He didn’t understand. How could he forgive what didn’t make any sense?
He hadn’t understood how his parents could lie to him for so long, or how Felix could keep the truth from him after he’d found out, but he was starting to, now. When love and family and everything was so fragile, people did what they had to in order to keep it together. He wouldn’t have understood that at seventeen, when Felix learned the truth.
But he didn’t think he would ever understand how Tori could walk away from the connection between them, when he was offering to change his whole life, his whole existence for her. How she could hear him say he loved her, and have it mean nothing.
Maybe he should have told her about the last time he’d said that to a woman, only to have her turn round and humiliate him. Maybe then she’d realise how much it meant to him.
Or maybe not. His first love had ended in embarrassment. Hers had ended in death. She wasn’t likely to cut him much slack for that.
And anyway, she was the one who had left. Maybe she should be running back and begging him for forgiveness.
‘You could go after her, you realise,’ Felix said after a moment. ‘It’s not like you don’t know where she is.’
‘It’s also not as if she gave me any indication at all that she wanted me to follow her,’ Jasper pointed out. ‘I told her I loved her—’
‘No, you told a party full of strangers you loved her, mostly to make our father feel guilty.’
Our father. That still sounded strange.
‘It doesn’t matter. She said love isn’t enough.’ But it was all he had to give.
The realisation had been a slow one, creeping in between snow falls and frozen rivers, silent in the muffled winter landscape. Eight years ago when they’d met, she’d been a challenge. Five years ago, when they’d first spent the night together, she’d been a refuge. Two weeks ago, when they’d been stranded together at the Moorside, she’d still been a mystery—but one he was piecing together the clues to make sense of. By the time she’d kissed him at the Christmas market, she’d been all he could think about. She’d become a friend, then something more, something deeper, something he was scared to name unless it escaped again.
He’d barely known he was falling until he was all in. Like slipping on ice.
Yes, that was a perfect description for how falling in love with Tori Edwards felt. As if his feet had gone from under him and he was flat on his back on the hard, icy ground wondering what the hell just happened.
‘She said something else, before you got to the cottage. Something that made about as much sense as all of that did.’ Felix’s brows knitted together as he obviously tried to remember it word for word. ‘She said she’d been here before. That you were just saying you loved her to try and get her to stay, or make her feel guilty or something.’
‘She thought I was only proclaiming love in the most embarrassing way possible to make her feel bad?’ Jasper’s brain caught up with the rest of what Felix had said. ‘Wait. She said she’d been here before?’
‘That’s what she said.’
Yes. She’d said that to him, too, but he hadn’t realised the significance of it until now. He’d assumed she was talking about the first time they’d slept together, just before he’d left the country. But what if she wasn’t?
Because she hadn’t been here with him before. This was all different, this time. He’d definitely never told her he loved her before. And, given what else he knew about her love life and relationship history, that left him only one possible candidate.
‘Tyler.’
‘Who?’ Felix asked.
‘Her ex-boyfriend. The son of her sort-of foster parents. He died, before she came here. But I’m starting to think there was more to that story than she told me.’ He’d known that—or sensed it at least—before. But he hadn’t imagined it could be something big enough to derail everything between them.
‘Isn’t there always?’
‘Maybe I just wasn’t asking the right questions.’ And maybe he needed to.
No more secrets. That was what he’d promised himself when he came back here. He just hadn’t anticipated the challenge that was Tori Edwards and her defensive walls.
Jasper sprang to his feet, and Felix followed. ‘You’re going to go see her?’
‘I’m going to go see her.’
‘Hang on, then.’ Felix fished a key from his pocket and let himself into Tori’s cottage.
‘Wait, why do you have a key to her cottage?’ Jasper called from the doorstep, reluctant to go inside without Tori’s permission even though she wasn’t there.
‘She wanted me to water her Christmas tree,’ Felix yelled back.
‘Of course she did.’
Felix re-emerged moments later with a parcel wrapped in Christmas paper; one Jasper recognised. It was the one Henry had given him for Tori when they’d left the Moorside, just a couple of weeks ago now.
‘It’s Christmas Day. She’ll want this,’ Felix said.
Jasper nodded, and took the parcel from him. ‘I’ll deliver it. Make my excuses with the parents for Christmas dinner?’
‘Of course. Just be careful on the roads,’ Felix said. ‘There’s more snow forecast. And I don’t want to lose a brother when I only just got him back.’
‘Neither do I.’ Jasper flashed him a grin, then ran for his four-by-four, parked up in the garage by the house.
It was time to put an end to all the secrets. It was time to bring Tori home again.
* * *
Tori stared at the door in front of her, willing herself to open it.
She’d been back at the Moorside for three days now. It was time.
She just still didn’t quite feel ready.
Aunt Liz and Uncle Henry had looked about as surprised as she’d expected when she’d appeared on their doorstep three nights ago. For all they’d asked her to come back for Christmas, it was clear they hadn’t actually expected that she would. Still, Liz had made up her room for her, and Henry had fed her dinner—‘Anything but pie?’ she’d asked, at which question he’d given her a knowing look—and she’d settled back into life at the Moorside as if she’d never left.
Well, almost.
‘Are you going to go in?’ Henry’s voice behind her made her jump. ‘Only, our turkey will be ready in six hours, and I’d hate for you to miss it because you’re busy staring at a door.’
Not just any door. Tyler’s door.
Henry sank down against the wall to sit beside her on the floor, their legs stretched out across the hallway ahead of them. The pub was still open, for all that it was Christmas Day, but all the lunches were cooked and being served. Another couple of hours and all that would be left was mopping up the last of the drinkers before sending them home to their families and having their own, very late, Christmas dinner.
‘He loved you so much, you know,’ Henry said. ‘He’d want you to move on and be happy, if that’s what this is about.’
‘It’s not.’ Tori considered. ‘Well, not entirely.’
Yes, she felt guilty about moving on and leaving Tyler behind, but then, she’d been feeling that guilt since long before he’d died. Weirdly, she didn’t feel as if she was betraying Tyler with Jasper. If anything, she felt she was betraying Jasper, by clinging onto Tyler’s memory.
She’d done a lot of thinking over the last three days, and one thing was crystal clear to her. If she wanted to move on—with Jasper, or with anyone—she needed to put Tyler’s ghost to rest.
And the only way she’d been able to come up with to do that was by telling the truth.
‘Did he ever talk to you, about me leaving for university?’ Tori asked. She’d never spoken with Tyler’s parents about what had happened before she’d left, or after. But suddenly, she wondered if they knew anyway. They’d loved their son deeply, but they’d never
claimed he was perfect. None of them were.
All of them needed forgiveness, she realised now. But the dead couldn’t give it.