Page 72 of Take Me Away

‘And what?’

He shakes his head. ‘You have no idea what it does to me, seeing you with Maisie. Watching her look at you like you’re some kind of miracle.’

‘She’s a sweet kid. She doesn’t know our history.’

‘But I do.’ His voice roughens. ‘I remember everything, Isla.’ The thud in my heart echoes as he pauses. ‘And I’ve tried too hard to forget.’

His gaze reaches mine, baleful, broken, but worse than those is the guilt shadowed there.

‘You remembered me, even after you were married.’

His stare, straight into my soul, fractures me wide open.

My tongue tingles with dryness. My breath is caught, snagged in my throat. ‘You told me to go, Kit.’

‘I thought you’d come back.’ For a moment that stormy gaze drops, and suddenly it all clicks into place. He doesn’t just hate me for being the girl who left and never came back. He hates himself more for not forgetting her, even when his life had moved on.

‘And I thought you’d follow me. I so wanted you with me.’ I blink, too fast. ‘But you just waved me off like it was the end of our normal summer, like I wasn’t heading out into the unknown. Alone. Always, alone. Little Isla Quinn, Nobody’s Girl.’

Bile claws up my throat. I can’t breathe. Can’t talk. He grabs my hand and holds it against his chest.

Something flickers across his face – pain so raw it makes my chest ache in response. ‘After all this time, after everything,’ he says roughly, ‘I look at you, and I hate that you make me care. That even when you were gone, you were still here.’ He presses my hand, still held in his against his chest.

The admission hangs in the air between us, raw and honest and terrifying.

‘I never stopped,’ I whisper. ‘Caring. Loving you.’

Those last words just slip out, but they are nothing more than floodgates holding back the tide.

‘I fell in love with you when I was eight years old. You were the highlight of my life, my whole year, not just my summers. That day, when we left the audition with Marcus Vale, you held my hand the whole way home, and all I dreamed of was for you to ask me to stay. To tell me that you loved me enough to want me for who I was, there and then in that moment.’

His gaze shutters, one long blink.

‘But I didn’t.’

I let out a dry snort. ‘No, Kit. You didn’t.’ I don’t know whether to admit the next bit, whether it will gain us anything, or just make it worse, but I’m halfway there with some truths I haven’t even allowed myself to think for years, and I don’t think I can stop now.

‘I was going to come back.’ A swallow. A memory long buried. ‘I had a filming break while they went through the first rushes in the London studio.’ My hand is still pressed against his chest, but I’m not sure if it’s me placing it there or him holding it. ‘I missed you and it hurt so bad. I wanted to come back and tell you. Wanted to come back and tell you that we were more than a summer thing, that I wanted us to be forever.’

‘But you didn’t?’

I shake my head, and a tear rolls with the motion. ‘I told you the other night. Maggie came to London…’ The heartbreak is there all over again. The crack in my heart that weakened me.

‘And she told you I’d met Jess.’ He sighs the words.

I nod. Can’t, won’t, meet his gaze.

‘And now?’ His voice is a whisper.

My voice wavers. ‘None of this was what I wanted. Everything is in free fall.’

‘So you ran away.’

‘I came to the only place I’ve ever felt at home,’ I correct him. The words surprise me as much as him. ‘I didn’t plan to. But…’ I don’t know how to express the longing I had for this place. The salt in the air, the sand in my toes, the safety of the old Cornish walls.

‘For how long?’ he asks.

‘I don’t know,’ I answer honestly.