Chapter Fifty-four
Inside my kitchen, I dump my shopping bags and a tin of tuna rolls out.
It has a red ‘Discounted’ sticker because it’s very near its sell-by date.
I pick it up and put it on my kitchen table.
Actually, not mine – it belongs to the landlord and was probably left outside for the recycling.
I hate that Osian can see the evidence of me living on a shoestring.
I square my shoulders.
Welcome to the real world where most people live.
“How can you live here?” he asks. “Just so you can make a point? Or force me to feel guilty?”
I turn to face him. “I don’t need to force you. Guilt is your preferred state of being. Guilt and abstinence. Keeping yourself beyond human emotions. The irony of it. Do your Perllans know you are the one that isn’t growing?”
Ugly words fly out of my mouth on autopilot. Because I too am hiding from my emotions. Every last drop of my energy is going into suppressing the need to fling myself into his arms.
He too is getting angry. Riled up by me, no doubt. “I didn’t drive 250 miles so you can psychoanalyse me.”
“Why did you come, then?”
“To bring you back.”
“Why? You think I need a lift? Because the only reason I haven’t gone back is lack of transport?”
“Because we need you.”
I stare at him in disbelief. Just for a moment, a tiny fraction of a moment, a stupid hope steals into my heart, then the word ‘we’ registers.
“I’ve already done all I can for the partners—”
“Not money,” he interrupts. “They need you. With or without the money. Just you.” He says this like a challenge, as if it’s something I’m supposed to know already.
“They don’t need me. They like me. I like them too. But they don’t need—”
Again he interrupts me. “You really don’t understand.
You can’t see yourself. You changed everything.
Yes, Evan and Haneen have the vision and they are the heart of the community, and we all play a part, but you…
you were the light, the creative light that inspired and gave everyone hope.
You showed us by your example that we could do more.
Without you, we wouldn’t have had the Easter opening.
Or the press coverage. Even me… Even me.
” He is breathing fast as if after a workout.
“You think I run the Perllans, but three of them wanted to work for you. Didn’t you see it?
You are what makes everyone win. And we need you. Come back and help us win the fight.”
“How?”
“I don’t know,” he says, and his breathing slows down a little. “But you will. You always find a way, even when none of us can.”
My eyes sting, making me blink and blink to keep away tears.
“I’m so angry with you. I hate you.” The words come out in a whisper. “I travelled all the way to the other side of the country to get away from you and you followed me here to shout at me.”
“I didn’t shout,” he says quietly.
“But you’re angry. Why?”
“Because I’ve been trying to find your address for weeks. I’ve emailed you over and over.”
“I blocked you. You know that.” I can’t speak anymore because I’m crying.
Osian takes one step forward, then another, and pulls me into his arms. I try to struggle free, but he doesn’t let me.
“I believed you. For a time,” he says in a softer, warmer voice. “Before I found out that you did read them.” His hands rub up and down my back, warming me.
“How do you even know? The Y Tylwyth Teg?”
“Not them.” A ghost of a laugh. “Only Gmail read receipts.” His voice turns serious and intense again.
“I could tell you were reading them, but later. Then you stopped, and it felt like a knife in the heart, like a real break up.” He lets out a groan that I feel reverberate through his entire body.
“I tried everything; writing ‘URGENT’ in capital letters, or ‘Please answer’, and even at the end in desperation, ‘You were right’. But you never read them.”
I pull away and blink at him.
He wipes my tears with his thumbs, then pulls me closer and kisses me. Just a simple kiss on the mouth, but it’s firm, confident and deliberate. It feels like a signature on a contract.
“Evie, I’m not like you, that whole emotional intelligence business. It takes me a long time to work out how I feel. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings.”
He kisses me again. The same way.
I’m too stunned to react.
“It just took me time.”
“And Kirsten?” Instantly I bite my lip. Too late.
It’s the worst possible thing to say, but Kirsten has stood between us for so long that I can’t help seeing her even here in the three inches of air between me and him. He must read the worry in my eyes because he pulls me into a hard hug and holds me for a long time.
Finally, he releases me. “Is there somewhere to sit in this temporary house of yours?”
Without a word, I turn towards my sitting room. It has one sofa – a very old and soft two-seater.
“Whoa!” Osian yelps when he sits and sinks almost down to the floor.
Because he still has hold of my hand, I tumble down into his lap and he keeps me there.
I’m trying really hard not to give in to this because I don’t know what he’s going to say, but for now it feels too nice in his lap. Something I’d imagined so many times.
“Kirsten—” he says quietly, “—will always be my first love. I loved her with that clarity that comes from being twenty and having no reason to doubt. And that twenty-year-old boy will always love her. He can never love anyone else. You know why?” He holds my gaze.
I shake my head, bracing myself for a painful answer.
“Because he’s not here anymore. He will always exist in that vanished time.
I never understood it until I overheard Shirley talking to Llewellyn.
She asked him why he ever loved Nora, and he said it wasn’t him but a different man.
He said he’d grown and changed with time and that new him didn’t have the same feelings and needs.
It made me think.” He cups the top of my arm; his hand feels just as warm and strong as I remember it.
“It took me ages to face the truth. Yes, I had loved Kirsten, but we were so young. We were so focussed. Tennis didn’t leave us any time to be together.
Who knows if we were even compatible in real life?
Would our relationship have survived? We’ll never know.
Like the seeds that got mixed up. One of my Perllans opened everything into the same big jar.
Who knows what’ll grow when we plant them, or if they’ll germinate at all.
I don’t know. And it doesn’t really matter. ”
Osian’s hand sweeps down my back and curls around my waist.
“You are right about the Meinir legend, because while she was locked into a hollow tree, Rhys wasted his life looking for her. And me…” Osian squeezes me closer to him. “When you came...”
He pauses and I hold my breath.
“I started to have feelings for you and that made me guilty. I don’t know if you noticed how hard I tried to push you away. Every time we got close, I panicked and stepped back.”
“Yes, I remember. You were always blowing hot and cold.”
“I’m sorry.” He moves his hand up to my hair, combing it over and over with his fingers. “It felt like I was being unfaithful to her, but that’s where I was wrong. I wasn’t unfaithful. The younger Osian will always be hers.”
God, what a lot of words and still he doesn’t say what I need to hear.
“But I did something. I planted her favourite flower. A white and red peony, a special hybrid. And I called it the Santa Fe, which was where we had our wedding. I grew five of them in five little pots. And when they were strong enough, I gave them away, each one to a different family who visited the gardens. It was my goodbye to Kirsten, but also to that young man who loved her. I thought it would hurt, you know, to see the last one go. But what I felt was release. I felt open and new.”
Now he’s said this I can see it in his face. He does look… free and open, and he’s smiling. Not a huge smile, just a simple, natural and easy smile. As if he’s come out from under a huge weight.
His eyes dance right to left as if he too is studying my face.
“So,” I say carefully because I don’t want to jump the gun. He just said it takes him longer to work out emotions. “If you feel renewed, what comes next?”
He leans over and presses another one of his single kisses on my lips. “You really need to ask me that?”
“Yes.”
He shifts me on his lap so we’re facing each other. “Evie, look me in the eye. Do you really not know?”
I swallow with difficulty. “Don’t do this. Please. Don’t make me guess. You owe me more than that.”
Pain flashes across his face, melting his gaze.
“Yes, I do owe you. I owe you so much more than words.” He closes his eyes and draws in a long breath.
“I’m in love with you. Only you. There’s no one else.
I have loved you for months and months. Since that first time I watched you look at a dead garden and see a dream.
And everything after that just made me love you more.
And, Evie, when you went away, I missed you harder than I ever missed anyone or anything else.
” Then he opens his eyes. “I love you so much. Please come back with me because I don’t want to live without you.
It’d be like being trapped inside an oak tree. ”
For answer, I kiss him. Only a kiss like his single kisses, but it doesn’t work out that way. We don’t stop. We stay on that little sofa for hours.
Eventually, we go back to talking. And I make us tuna sandwiches, because who needs to cook at midnight?
“This is ridiculous.” He squeezes into a chair behind my kitchen table. “This place isn’t big enough for two people. Come back to Kendric House.”
“I can’t go back. What about my job? Sue Baker has been kindness itself to me. I can’t leave her in the lurch.”
“Isn’t she a gardener? Didn’t you tell me their business slows down in winter? Couldn’t she take over your workshops now? And keep the income for herself?”
“And I can’t go back. My apartment is a holiday let now, remember? The community needs the income from that until the legal issues are solved.”
He swallows the last of his food and washes it down with tea. “You don’t need an apartment. Kendric House has plenty of other rooms. You can even live with me.”
I smack his arm gently. “You’re quick with the solutions when it suits you.”
He laughs.
“Coffee?” I ask, getting up.
“I don’t want coffee, not now.”
I giggle. “Don’t you know anything? Coffee at the end of the date usually means an invitation to bed.”
His gaze travels over me, and even with the dime light, the need, the hunger shines in his eyes.
“No. I’m not going to sleep with you. Not in this borrowed place.
I want you at home where I can wake up next to you early with the sun streaming in through my windows.
Come with me and we can have coffee on our balcony.
” He pushes his plate away and stands up, then pulls me by the hand to stand against him.
“Besides,” I murmur into his neck. “I can’t live with you. You have hideous leather furniture.”
“Please? My Evangeline. Please come back to me.”