‘I love my family but I can’t—I won’t—live with them. I keep everything separate and contained. That’s how it works. That’s how I live.’
The hurt in her chest was spreading like a blizzard.
‘Is that why you didn’t tell Marta about me and Sóley?’
She saw the truth in his eyes before he even opened his mouth, and it hurt so badly she had to grit her teeth against the pain in her heart.
‘Yes.’
‘Have you told anyone in your family?’
This time he shook his head.
She breathed out unsteadily. It had happened again—just like with her father. They had met too late. Ragnar, the man she loved, the man she so badly wanted to love her, was someone who couldn’t be what she wanted or give her what she needed. Only she’d been too busy painting pretty pictures in her head to see what was actually in front of her nose.
‘What if I tell you that I love you?’ she whispered. ‘Would that change anything?’
As he shook his head the distance in his eyes made her almost black out.
‘I want to go home.’ The words left her mouth before she knew they were there. ‘I want to go back to England—now.’
He glanced away, and there was a long, strained silence.
‘Then I’ll go and speak to Ivar,’ he said finally. ‘I’ll leave you to pack.’
And without meeting her eyes he turned and walked out through the door.
CHAPTER TEN
STANDING BESIDE THE fire in the middle of the living room, Ragnar breathed out unsteadily. This was his home, and yet he felt adrift—disconnected and dazed.
He didn’t know which was more unbelievable. The fact that Lottie and Sóley were gone or that he had stood and watched them leave.
He fumbled with the equation in his head but nothing he did would balance it.
He shivered. He felt cold, and the house was so quiet. No, not just quiet—it was silent. The silence of reproach and regret.
His eyes flicked across the empty room to something square and yellow, poking out from beneath a cushion on the sofa. Slowly he walked towards it, his heart pounding as he saw what it was.
Lottie’s sketchbook.
He picked it up, his hand shaking as he turned the pages, an ache flowering like a black orchid inside his chest.
What had he done?
Or rather what hadn’t he done?
Why hadn’t he stopped her leaving?
Why had he just stood and waited while she packed?
It made no sense. He’d only just asked her to move in with him, and she’d agreed, and for the first time ever he’d been thinking about a future that offered something other than lives lived separately with clearly defined borders. For the first time ever he’d been looking at a hazy rose-gold sunset of a future, with Lottie and his daughter.
And then Marta had arrived, crashing into his ordered, tranquil life, trailing snowflakes and suitcases and disorder in her wake, and instantly the sunset had been blotted out by the need to act quickly and decisively.
Of course he’d taken care of her, but there had been no possibility of her staying. And he’d tried to explain that to Lottie. Tried to explain that he couldn’t let his family into his home with all their tears and traumas.
Only she hadn’t understood, and she’d kept on pushing and pushing, and then—his breathing faltered—then she’d told him she loved him.