Page 115 of Summer At Willow Tree Farm

His head rose. His brows slanting down. ‘I was talking crap. Of course there’s an us. We were banging each other senseless for two whole weeks.’

The vice around her heart released. Enough to allow her to inflate her burning lungs.

Sex. Was he still just talking about sex?

Her lady bits chose that precise moment to start picketing her brain – having formed a committee to advocate for lots more extra-curricular banging.

But her head – and her heart – pushed back.

She couldn’t start sleeping with Art again, without screwing herself. Maybe not today. Maybe not next week. But eventually she would have to demand more. And she still didn’t know if Art wanted more. If he would ever want more.

She knew why it was so hard for him to ask, all the clues had always been there. He’d closed himself off years before he had ever met her. His father had abused him. His mother had deserted him. And Alicia had done the same, losing herself in drugs after giving birth to his child. Art had learned at a young age how to protect himself from hurt and he’d built that wall higher, brick by brick, over a lifetime.

But if she stayed in Wiltshire, she couldn’t continue to batter her head and her heart against that wall – however vocal the lady bits committee – without knowing she had at least some chance of making a den

t in it.

‘We’re not going to be banging each other any more,’ Ellie said. ‘That’s not why I’m staying. And it’s also way too confusing for the kids.’

‘Not that confusing, once we explain everything.’

‘There’s nothing to explain any more.’

‘Why not?’

She blinked, her rising anger going some way to puncturing the hurt still constricting her lungs. ‘Because I’m staying now.’

‘So?’

‘So a no-strings affair was viable when I was just going to be here for the summer. But I’m not prepared to be your convenient bonk buddy for the rest of my life, Art.’

‘Since when were you ever convenient?’ he said.

‘Is that supposed to be funny?’

‘No, you’re about the most inconvenient woman I’ve ever met, if you must know. You were at fourteen and you’re even more so now.’

Bloody hell. She did not have to put up with this.

‘Why?’ she said, playing him at his own game. ‘Why am I inconvenient, Art?’ she asked. Before he could open his mouth, she jumped in to give him the answer. ‘Because I have the unbelievable cheek to actually demand more from you than an orgasm? Because I have an opinion on your relationship with your daughter? On the way we run the project? Because I love how protective and caring you are with my mum? Because it rips me apart to know what happened to you as a child? Because I want to strangle your mother for being such a weak, stupid, selfish bitch? Because the more we make love the more invested I feel? Is that why I’m so inconvenient? Because I want you to feel something for me? To want me? And not just my lady bits?’

He looked stunned. As if he’d just been asked to defuse a nuclear warhead and it had exploded in his face. Exactly as he had all those summers ago.

She let the pain flood through her system. And the humiliation. Because she’d finally told him everything. Ripped it open and laid it at his feet. The way she should have done five days ago. And now he would know. How much she loved him. And he’d probably feel sorry for her. And if there was actually something worse than having to live with Art and not touch, it would be living with Art and him knowing how much it was costing her not to touch.

Still maybe this was a good thing, because if he wasn’t interested, the very last thing he’d want to do now was have sex with her ever again.

*

You coward. You’ve got to tell her. No excuses. Not any more.

Art felt everything inside him coalesce into one raw aching nerve. The same nerve that had been exposed when he’d been seven and lying on a hospital trolley and his mother had whispered in his ear: ‘Don’t tell, Arty.’ And he’d known she didn’t care about him, or didn’t care enough.

The same nerve that had been flayed when Ellie had stood in front of him all those summers ago and told him she loved him. And he’d been too terrified to believe her.

The same nerve that had been flayed when Alicia had looked right through him, her eyes glazed and unfocused and told him to stop being such a bore about their baby.

The same nerve that had been flayed again, even though he thought he’d cut it out of himself years before, five days ago, when Ellie’s husband had stepped out of his fancy hire car.

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