‘Tori, sweetheart.’ He whispered the words against her hair, kissing her head softly as her cries lessened. ‘Wake up, love.’
And she did.
Lifting her head, she blinked up at him, tears still glistening in the half-light. ‘I was dreaming...’ She shuddered at the memory.
‘About Tyler?’ he asked gently. She nodded. ‘Would it help to talk about it?’
This time, she shook her head, her hair whipping around in defiance. ‘I just want to forget.’ She looked up at him again, and there were no tears this time. Just a new fierceness to replace the armour she’d lost. Her body shifted, and suddenly every inch of her seemed to be pressed up against him, tempting and hot and everything he’d never even dreamed of.
That was a lie. He’d dreamed about it. Often. Especially since the night they’d spent together.
But he’d never imagined it could actually happen again, not here and now.
She raised her mouth, pressing it firmly to his, her tongue sweeping out across his lower lip, and his whole body shuddered with want and desire as he kissed her back. The kiss was deep and desperate and everything he remembered about their other night together. When she pulled back, just far enough to kiss her way along his jawline, Jasper could barely remember his own name.
‘Help me forget?’ she murmured against his ear.
And suddenly the heat faded.
Not completely, of course. The lust she’d inspired was still coursing through his blood, and certain parts of his anatomy were absolutely on board with her plan—right now, preferably.
But his brain, that frustrating, overthinking part of him—the part that had come up with a dream of a frozen river and this woman’s hand in his—had other ideas.
‘Tori...’ He pulled away, as far as he could without falling out of the narrow single bed. ‘Tori, not like this.’
God, he wanted her. But he wanted her to want him, too. Not just forgetfulness, not just oblivion. He’d had enough of that sort of relationship himself, when he’d first moved away from Flaxstone. The kind of sex that just blocked out the world for a time, that helped him pass out and sleep without dreaming of the life he’d thought he’d had and the lies that had lurked behind it.
He didn’t want that with Tori. Not this time.
Last time had been freeing—for him, at least. She hadn’t just helped him to forget his worries, she’d given him new hope for what came next. Hope that had only lasted until the next day, when he’d confronted his father, but still. It hadn’t been despair or desperation that had driven him to her, not like it was for her now. Now he wondered again what it had been for Tori that had allowed her to let him in that night.
Whatever that was, he knew that if they were to have that connection again, he needed it to be something more. Tori meant something more to him, now. Seeing her at the Moorside these last couple of days had convinced him of that, if nothing else.
She mattered. It might not be love or for ever or any of the other impossible things his dream had seemed to promise him. But it was more than this—more than forgetting who she was in his body for a while.
And he knew, if he took what she was offering right now, he’d never be worthy of anything more.
‘Tori. Tori, no. Not like this.’ He said it again as gently as he could, but hurt flashed across her face all the same. He was so close he could see it, pale in the moonlight.
But then she nodded in acceptance. ‘I know. I just...it still hurts.’
‘I imagine it always will.’ He didn’t know about this sort of emotional pain, not really. But he understood about having a whole world he thought he knew being snatched away from him.
What sort of a future had Tori imagined with Tyler? How much must she have loved him to have not even been able to come back and see her family because the pain was so great?
Jasper wasn’t foolish enough to imagine she might ever love him that way—wasn’t even sure he’d know what to do with that kind of love if she did. But just for a moment, in the darkness, he wondered how it would feel. To be loved so much.
Had his father loved Felix’s mother that way? Did his own mother love his father enough that she’d love him still when the truth came out?
He didn’t know. He’d run away before he could ask those questions.
But suddenly, holding a silent Tori in his arms, he wondered.
How had they loved each other? And could he forgive them, if it was enough?
Maybe, with the thaw, it would be time to find out.
* * *
Tori woke alone, this time. Hardly surprising, given the way she’d behaved the night before. She cringed even to remember it.
But Jasper hadn’t mocked her, hadn’t been smug or even dismissive. He hadn’t even said just no.
He’d said, ‘No, not like this.’
And he’d been right.
Of course, the odds were good he’d tease and joke about it this morning, make comments about his ego and her flattery of it being good for the soul or something. But the more time she spent with him on this abortive road trip, the more she came to realise that those jibes and barbs weren’t the real Jasper. They were the thorns and brambles he used to keep people away. To stop them from seeing the man inside.
But she’d seen him. Well, glimpsed him, at least. Watching him with the children, or helping Henry. Feeling his arms around her as she cried. And the strain in his voice as he told her no, more telling than his words of how much he was giving up.
She’d felt the real Jasper in his kiss. And she knew for certain now that he was nothing like the entitled, shallow man he pretended to be.
Tori wasn’t entirely sure what to do with this information just yet.
Make fun of him, probably. Wasn’t that the way their relationship went?
But maybe it didn’t have to, any more.
She was still thinking about the possibilities as she headed downstairs thirty minutes later, washed and dressed and as presentable as she was going to get while wearing the same clothes she’d had on for three days now. Not that it could matter all that much; Jasper had seen her at her worst last night, in the grips of a nightmare and covered in sweat, and he’d still wanted her. And Liz and Henry...well, they’d seen her in her teenage Goth phase, so nothing would alarm them now.
Jasper was perched at the bar when she walked in, surprised to find the place less busy than it had been yesterday. Across in the dining room she could see people folding sheets and packing bags through the open doorway.
‘The roads are open?’ she guessed.
Jasper nodded. ‘Well, the way back to the main road is open. The moors road is still closed, so we’ll have to go the long way round. But when you’re ready we can head out and go...home.’
There was a slight pause before the last word, as if he realised that Flaxstone could never really be her home, not while the Moorside still stood, not even if she never came back here ever again. She?
??d had home once. She didn’t expect to be so lucky as to find it twice.
Except maybe he was thinking of his own complicated feelings about the place. Tori didn’t know what had driven him away from Flaxstone, or what had persuaded him to return, but she knew he hadn’t seemed at ease on the estate ever since he’d arrived back in the country.
The time they’d spent at the Moorside Inn might not have been planned, or convenient, or even what she’d have chosen if she’d had any say in the matter at all. But Tori had to admit that it had changed them. It had given them the space to see deeper into each other, behind their defences.
And it had given her the chance to be part of a family again.
Walking away from that a second time somehow felt far, far harder than it had been eight years ago, deep in the grip of her grief and guilt over Tyler’s death.
‘You’ll come back and see us soon, won’t you, Vicky?’ Aunt Liz said, holding her hands tight as Jasper loaded their stuff into the car. They seemed to be leaving with more than they’d arrived with—including two of Uncle Henry’s steak and ale pies from the freezer, something that had made Jasper beam. There was something else, too—something wrapped in Christmas paper, that she hadn’t been allowed to examine too closely. Tori was fine with that. Christmas presents smacked too much of family, and togetherness, and all the things she needed to say goodbye to again.
She wasn’t ‘Vicky’ any longer. She’d been Tori since the day she walked out. Vicky and her dreams and ambition and selfishness had got Tyler killed. And even that hadn’t been enough for her to give them up entirely.
She didn’t want to be Vicky again. It hurt too much.
But Aunt Liz looked so hopeful, her grip on Tori’s hands so desperate, that she couldn’t tell her that. ‘Sure. I’ll come soon.’
‘For Christmas maybe?’ Aunt Liz pressed.
‘Maybe.’ Tori gave a faint smile, and pressed a kiss to Liz’s cheek. Her skin felt more papery, older than Tori remembered.