Chapter Seven #2
She studied the bangle she’d been absently opening and closing for the last ten minutes. ‘This was my mother’s. It’s one of the few things I have of hers. She and my dad met when he went into the cafe she was working at.’
‘You said he was a navy man.’ He nodded.
‘Right. A maritime engineer. It was pretty quick. They were really happy. I’ve seen the photos. My grandmother told me the story of how they met so many times.’
They’d had a once in a lifetime love. Her grandmother had experienced one of those too. So Bethan had assumed such miracles were normal.
‘Anyway, when I was a toddler Dad was away on an exercise for a couple of months. Mum was pregnant again—almost at term and she was really tired. My dad’s mother came and took me up to her place in Scotland to give her a break.
But that night my mother left an element on by accident.
She and the baby didn’t survive the fire. ’
‘Bethan—’
‘I know,’ she nodded, appreciating the horror in his eyes.
‘It was terrible for my father but he had to work and that took him away a lot. So I never left Scotland. Dad sold our house in Wales and moved back in with his mother and me. My grandmother had been widowed too—lost the love of her life ten years earlier, so she understood Dad’s grief.
Honestly, after that my childhood was idyllic.
It was a small, lovely village and our cottage was cosy.
It was filled with photos and trinkets—so many fond memories of my mother and my grandfather.
Never a day passed without mention of them, the stories of how my mum and dad met.
They were lost but never gone, you know?
Dad adored me and I loved him and when he was home on leave, we’d work in his father’s shed. He’d teach me so many things like—’
‘Soldering mechanisms.’ Ares nodded.
‘Yes, and all the rope knots.’
‘But something wasn’t right.’ Ares frowned.
Yeah, he was astute. ‘There was an exclusive boarding school down the road that cost a lot of money. Dad worked so hard to send me there as a day student so I didn’t have to leave home and I never wanted him to think I was ungrateful.’
‘You were unhappy there.’
Desperately so. ‘They were real rich bitch types, you know? I wasn’t from wealth like that.’
‘They made you feel inferior?’
‘I didn’t fit in and we all knew it. I stayed in the library at lunchtime, stayed offline, tried to stay invisible.’
‘You could never be invisible.’
‘Yeah. I guess so because they still got to me.’
His jaw tightened.
‘Not physically or anything really bad. Just endless cutting comments,’ she said quietly.
‘They mocked my lack of properties—that there were no holidays abroad. They had no idea that I loved going out in a skiff with Dad and just being home with him. They teased my big body, my uncool clothes. My old-fashioned hobbies. Apparently I was like a grandma, which wasn’t an insult to me at all.
And when my grandmother got sick in my last year, I dropped out. ’ She’d been happy to.
‘Your dad didn’t come back when she got sick?’
‘At first. But she was sick for a while and we needed money and he had to go back. I was there, I didn’t need anyone else to help when she’d done so much for me.’
‘And by being busy with her, you could avoid living your life. Avoid interacting with people your own age who’d been horrible,’ he suggested softly. ‘It was safe.’
‘I loved her. I wanted to be the one to take care of her.’ Anger rippled. She wasn’t the one who avoided people.
‘I know. But still...’ He angled his head and challenged her with those all-seeing eyes. ‘Sometimes there can be more than one reason why we do things, no? We tell ourselves we’re doing something for someone else’s benefit but also...really...it sometimes has selfish elements.’
‘You’re saying our choices can be multilayered. Because life is complicated.’ She knew what he was getting at really.
His choice to marry her. When he had. How he had.
Maybe he was right again. Now she knew there was more to that decision than she’d understood because she’d been blinded by her own privileges.
She’d grown up in a loving family, but she’d been ignorant.
The lessons she’d learned about love from her adoring family were honestly too good to be true.
Too easy. She’d barely had half a picture.
Ares frowned again. ‘What happened to your dad?’
She opened the clasp once more. ‘He died three months after I’d finished school. There was a landslide caused by a flash flood. He was digging out a person who was trapped when there was another big slip.’
For such a lithe, fit man Ares could sit surprisingly still. It was a change—he’d always been active before. Now she watched his even breathing. It was too even. Was he counting? Using a relaxation strategy because he was stressed?
It wasn’t that he really cared, he was just empathetic, right?
Because he’d lost his parents too. They had more in common than she’d realised.
And she needed to explain her part in why they hadn’t worked.
Because it would help with this. The end.
And it was easier to talk about her past than deal with the fragile emotions of the present.
‘After my grandmother died I had to sell our home to pay off the debt we’d gotten into.
The little left over paid for my trip to Greece.
She knew I’d always wanted to come here and made me promise that I’d do it.
For her—for my father too. I know I told you that she’d died, but not that it was only two months before I got here. ’
Ares’s eye widened. ‘She was sick for years.’
Bethan nodded. She’d stayed in the cottage.
‘I crafted in the evenings, banged about in my grandfather’s shed during the day when she was resting.
It was quiet but I wasn’t lonely. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to bring the mood down, you know?
’ She sent him a soft, sad smile. ‘I was having so much fun with you but the truth is I was grieving and it was an escape.’
Perhaps for them both. Perhaps he too had wanted to forget reality—the pressure of being Ares Vasiliadis. It had just been a few weeks of all the good things and only the good things. It had been her mistake in thinking that perfection could last forever.
‘I owe you an apology,’ she said with sudden clarity. ‘I was needy. And I was so na?ve. I’m sorry about that.’
His gaze lifted, shocked. ‘What?’
‘Ares, I was inexperienced in a lot of things, but especially the realities of a relationship.’ She turned to him earnestly.
‘It’s taken me an age to realise I only heard stories of perfect marriages.
I never saw any actually work. I never witnessed the normal ups and downs, no working through issues or anything.
I was repeatedly told about my parents’ once-in-a-lifetime love—and that of my grandparents—but I was only told the good bits, right?
So I na?vely believed there were only good bits.
That if you’d met the “one” then everything was miraculously easy.
I put all that expectation on you. It was an impossible burden.
Especially when you really had no idea how lonely I’d been, how ill-equipped I was to speak up or even compromise.
‘It wasn’t fair of me to expect that you’d fill all my emotional gaps—and there were plenty.
The first moment things got tricky, I didn’t know how to fix it.
’ How to fight for what she’d truly wanted.
‘I was insecure. I’d thought you were a ferryman—a sailor, like Dad.
I could relate to that and I thought we were a match.
I could live with this villa—but when we went to Athens I learned there were more properties and planes and all kinds of expectations.
That compound was so cold and so was everyone in it.
’ And he’d turned cold too. He’d turned to stone.
‘You were in another realm from me. I got scared. I took Gia’s words as gospel.
I used those Sophia stories as part of my reason to run, but it was a release for you too. ’
He stiffened.
‘You know I’m right,’ she said softly.
But even now she couldn’t bring herself to remind him of his refusal to answer the one question she’d been brave enough to ask. His inability to say he loved her.
‘You know I don’t fit into that world,’ she finished.
‘I never was ashamed of you,’ he said huskily.
She paused. He’d said that yesterday and she wanted to believe him but—
‘I didn’t want to hide you here,’ he added. ‘I truly didn’t think you wanted to live in a big city.’
‘I’ve spent the last two and a bit years living in London,’ she pointed out wryly.
‘But you liked the small town you grew up in in Scotland. You told me that back then,’ he said fiercely.
She glanced up. He’d really paid attention to what little she had said about her past?
‘You said that being on this island was like that only with better weather, better food,’ he added. ‘You stood in this room and said you never wanted to leave. Ever.’
She’d never wanted to leave him. She would have followed him to the ends of the earth. But he was right—he’d just quoted her perfectly.
‘Was that a lie?’ he asked eventually.
‘No. I just... I hadn’t really meant it like that because it wasn’t a real possibility. I would’ve needed a job...’
But now—far too late—she realised that for him it was entirely possible. It would have been nothing for him to keep her here. He had the money to make it all happen. He’d taken her fantasy wish at face value because for him it wasn’t an impossible dream but easily achievable.
‘I knew you’d need occupation so I had the studio fitted out,’ he murmured. ‘I’d hoped to make you happy.’
His self-mocking smile hurt her heart.
‘Which would have been an impossibility,’ she said softly.
Maybe he’d not been ashamed of her. Maybe his avoidance of Athens—of mentioning his family—hadn’t been about her at all, but his own issue—shame or pain or something that she still didn’t know about.
‘No one could live up to my na?ve relationship ideals back then,’ she murmured sadly. ‘Certainly not someone...’
‘Like me?’ He frowned.
‘Hurt,’ she breathed. ‘Hurt, like you.’
His expression went more mask-like than ever. She’d not meant to put this on him. She’d meant to own her part in it, not air her new assumptions about him. But here she was, talking too much.
‘I don’t mean by me,’ she muttered with a self-mocking smile of her own. ‘You don’t have to tell me why, but I know there’s a wall you retreat behind. I think it’s been there since before we met and I’m sure you had good reasons to build it.’
She paused again, heart thundering. This was a risk but she wanted to clear the air properly. Then maybe they could put this behind them. And she’d meant it. He didn’t have to explain if he didn’t want to...
And clearly he didn’t. Because he was silent for too many beats for her stressed brain to count.
‘You never would have been a burden,’ he rasped. ‘Not to me.’
His eventual raw reply smote her heart. She waited but he didn’t say anything more.
Didn’t deny what she’d said nor explain.
He was definitely hurt and his defences—barriers—were back up.
Masking pain and not allowing more. And wasn’t that fair enough?
Because that was the mistake they’d made—thinking they shared more than a physical connection.
There hadn’t been a truly emotional one and there still wasn’t.
His silence now reinforced that. And that had to be okay, because she wasn’t na?ve any more.
Life was never a fairy tale. She could survive this.
‘I’m going to grab a tonne of the food that’s in the fridge.’ She stood, hiding her shattered insides. Sometimes comfort eating was the only way. ‘I’m going to eat it while watching a movie.’ She cocked her head and tried to be rational and adult and mature. ‘You want to join me?’