‘You know why not.’
‘No. I don’t. Not really.’
‘Kate.’
‘History doesn’t have to repeat itself,’ she persisted, ignoring the warning note she could hear in his voice because she was in love with him and she had to make him see she was right.
‘As I told you before, it’s a risk I’m not willing to take.’
‘There is no risk.’
‘However much I might wish otherwise, you are both better off—and safer—without me.’
At his choice of words, hope flared inside her, spreading through her like wildfire, dizzying her with its intensity. Could it be that he did want them but was simply so blinded by fear he believed he didn’t deserve them? Could she convince him otherwise? ‘You are not your father,’ she said, her throat tight and her pulse racing.
‘Leave it.’
‘No. It’s too important.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
Too bad. He wasn’t shutting her down again. Not now. And she’d chosen her battlefield wisely. There was no escape from a moving car. ‘But you should,’ she said heatedly. ‘You need to. You need to see what I see: a man who would go to the ends of the earth to protect and defend those that matter to him. That man would never be a danger to anyone. That man would never hit anyone.’
He pulled over suddenly and parked, and then turned to her, his eyes bleak, his face rigid. ‘But I did, Kate,’ he said bluntly. ‘I did.’
She blanched, the words hovering between them, the rain hammering down on the roof of the car. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Exactly that.’
No. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. ‘When? Who?’
‘My mother. I was sixteen.’
She recoiled with shock, but right down to her marrow she knew that it couldn’t be that simple. ‘What happened?’
‘Nothing happened.’
‘I don’t believe you. There has to be some explanation.’
‘There isn’t.’
‘Circumstances, then?’ she said, because she was not going to let this go and she refused to believe it of him. ‘Tell me the circumstances.’
‘The day I’d planned to leave,’ he said, his voice flat and emotionless in a way that intensified the ache in her chest, ‘I told her to grab what she needed. She said no. I begged. My father came home, off his head as usual. She told him what I’d asked her to do and he flew into a rage. He punched me in the stomach and I’d had enough. For the first time in my life I retaliated. My mother went to protect him and my fist caught her on the cheek. She told me to get out. So I did.’
He spoke matter-of-factly, but she could hear the trace of emotion behind what he said, the guilt, betrayal, the rejection, the abandonment. ‘It was an accident,’ she said, her words catching on the lump in her throat.
‘Was it?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s who I really am, Kate.’
‘It isn’t. It really isn’t.’ She took a deep breath and stepped into the terrifying unknown. ‘I’ve fallen in love with you, Theo. I don’t know when or how, but I love you and trust you with every cell of my being.’
He barely moved a muscle in response. ‘Then you’ve made a mistake,’ he said flatly. ‘I can never be the man you want me to be.’
For a moment her heart shattered, pain pummelling through her at the realisation he was adamant in his belief, but then, quite suddenly, anger flared deep inside her, rushing along her veins and setting fire to her nerve-endings. How dared he tell her she’d made a mistake? How dared he dismiss her feelings? And how dared he continue to reject their child?