Count On Me

Part Forty Eight

A/N Another quick chapter as you are all so complimentary!!! Enjoy, xxx

Chapter Forty Eight

Oscar looked out at the Pacific Ocean and smiled. Venice Beach was one of his favourite places on the West coast. It had helped that he met a woman years ago who was a native and showed him all the best places to go. Now, it was a place he could wander, enjoy and switch off. Which was hard. Considering he'd just resigned from his job as an almost board member of one of the biggest hotel companies in the world. But it wasn't that action that was making him so uptight, it was the events of the last five days, and the text that had just come through on his phone.

back in Manchester, he didn't know if Lizzie would see his actions in the same light as they were intended, hence the long winded note that he sent her. He knew he needed to act, to show her how he felt, and that was the best thing he could think of. It was his heart on a plate, delivered without him seeing the results. Sort of.

He had been in a cafe opposite the building that housed her lawyers office, watched her go in, head hung, eyes to the floor. She looked devastated, beaten...and that was all his fault. He'd almost held his breath as she disappeared into the reception, then scuttled in after her to give the letter to the security guard there. It was about forty minutes later that she emerged, looking stunned, clutching his letter in her hand.

From his seat he could see her open it, read it, once...twice...three times at least. She looked sad, and he hated that, but it was there, all out in the open. He had to leave, that was part of this, back off and let her see how things were. But with travel and time difference he had only managed one very brief Skype chat with Nate since then, Lizzie almost ridiculous in her absence from the conversation. But he had to have confidence in both her, and his own actions. So he smiled and blew his son a good night kiss.

Now on day three, he had resigned, walked in to his head office and told them he was done...and he felt...liberated. On leaving the office, feeling ten times lighter than when he arrived, he'd had a message from Lizzie.

Oscar slumped to a bench along the boardwalk and pulled out his phone again.

"It's been two days, and I still don't know how to respond. No one has ever trusted, or believed in me as much as you do. And even now I doubt that it's real. Because, maybe I don't feel that I deserve that from someone as wonderful as you."

There had been a ten minute gap to the next one.

"Did I really send that?" He could imagine her blushing; it took a lot to let down that tiny bit of barrier. "Oh well, in for a penny and all that. Oscar. Thank you. For believing in me. I want nothing more than for you to spend as much time with Nate as possible, and I'm sorry forced you in to this. I was wrong about you, I DO trust you, I'd trust you with my life."

He let out a long slow exhale, his eyes starting to believe what he'd read a little earlier. That kind of comment from Lizzie was more symbolic that 'I love you'. He knew her, he got her. No one had loved her the way she deserved it, so why would she think that he loved and wanted her now. He stumbled over the 'L' word. He KNEW that was what he felt, but it still seemed strange, foreign even to think of himself in relation to it and another person....other then Nate, obviously. She wasn't going to accept his feelings easily, but then he wasn't finding it very easy to think them! They were a pair of emotional cripples and he had to make her realise that they were both the same.

It was ridiculously warm in California and he stretched out, turning his face up to the sun, closing his eyes, basking for a moment. But his moment of serenity was disturbed by a cough.