He didn’t add that it was because of Louis Rockman attacking her. He didn’t need to.
‘He does,’ she agreed quietly. ‘You know, in many ways we are the same, you and I.’
‘You are the daughter of an earl. And I am the son of a single, unwed mother. I hardly think that makes us the same.’
‘We both had mothers who loved bad men, oblivious to their faults. Mothers who couldn’t see the truth even though it was staring them in the face. The only difference was that you had to see your mother worship your father from afar, whilst I had to watch mine do it right before my eyes.’
There was sheer torment in Lukas’s eyes just then. But he simply pulled his jaw taut, took a breath and then released it.
‘In any case, I should go.’
‘So...that is what you came here to say?’ Oti asked in disbelief.
‘It is.’
‘That is all you came here to say? Nothing more?’
‘Nothing more. I just wanted to tell you that you were right,’ Lukas acknowledged with a rueful upturn of his mouth. ‘And to thank you.’
‘To thank me?’
‘For showing me a different way to be. For seeing past the demons in me, to the good, I guess. If someone as gentle and good as you can love even a little bit of me, it gives me hope.’
‘Hope?’ she echoed again.
‘Yes.’ He cast her an odd look. ‘Anyway, I’ve had an account set up in your name. Tell me how much you need for you, and for our baby. It will be in there.’
‘I don’t want your money, Lukas,’ she choked out. ‘I don’t want anything from you.’
She couldn’t have said what that expression was that twisted his features. Or perhaps it was more that she didn’t want to identify it. It made his words echo too loudly around her head.
That if she loved him, then she was the only one who ever had.
It tore her up, and yet simultaneously made her more determined.
His situation was heartbreaking, and it made his rejection of her all the more understandable, even if it didn’t make it hurt any less. But she refused to allow him to throw it all away, just because he didn’t understand it.
She’d helped him see a better way once. Surely she could do it again.
‘Is that all you really came here to say?’ she challenged. ‘You’re going to throw away the fact that I love you? The fact that you love me?’
‘I don’t even know what love is, Oti. I wish I did. I wish I was that kind of man. But you wouldn’t want whatever half-baked idea of love that I could offer.’
‘You know how to love, as determined as you might be to pretend otherwise.’
‘And you’re determined to ignore what’s right in front of your face,’ he growled, misery etched into his ridiculously handsome face, which looked all the more beautiful to her right at that moment.
‘You do,’ she urged him softly. ‘You’ve already shown me you do, several times. You just can’t bring yourself to see it. But I can help you...if you’ll let me.’
She watched him hesitate, those grey eyes shot through with uncertainty, but also with a kind of longing that pulled at her heart.
She had him. For better or worse, she had him. Relief and triumph punched through her.
‘I want you, Oti, with every fibre of my being,’ he told her fiercely. ‘And I don’t believe that feeling will ever diminish. More than that, I don’t want it to. But I also want what’s best for you and for our baby, and I don’t believe that’s me.’
Subconsciously, his eyes dropped to her belly, and she took the opportunity to close the gap between them. Then, taking his large hands in her own, she placed them over her stomach.
‘It is what’s best for us,’ she confirmed softly. ‘And what you’ve just described is the very definition of love.’