‘The way you treat me is nothing to do with love. It certainly doesn’t feel like love. In fact, it feels like hatred. Pure hatred. I don’t know what I ever did to you to deserve your contempt.’

He shook his head and had the audacity to laugh at her. ‘You don’t understand.’

‘Explain it to me then!’ she said. ‘Tell me, Nathan. Tell me why!’ Suddenly, she needed to know. Because this was it, their last hurrah. If her plan succeeded, she’d never get the chance to ask him again.

‘You know why, Grace. You already know, babe,’ he slurred. ‘Because I’d never been loved by anyone until I met you and I don’t know how to deal with that. And then you went and you made me fall in love with you, didn’t you? Me! Nathan Conlon, who swore he’d never love anyone ever again. I promised myself I’d never let anyone have that sort of power over me. But you, with your big brown eyes and your soft skin and your …’ he trailed off then and his head dropped for a moment. After a few seconds his head snapped back up and he went on. ‘And then you went and gave me our son, our precious boy. How dare you do that to me. So, I wanted to hate you, and I wanted you to hate me. It was easier to hate you if I treated you like you were nothing to me. But no matter what I did you always forgave me, you always wanted to see the best in me. And once I realized I couldn’t bear it if I lost you, then I had to hold on to you the only way I knew how. To make you too scared to leave. I hated myself for what I’d become, and I took that out on you, because I could pretend it was all your fault. You were like a mirror, showing me who I could be if I could just shake these demons that I carry around with me. But I can never shake them, Grace. They are never satisfied.’ He shook his head. ‘And so I hated that feeling, that hopefulness you gave me, thinking one day I might just be … better. I hated it. But I couldn’t let it go either, and so I could never let you go. I had to make sure that you were too scared to ever leave. I had to make you believe that living with me was the better alternative to what I’d do to you if you ever left. To make you believe that being with me is so much easier than being against me. But all that’s about to change, Grace.’