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‘No,’ he said automatically. ‘I wanted her, like I told you. It was only sex. It wasn’t a big deal.’

Just like her not being adopted wasn’t a big deal.

His gut lurched in recognition, hearing the same note of doubt and uncertainty in his voice that he’d heard in hers when she’d said it.

It wasn’t the same, though. It wasn’t.

He turned back to the tree, staring hard at it, trying not to give in to the rage or that creeping, insidious doubt.

‘Kai.’ Libby put a hand on his back. Not demanding, not even requesting, just the warmth of a touch and an unspoken reassurance, an acknowledgement.

‘It wasn’t all like that,’ he went on, not even knowing what he was going to say until the words came out. ‘Our relationship. She was everything to me.’

‘I know, you loved her.’

He stared hard at a particularly delicate and beautiful bauble hanging from one branch. She’d said that to him yesterday, and he’d agreed that he had loved her. Once. But did he love her still? He hadn’t been able to answer that. His feelings about Neve were too tangled up, and even now, he couldn’t untangle them.

‘I thought I did,’ he said finally.

‘Of course you did,’ Libby said. ‘It sounds as if it was a very complicated kind of relationship.’

‘I wanted to marry her.’ He focused on that delicate pink bauble because each word he said hurt, and yet once they were out, the pressure inside him, the anger, seemed to decrease. Like getting a splinter out of a wound. ‘I even asked her, like I told you, but she refused me. Told me she didn’t want to marry anyone, and that wasn’t what our relationship was anyway.’

‘What did she think it was?’

‘She wanted…’ He stopped and took a breath, now unable to push that doubt away. ‘Someone to control. I think I even knew that at the time, but…I wanted her to love me, and I thought that she did. She told me it was all for my own good, and I believed her.’

Libby’s hand on his back spread out, a warm burst of sun on his skin. ‘You can’t blame yourself,’ she said. ‘You just can’t. None of this is on you.’

He turned suddenly, the black anger rising inside him, meeting her steady amber gaze. ‘You think that makes it better?’

She didn’t flinch. ‘No, I don’t think that makes it better. But my feelings about it and my opinion doesn’t matter. Only yours do.’

Yet for some inexplicable reason, her opinion did matter to him, so he asked, ‘But you think it was wrong, don’t you?’

She studied him, a clear and open look. ‘The truth? I think she manipulated you. She was older, more powerful, and in complete control of the situation, and yes, she took advantage of it. I think what she did to you was wrong, and…that makes me angry. But there’s nothing wrong with you, Kai. You do understand that, don’t you?’

Did he understand that? He’d loved the woman who’d abused him, and he felt something deep and hot and complicated for her. And part of him had known that there had been something fucked up about their relationship, but he hadn’t made any effort to end it. He’d never told her no.

‘I never told her to stop,’ he said blankly. ‘Fuck, I was an adult man and she was beautiful. Why would I have ever thought that there was anything wrong about our relationship?’

Libby said nothing. Instead, she took a step forward and wrapped her arms around him, laying her cheek against his chest. He stared down at the top of her golden head, feeling the warmth of her arms, wrapping him in sunshine, and part of him wanted to push her away, tell her that he didn’t need her reassurance, that he was fine, that he didn’t need her pity, either. Yet another part of him, a lost and broken part, wanted to put his arms around her and hold her close, let her warmth melt through that last layer of ice. The frozen wall he’d put around himself so he didn’t have to feel his own black rage at Neve and how she’d manipulated him. And at himself for letting it all happen.

The conflicting feelings were too much in the end, and with as much gentleness as he could muster, he pulled her away from him and stepped back out of reach.

She didn’t protest, only held his gaze with a steady, warm stare.

‘You shouldn’t come near me,’ he said. ‘I’m too angry.’

She nodded. ‘I understand.’

‘Do you? Do you really?’

Her forehead creased. ‘I don’t understand your specific situation, no, and I won’t pretend to. But I understand what it’s like to feel as if there’s something wrong with you and you don’t know what or why.’

And she did, he supposed. Her experience at the home and how no one had adopted her had left her feeling as if she was lacking, and now he was feeling as if there was something wrong with him, because of Neve. Because he’d allowed her to manipulate him, take advantage of him. Because he’d been blinded by his own ambition. He felt sick all of a sudden, at what he’d allowed her to do and at what she’d got away with, at how loyal he still was to her, even though she’d done nothing to deserve it.

But Libby was looking at him, her face shining with understanding and sympathy and caring. All the things that Neve had denied him, and that included love.