‘Honestly?’ Zoey said, still staring into her mug. ‘Mostly I’m just feeling relieved.’
Ash’s shoulders relaxed just a little at that. At least she wasn’t regretting her decision. Because that would have been a problem he’d have no idea how to fix under the circumstances.
‘He wasn’t the right guy for you, Zoey,’ he said softly.
She looked up with a sad half smile. ‘They never are. That’s the problem.’
‘One of them will be, one day.’
‘You can’t know that.’ Zoey shook her head, then took another gulp of whisky. ‘Maybe there just isn’t a right guy out there for me.’
‘But maybe there is,’ Ash countered. ‘And if you stop looking, you’ll never find him.’
She squinted up at him. ‘Have you been reading self-help relationship blogs again?’
‘No!’ Well, not often, anyway. ‘I just can’t imagine someone as brilliant as you being alone for ever.’
Her cheeks turned a little pink at that, almost matching her still damp dress. It was funny, even drenched and bedraggled, shoeless and tipsy, she looked more beautiful than ever tonight. She always did, he supposed. He just hadn’t ever let himself look before.
‘What about you?’ she asked, and the question threw him right back into the present with a jolt.
‘How do you mean? I’m fine. Wet, but fine.’ The towels hadn’t been nearly good enough. He really wished he’d been able to bring the towelling robes as well—the stress it might have put on his imagination notwithstanding. At least then they could have got out of their soaked clothes.
Let me help you out of that wet dress...
Ash choked on a mouthful of whisky as the image of him undressing Zoey flashed through his mind.
Really not the time.
‘I mean, do you think there will ever be anyone else for you? After Grace, I mean?’
Ash put down his mug. What did it say about him that the idea had hardly even crossed his mind in the last two years?
‘I... I don’t know. I mean, it’s hard to imagine it. I can imagine dating, maybe even sex with someone else.’ Hell, he’d been doing that right here, right now, at the most inappropriate time ever, curse his imagination. ‘But the idea of loving someone else. Marrying them. Making a life with them...that’s... I just can’t see it. Literally. I can’t picture it in my mind. You know?’ When Grace had died, he’d lost not just his wife, but his whole future. The family he’d hoped to have one day was gone for ever.
‘I know,’ Zoey said sadly. ‘That’s the problem I have. I can see myself in the future, with a family, a home, a happy life. And there’s always a vague figure in the background—a husband or partner or whatever. But I can never quite see him.’
‘Not even when you’re getting ready to walk down the aisle to meet him?’
Zoey shook her head. ‘I guess I always think it’ll come together. That everything will come into focus once I have that dress on and the ring on my finger. But then it comes to the day and the picture still isn’t there. I can’t ever see how to get from where I am to where I want to be.’
‘So you do want to get married, then?’ Ash asked. Grace had always said that Zoey wanted a happy marriage but, given how many times she’d walked out on the possibility of one, Ash had to wonder. ‘Are you sure that marriage isn’t just something you think you’re supposed to want but don’t really? I mean, it isn’t for everyone. It doesn’t have to be.’
‘I know that.’ Zoey looked up, straight into his eyes, and he felt a jolt go through him at the intensity of her gaze. ‘But I want it. I want the whole thing—true love, marriage, a happy-ever-after. I want that more than anything.’
And he knew she meant every single word.
* * *
She’d never told anyone this before—except Grace. She let people believe that it was fear of commitment that made her run, let them think she just had the worst relationship style in the world. She never let on that it was only because she wanted that happily-ever-after so badly that she kept running out on it.