“Why won’t you tell me wh—”
Mum pauses by the French doors leading out to the expansive lawn where the helicopter is sitting, waiting and ready to go. “Cassie, you don’t need to know anything other than you are safe. You don’t need to worry about anything.”
“But…” I freeze at the sight of Leo pacing below the almost stationary helicopter blades. They’re going so slow that when he brings the cigarette he’s holding to his lips ash doesn’t flurry around him like you would expect it to.
Smoking is a habit I can’t stand, that I always nag Christopher about, but Leo makes it look like the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. Even with the way he looks rumpled in his tux, with his shirt tails hanging loose below the hem of his jacket. His usually coiffed hair is floppy and messy, and when he brushes it out of his eyes, our gazes meet.
I’m glued to the spot with relief inflating me to the point I feel like I might float off into the night sky.
“He looks like shit.” Fleur says beside me, linking her arm with mine.
“He does,” I whisper. Sighing as I try to ignore the need to go to him. He may look messy and rumpled, but all I see is the way he’s looking at me with a need that matches mine. The need to touch and be touched, and all I want is to go to him and make sure that he’s okay. Even though I already know that he isn’t. The strings between us are pulling and twisting, and God, I can feel his turmoil. It’s not just written on his face; it’s conducting between us like a live current through a copper wire.
Arabella makes the first move, running to him before wrapping him in her arms. And jealousy threatens to swallow me whole. At the same time, I’m debating what to do.
Do I go to him? Do I not?
The regret I still feel for walking away at the party rears its head and it’s all I need to know that I can’t ignore the need to be close to him again.
Taking hurried steps towards him, my feet sink into the wet grass as I watch my parents get in the helicopter. My mother hesitates momentarily, and I almost expect her to turn back, but she doesn’t. Taking my father’s hand, she disappears inside the aircraft.
Flicking his cigarette to the ground, Leo turns to follow them and when I grab his forearm my heart races as our eyes connect once more. This close he looks exhausted, and the handsome hollows of his face are more pronounced, making him look feral and haunted.
Stepping closer, he takes his arm back before he grabs my hips with both of his hands. The blades pick up speed and my hair blusters around us as his face lowers to mine. The low, wiry whoop of each turn is loud and perfectly timed until it becomes one loud continuous whoosh a bit like my heartbeat.
“I thought…” My voice and my words ball up in my mouth and I have to take a deep breath and swallow them down in order to try and say something. “There was an accident…”
Clambering up his arms, my hands trace up to cup his jaw and when he doesn’t try to push me away, I take a step closer to him until we’re so close that Leo’s lips are at my ear.
I turn my face into his, the grip of his hands tightening on my hips as I whisper with relief, “You’re okay.”
“An accident,” he repeats, his expression hardening as a low, bitter laugh twists his handsome face.
I don’t like his reaction to my words, it has alarm bells going off in my head and my chest is so tight that I might suffocate. “Tell me what’s happened, please?” It’s not so much a question as it is a plea and a hope that at least one person will tell me the truth.
“I happened.” I swear there are tears lining his eyes as he grits those words.
Rolling onto the tips of my toes with my hair tangling around us I press my lips to his jaw and enjoy the way his stubble grates my warm skin as his fingers dig deep and hard into my flesh, so much that I can feel his touch in my bones.
I have no idea what he meant by he happened, but his tone is heavy with guilt and regret, and all I want is
to make it better for him. However, I can’t try to fix something that I have no idea of. “What happened?”
His expression hardens with his swallow; I know what’s going to happen like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Lowering himself to my height he presses me flush to his body as he hisses in my ear, “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay well enough away from me.” And then he’s gone. He rips himself away from me like you would a plaster from a wound. Fast. Without hesitation or warning. But it doesn’t minimise the pain that floods me.
Falling to the ground at my feet, my heart shatters. I knew that I was in way above my head with my feelings. A part of me already knew that eventually, Leo would break me, I just didn’t expect it to be so soon and so easily. Not after only one soul searing kiss.
Arabella walks me back towards the house, she stops to watch the helicopter take-off, but I can only trudge inside, barely able to keep myself upright in my trance.
What was I thinking? Is all I can ask myself as I drag my feet into the kitchen. I sit at the large antique bench, the cold in the room matching the ice in my chest, as exhaustion and disappointment stab and twist inside me.
Shaking I’m incapable of wiping the tears that rim my eyes, and when someone drapes a blanket over my back and puts a cup of my favourite maple and chamomile tea in front of me, I can’t even express my gratitude.
Eventually Arabella and Fleur join me, and although I have a tonne of questions swirling round in my head, my hurt has left me voiceless.
Chapter 8