‘What about you?’ she asked suddenly. ‘Did you have any wedding fantasies?’ She closed her eyes almost as soon as she finished saying it. Opened them with an apologetic grimace. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.’
‘You don’t have to filter yourself around me.’ The truth of the words settled the tension. And he realised that if he didn’t want her to filter herself, he needed to be okay with responding to it. ‘I always wanted to get married on a lake. Like this, actually.’ He paused. ‘With Liesel... I thought we’d get married in Cape Town, at this gorgeous little quarry in Durbanville.’
‘I know it. It’s beautiful.’
‘It is.’ He took a shaky breath. ‘I’d pictured all of it. Fighting with my parents to have the ceremony there because they’d want it in the family church. Coming to some kind of compromise because they loved me and I didn’t want to disappoint them.’
He paused when the words sent an uncomfortable ripple through him. Not for the usual reasons this time. No, this time it was because he remember they loved him. It sounded silly—how could he forget it?—but he hadn’t thought about it like that in the longest time. They loved him. That’s where their concern was coming from. Concern he’d begun to see only as disappointment.
Huh.
‘I’m sure it would have turned out perfectly. I’m sure it will, someday,’ she added quickly. ‘With the right woman.’
He almost laughed. Even when he told himself not to be, he was still surprised. But then, he already established things between them made no sense. So he gave up trying to hide his remaining insecurities.
He sighed. ‘Exactly. The only problem is that I can’t trust myself to judge whether a woman is right for me or not.’
Chapter Fifteen
It shouldn’t have bothered her. Less than thirty minutes before, they’d had a painful discussion about why their feelings for one another couldn’t matter. Less than ten minutes before, she’d told him about her writing dreams and how her grief for her father had forced them aside in the last years. Why then, did Ezra’s admission feel like he stabbed her with something?
‘Why not?’ she forced herself to ask. Because she wasn’t a fish out of water, flipping and flopping. She would be consistent in what she wanted from him. From them.
Because she wasn’t a fish, damn it.
‘Well, you already know about Liesel,’ he started slowly. She forced air into her lungs when she realised she was holding her breath, waiting for him to continue. ‘She wasn’t my first wrong choice when it came to dating. There was...someone else. I met her the summer before my last year of high school.’
‘Sounds like a suitable start to a tragic love story.’
His mouth curved. ‘You’re not wrong.’ He took a breath. ‘I was a pretty good kid until then. It helped that I had pretty stable older siblings. Great examples, but terrible standards to live up to. But I tried. Until my sister left her first year of university to follow some band across the country and I realised the bar to live up to had dropped significantly.’
She nodded sombrely, and then said, ‘I know this is probably an inappropriate thing to say right now, but your sister sounds...strong-willed.’
He laughed. ‘Bullheaded, you mean. She’s kind of badass now. Anyway, back then, she was just acting out against our strict upbringing. Loving, but strict. She went a little bit overboard with her first taste of freedom at university. Realised it pretty soon when she came back six months later broke and completely jaded by the friends who’d convinced her to go with them. Turned out they’d manipulated her into spending the money she’d saved over the years—like I said, she was stable before then—and left her the moment it ran out.’
‘When did that happen?’
‘About a month in.’ He grinned. ‘I told you she was bullheaded. But we live and we learn.’
‘What was your lesson?’
‘Right.’ He sobered. ‘When I realised I had some space to mess up, I let myself do something I never had before: I went to a party.’
‘You’d never gone to a party before then?’
‘Not this kind. Thanks for the concern though,’ he added, and she smiled. ‘Anyway, this was the kind where adults weren’t allowed at. And I kissed a girl no adult would have allowed seventeen-year-old me to kiss.’
‘She was an alien?’
‘She was older,’ he said dryly. ‘She’d been arrested for petty theft a couple of times’
‘I’m almost impressed.’
‘Don’t be. It was stupid.’
Feeling the shift in him, she asked softly, ‘What happened?’
‘I became a nightmare. Ditched school to be with her. Did the bare minimum when I was there. Ignored my parents. Snuck out. Drank. Did pretty much everything you hear kids try to do as teenagers, but as one kid and all in the space of four months.’
‘And then?’
‘And then I failed the first term of my final year in high school and my parents told me if it continued, they’d kick me out at the end of the year.’
‘That was enough to kick your ass into gear?’
‘Yeah. Some part of me knew I was being an idiot. The relationship was terrible. I’m not sure why I stayed.’ He winced. ‘See what I mean?’
She did, and he was punishing himself for it. But she didn’t say anything. Waited for him to finish his story instead.
‘My parents worked their butts off for us. My mom got pregnant with my brother when she was a teenager and her parents disowned her. My father’s parents took them in, but they didn’t have much either. Every single day each of them worked to give us a life they didn’t get. And I threw their efforts back into their faces.’
‘You were a kid.’
‘Yeah, but it made me work my butt off to keep them from ever looking at me that way again. With that... I don’t know. A combination of disappointment and hurt.’ He lifted a shoulder. ‘It messed with me almost as much as the threat did.’
‘So you stayed in line.’
‘I did what I needed to do to pass. I messed up my grades so bad that I didn’t get a bursary. Something else I regret.’ He ran a hand over the back of his neck. ‘But I did well in my first year at university.’ There was a quick pause. ‘And my second, and third, and postgrad...’ He grinned. ‘You get the picture.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah, I do, Doctor.’
‘I just wanted to make up for disappointing them. Making sure they didn’t have to pay for another year of my studies seemed like a simple way.’
‘And also, making sure you dated the right kind of women after that.’
His gaze flew to hers. He gave a slight shake of his head. It looked as if it were more to himself than to her.
‘I only dated Liesel after that.’
‘How old were you?’
‘Twenty-four.’
She did the calculations. ‘For seven years you didn’t date anyone?’
‘More or less.’ He shrugged. ‘I wanted to focus on my studies.’
‘Did you have your PhD when you met Liesel?’
‘I was two years away from graduating.’
‘What changed?’
‘I thought I’d met the right person.’
She considered it for a moment. ‘Did your parents introduce you?’
His brows lifted. ‘Yeah. How’d you know?’
‘A gut feeling.’ She paused. ‘You said your parents didn’t want you to marry her though?’
‘Jane, my sister, told me they’d realised it somewhere during the course of our relationship.’
‘Why didn’t they say anything?’
‘I don’t know.’
They sat like that as the silence stretched. Somewhere away from the pier they heard the water splash.
‘Maybe they thought you were happy,’ she said slowly.
‘Maybe they were willing to sacrifice what they thought because they thought you were happy. Because they loved you.’
The side of his mouth lifted. ‘Sounds like them.’
‘You already knew?’
‘Not entirely. But before I told you that story I realised a lot of what I’d been doing was because I got stuck in the surface emotions and not the deeper ones. The concern and disappointment came because they loved me.’
There was a beat before she asked, ‘You came up with that by yourself?’
He laughed. ‘After years, yeah.’
‘You’ve obviously earned your title, Doctor.’
He smiled lazily at her. Despite the sombre tone of their discussion, her belly flipped.
‘I did study for seven years.’ He leaned back now. ‘So, is there anything you’d like to talk about since I’m an expert? Maybe your fear of commitment?’
She snorted. ‘I do not have a fear of commitment.’
‘What about your resistance to getting married?’
‘It’s not about fear of commitment.’
‘You want to be in a committed relationship?’
‘Well, yeah. Maybe.’ She wasn’t quite sure herself. ‘I do like the idea of marriage.’
He straightened. ‘Yeah?’
She laughed lightly. ‘Yeah. I know, I’m a whole bunch of complicated.’
‘Is the wedding stuff just because of your parents?’
‘I said I like the idea of marriage, Ezra. I didn’t cast a spell to make my soulmate suddenly appear so I could get married.’
His lips curved. ‘But what does liking the idea mean? You don’t want to get caught in the everyday of it?’
‘No.’ She took a deep breath, her lungs seemingly knowing she was about to make the admission before her mind did. ‘I don’t want to turn into my mother.
The shame, the guilt, immediately followed her words. Because she deserved them, she let them flow through her body. Let them pulse in her veins. She let them remind her she was the worst daughter.
‘Tell me,’ he said softly when she closed her eyes, seeping herself in the feelings of it.
She opened her eyes to his concern; to his compassion. Somehow it undid the knot inside her. It shouldn’t have, she knew. Because he was looking at her as if she hadn’t admitted her darkest secret to him. His expression was exactly as it had been when he’d kissed her: as if she were the only woman in the world. As if she were deserving of this attention.
‘She—’ Angie swallowed when her throat went dry. Tried again. ‘I told you about how much she depended on my father. And that he liked it. He liked that she needed him, I mean. I think it made him feel loved.’ She paused. ‘Maybe that’s why he let me in to their weird dynamic. He wanted me to feel loved, too.’
She sucked in her lip. Let the air shudder through the side of her mouth.
‘I protected my sisters from it for as long as I could, so I don’t think they felt the burden of it.’ She closed her eyes again. ‘It didn’t make me feel loved. It made me feel trapped. Making sure my sisters had everything they needed emotionally, and then protecting my mother from the fact that they needed it from her and that she couldn’t give it to them.’ She paused. ‘I couldn’t tell my father that though. Obviously, I couldn’t tell my mother. So I just tried my best.’ She opened her eyes. ‘I think I did an okay job of protecting Sophia and Zoey.’
Until she’d left, when she’d seemingly handed the reins over to Sophia.
‘It’s fine, Angie. Leave. I’ll be here for Mom and Zo. You just...leave.’
‘It wasn’t your responsibility though,’ Ezra’s voice interrupted the accusation replaying in her head. ‘Not with your mother or with your sisters. Or your father,’ he added. He gripped her hand when her head whipped so she could look at him. ‘It’s true, Angie. You were protecting him, too, by not telling him the truth.’
Tears pricked in her eyes. She nodded. ‘I didn’t realise.’
Breathe.
She opened her mouth. Sucked in air.
‘I was going to tell you I didn’t want to end up like my mother, in what would be the only example of marriage I’ve had. Being dependent on someone else. Not knowing who I was without that person. Being broken without them. That’s why I ran. I was afraid I’d break after my father... That’s why I don’t want to connect with anyone either.’ She paused when she ran out of breath. ‘But earlier today I realised that I did break. After he passed away, I broke. Now here you are confirming that I’d broken long before he...’
She couldn’t finish it.
‘Angie,’ he said softly.
‘It’s okay. It’s okay,’ she repeated, and squeezed his hand. ‘It’s part of what I’ve come home to face. Or what I will face,’ she said dryly, pinching her nose, ‘when I actually let myself go home.’
‘Coming back to South Africa, back to Cape Town, already means you’ve come home. You are facing it.’
‘Maybe. Or maybe I’m trying to figure out a way to work through how I feel about my father’s mistakes now that he’s not here.’
‘You mean with you mother?’
‘With me, too. And with my sisters. He wasn’t a perfect man. He encouraged my mother’s dependence. Expected me to carry some of the weight of that decision with both my mother and my sisters. He was honest to a fault, and annoyingly dry. I told you we were similar,’ she said with a pained laughed, before exhaling shakily. ‘He wasn’t perfect, and it’s so damn hard to say that.’
‘It shouldn’t be, if it’s true.’
‘Didn’t your mother ever tell you we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead?’
He laughed softly. ‘She has, actually. But I think speaking honestly about the dead is more important. It does no one any good to pretend the dead were saints when they were only human.’
Her eyes widened; she didn’t resist the smile that came along with it. ‘I’m going to have to pay you for your services.’
‘I’ll give you the friends and family discount.’
‘Is that what we are?’ she asked. ‘Friends?’
‘I don’t know.’ He turned to her, resting his knee on the pier. ‘It’s complicated, isn’t it?’
‘Much like we are.’
He nodded. His hand lifted to cup her chin. ‘I’ve never met anyone like you before.’
She wasn’t sure she was breathing, which made the breathy tone of her reply impossible. ‘Someone who runs from their fears?’
‘You’re not running anymore.’ His hand slid to the back of her neck. ‘I think you told me I need to learn from my mistakes because you need to learn from yours.’
She lifted her hand, intending to remove his hand from her neck. Instead, she gripped his wrist.
‘I’m still a mess.’
‘You’re not a mess,’ he said gently. ‘We aren’t either. We need work. We’ll always need work. We’re human.’
‘How do you—how do you know how to make me feel better?’
‘I have a gift,’ he teased.
‘Yeah, you do,’ she replied seriously. ‘For me.’
His body shifted then; his expression changed. Even though it was dark around them, and only the light of the full moon and the stars illuminated them, Angie saw the change. Felt it. In the sizzle in the air around them; in the tightening of her body.
Suddenly there were no past heartbreaks, no future uncertainty. There was no grief or families or problems. There was only them, now, and the demands of them in the now.
She was helpless not to give in.
So she leaned forward, lifted her hand to his cheek and tentatively touched her lips to his.
Chapter Sixteen
It went straight through her. The taste of him. The feel of his mouth pressed to hers. Her skin prickled. Her toes curled. Heat unfurled in her belly. She
pulled back slightly.
‘This is a bad idea,’ she whispered, but didn’t move any farther away.
‘Probably.’ The hand at her neck gently massaged her skin. She leaned into it, closing her eyes as she almost heard her muscles sigh with pleasure. ‘Especially since we’re sharing a room tonight. A bed.’
She laughed breathily, opening her eyes slowly. The effortless seduction in his eyes sent a thrill through her, the evidence of it gooseflesh on her body.
‘If we get that far,’ she replied quietly. ‘I’m pretty content here.’
‘Yeah?’ His hand rested on her waist. Heat flared through her entire body. ‘How lucky. I am, too.’
She smiled. Shifted closer to him. ‘You know, I’d probably compliment your game right now if it weren’t for the fact that I suggested we come down to the pier.’ She looked around them. ‘We’re under the stars, under the moon on a summer’s evening.’
‘Alone.’ As he said it, they heard a splash at the other end of the river. He smiled. ‘Almost.’
‘Still, not your idea.’
‘And yet somehow, we still ended up with all this romance.’ He cocked his head. ‘Maybe my game is even better than you thought.’
She laughed. ‘You’re such a joke.’
‘Hey, you were the one who started it.’ His gaze dropped to her lips. His eyes were hungry when they met hers again. ‘But I’d be happy to finish it.’
‘Please do.’
His lips touched hers before she’d finished, and she was drawn into the magic again. It was as if the last hour hadn’t happened. As if they hadn’t run; as if they hadn’t been vulnerable.
Or perhaps because of it.
Whatever it was—regular magic, Christmas magic—Angie relished the feel of it. Of the power of it. Because there was power in this moment. In the fact that she’d found this in the middle of nowhere. That she’d found it at a wedding. During the festive period. With a stranger.
There was power in the fire on her skin. In her body. Power in the smoke coming from the movement of their lips; the mating of their tongues. She deepened the kiss with the realisation of it, accepting the vibration of the moan Ezra gave in response. She almost smiled. Stopped herself only because she knew smiling would have meant breaking their contact.
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