‘Made you mine.’
It’s all I can hear—and his words from my office all those weeks ago come back to me.
‘I’m back to take all that I’m owed.’
I shiver. Have I got this wrong again? Does it really boil down to possession rather than love?
‘I’m not some possession you can lay claim to, Cain.’
‘No? My brother got to do that, though, didn’t he? He got you and my child.’
His tormented words stab through the very heart of me and I straighten against them. I put my hurt into strength. I know he’s speaking through his pain, through the drink. If I can sober him up maybe we can have a real conversation, a real future.
‘Let me make you a coffee and then we can talk properly.’
‘Save it, Lexi. I came to ask you to marry me.’
I want you to tell me you love me, my heart screams. That you want to marry me because you love me.
‘And what about love, Cain?’
He goes very still, very quiet, his eyes fixed on me for the longest time.
‘What about it?’
‘Don’t you want to marry for love?’
His skin pales, his eyes flash. ‘You didn’t love my brother in that way, yet you still married him.’
My world plummets. He doesn’t love me.
‘And, like I said,’ I say quietly, ‘I won’t marry without love again.’
He hesitates, the pulse in his jaw working to a rhythmic beat, and the kettle chooses that moment to click off. The room is so silent, so cold.
‘Then there’s nothing left to say. Goodnight, Lexi.’
He turns and walks away, taking my hope, my heart, my world with him.
* * *
There’s a banging in my skull—incessant, painful. I try and cover my ears, but the movement makes my stomach lurch.
I groan as I roll onto my side and my body suddenly falls. I swing backwards to regain the ground beneath me and realise I’m not in bed. I’m not even at home. The air smells different. It smells of...
Mum.
I’m on Mum’s sofa.
‘Oh, hell.’
The night comes back to me in broken snippets. Lexi’s confession, the pub, my—my proposal.
‘Fuck.’
I press my fingers into my throbbing temples as the nausea swims inside me.
‘Oh, you’re awake, then?’