“It would have hurt you knowing I couldn’t…”
“This hurts worse. God, Aly…” My leg felt cold when Ransom lifted his hand to scrub his fingers over his face. “You left me because you thought I wouldn’t want you? You thought having kids, giving my father grandkids was more important to me than the single most important person in my life?” He swallowed, head shaking and I hated the look he gave me—anger, worry, upset, I didn’t know which he felt. “You took the decision from me. You decided our future without even telling me why you were doing it.”
“I couldn’t disappoint you, shoushou…”
“No?” His expression was incredulous, angry. “But you could rip my heart out? You could hear me begging for you to stay and still walk away from me, telling me it could work when you knew you didn’t want it to?”
“I wanted it to.” He didn’t flinch or back away from me when I leaned forward, my fingers curling into his shirt on their own. “My God, Ransom, I did. But I wasn’t going to let you tie yourself to me when I couldn’t give you a family.”
“Fuck’s sake, Aly,” He grabbed my wrist, holding me still when I tried to pull away from him. His voice had lifted, cracked with the emotion, with his anger as he yelled at me. “You were my damn family!”
The seconds passed, inflated between us with the thick scent of kerosene from the fire pit as we watched each other. Ransom kept my hand still, gripping it even as my fingers relaxed from his collar. We were frozen in the charges laid before us, the flash of bitter memory that came between us like a wedge.
“It wasn’t the only reason,” I said, slipping my gaze to his. “You know it wasn’t.”
Ransom nodded, his features tightening as he looked at me. “I know that.” When I shook my head, unwilling to believe him, he came closer, catching my gaze. “You walked away from me because I didn’t see you, because I didn’t make our lives about anything but me and my career. Every damn thing was so one-sided. You lifted me up, gave me everything and I was too absorbed in what I wanted to see that.” The wind blew a strand of my hair against my face, catching in my eyes and Ransom moved it back, tucking it behind my ear. “But I see you now, ku`u lei. That recital, the new school, how hard you worked, what you’ve done, what you’ve accomplished. Aly, you did that with pure determination. You made successes for yourself without anyone at your back.” He cupped my face then, stilling my trembling chin as it moved. “You are such a badass woman, nani and I’m so damn proud of you.”
The tears came then, filling and falling from my eyes. I’d waited so long to hear those words and had no idea what they’d do to me if Ransom ever uttered them. Now he had and I saw the steel in his eyes, the determination, the honesty in them that kept his expressions still, as though saying the words out loud, to me, meant something to him as well.
But the truth was, it was too late. What he saw in me now was wonderful, what I had waited for so long, but it didn’t take away what I couldn’t give him. No matter how much I wanted it to. So much had changed while I was waiting.
I lowered my eyes, focusing on his knuckles as they kept my hand clasped at his chest. There was no way I could make this easier. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“Why?” He was shocked. He hadn’t considered that I might dismiss what he’d said, and to him it must have sounded like I was brushing him aside. “Because you’re so in love with Ethan?”
Ransom could be cruel when he was hurt and no doubt my agreeing to marry Ethan made that hurt run deep. Still, I didn’t appreciate the sarcasm in his tone. I jerked my hand from his shirt. “Don’t do that. Don’t turn this around…”
“You told me even he knows you aren’t all in with him.” I tried to move, but Ransom kept me still with one hand on the back of the chair I was sitting in. “You let me touch you.” Eyes closed tight, I let that slow growl of his words soak into my ears. His voice was a tease that licked against my senses, promising, provoking. Ransom’s voice was low, his fingers over my skin, across my face, feather light. “You let me taste you. You wouldn’t have if you were in love with him. This,” he said, grabbing my left hand, the ring glittering on my finger, “this is nothing. This means nothing.”
“Ransom...”