He paused, and I braced myself, because I already knew what was coming next.
‘She wants me to go with them.’
It was important that I said the right thing next. But the problem was, I had no idea what that might be.
I stumbled through my words like an actor who was on the wrong page of a script and had forgotten all their lines.
‘But what do you want? What about your work? Your friends? Your life here? What about...’ I bit off the rest of that question. I wouldn’t go there. But Rhys did.
‘What about you? What about us?’ he said, so softly I almost lost his words on the warm breeze.
‘I don’t matter. I’m not a factor in this.’
‘How can you say that? Of course you are.’
He sounded so emphatic that I should have felt comforted, but the break in his voice wouldn’t allow me to count this as a victory.
‘We’re too new. We’ve only just begun. I shouldn’t be a consideration here.’
‘You will always be a consideration. Wherever in the world I live, my heart will always be wherever you are.’
‘You have to go. You have to be wherever your daughter is. You and she have an incredible relationship, Rhys. Anyone can see that. Being separated would destroy both of you.’
‘I know,’ Rhys said, his voice hoarse. ‘But so would losing you.’
There was a solution here and a question I knew he would have to ask, but I couldn’t put him through the torture of wondering how to phrase it.
‘I can’t go with you, Rhys.’ It was like an invisible bullet had just struck him. His face contorted in pain. ‘I mean, maybe that’s being presumptuous, because you haven’t actually asked me to.’
He gave me the saddest smile in the entire world.
‘I was going to, even though I already suspected you’d say no.’
My lip began to tremble, and I struggled to get it under control to reply, but it wouldn’t let me. Rhys pulled me against his chest, my face finding the hollow of his shoulder, the place that felt more like home than anywhere I’d ever lived.
‘I know you’ve only just found your father. He’s the missing piece of your family and the only relative you have left. I could never ask nor expect you to walk away from him when you’re only just getting to know each other.’
I buried my face in his shirt front, which I was horribly afraid was going to end up saturated with my tears.
‘And then there’s Mel. You’re about to be godmother to her baby and she’s going to want you to be here and be involved in her child’s life as much as I know you want to be.
‘And lastly, there’s the business that you’ve worked so hard and for so long to make into a success. It’s what your mum wanted you to achieve, and I know that getting where you are is tangled up inall she wanted for you. And that giving it up would be like severing your last connection with her.’
‘How do you know me this well?’ I asked hoarsely, lifting my teary face to his.
‘It’s easy. It’s because I love you,’ he replied simply.
More than anything, I wanted to say ‘I love you too,’ but what would that do, except make him feel even worse?
The seconds stretched on, taking me past the acceptable length of time to give him the response I knew he hoped to hear. Knowing I loved him back wasn’t going to make any of this any easier. If anything, it would make it even harder for him to walk away. If I really loved this man, shouldn’t I be doing everything in my power to lessen his pain, not add to it?
It was the hardest thing I’d ever done, but I dug deep and somehow managed to channel a strength I must have inherited from the woman who’d raised me. The woman who’d written the book on keeping your emotions tightly reined in.
‘We had a good run, Rhys. But I think we both knew it was always going to end with something like this.’
‘What?’
If I’d punched him in the stomach he couldn’t have looked more winded. I had to focus on the tree behind us, because looking into his eyes would undo me.