‘. . . Fall for the nanny?’ she finished for him, feeling flattened. Because she got it, she did. A one-night hook-up couldn’t be allowed to derail a marriage, a family, a life. ‘I know.’

‘But you don’t.’ His voice was hoarse. ‘Because when I close my eyes now, I see you. When I was with her, I saw you. When you didn’t come back, I missed you.’ He clutched his head, the fingertips blanched white as he squeezed hard against his skull, as though the thoughts, the feelings, the pain, could be forced out. ‘I missed you and everything’s wrong. It was so clear before, what I had to do. Ever since I woke up, it’s always felt like . . . something’s missing, a part of me. And it has to be them. It must be. They’re my family.’ His hands dropped down as he looked back at her, looking defeated. Worn down. ‘It can’t be you.’

‘. . . I know,’ she said again, not daring to move. Her heart was pounding like a jackhammer, the shock of his words still rebounding through her body like pinballs. ‘I’m sorry.’

They stared at one another, unable to move closer, unable to pull away in an unbearable fixed tension that couldn’t be broken. ‘Today’s the day I’m getting them back,’ he said slowly, decisively, though she couldn’t tell if he was convincing her, or himself. ‘I’m not waiting another hour. When I go back down there, I’m telling Max everything.’

She nodded, feeling his eyes travelling over her skin like fingertips, touching her, feather-light. ‘Okay.’

Their eyes locked and the magnetic attraction sprang to attention again. He waited. And waited. ‘. . . This is where you tell me that she’s happy with him.’

Bell swallowed. ‘She was. But now she’s happy with you.’

He waited, his stare becoming more fixed, resolute. ‘This is where you tell me that I’ll never be half the father Max is.’

She forced herself to look back at him. ‘You love your son. That’s all he needs.’

A small sound escaped him, something between a groan and a plea. ‘And this is where you tell me that when you were with Mats . . .’ His voice cracked. ‘That you didn’t think of me.’

Reflexively, she looked away, the lie lodged in her throat, immovable, untellable. Because the truth was, eyes closed, he was all she’d seen and all she’d felt.

‘Bell –’ There was heat in the word, shape to a need, as he stepped towards her . . .

But she stepped away. ‘No. You’re doing the right thing,’ she whispered, her eyes shining with tears as he stared back at her, so close and yet a world away. ‘It’s not me.’

He lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling, waiting for the pain relief to kick in and trying to still his mind; but the headache and his emotions had fused into some kind of vortex whirling through him, a roar of images and sounds and feelings that he could neither control nor contain.