet. You’re romantic, plain and simple.”
“Even if I am, it doesn’t matter, because I’m not planning to act on it. And that’s not why I’m here.”
“Are you ready to tell me, then?” And he waited, a strange, new kind of energy rising in him as she turned and met his gaze. Looking uneasy, for the first time.
He couldn’t say he minded.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You can hide here as long as you like, Lexi,” Tyler said quietly. “You’re always welcome.”
“I’m not hiding.”
“It’s nothing to me if you wear a groove into the coastal walk while you fret over thinking yourself frigid. Though I will point out that most people, when they want to know about sex, take to the internet. I’m not necessarily advocating that you watch porn, mind. I’m not saying you shouldn’t, either. Maybe you’ll learn something.”
Lexi rolled her eyes. “The last thing I want to do is watch porn.”
“Because you’re too good, is that it?” And he laughed, though he didn’t find it funny. The notion of Lexi and anything pornographic was enough to turn him inside out. “Saint Lexi, Our Lady of Restraint?”
“Of course not.” She frowned at him. “Porn is just fucking. I want to know what it’s like to be fucked properly.”
And he wanted to say something to break the tension inside him. Between them. He wanted to make them both laugh the way he usually did. That was what he should do, and he knew it. It was the only thing that would keep them steady. On even ground, where they needed to stay. But he didn’t do it.