Bait

He kisses me back as his feet touch the bottom.

This time I won’t be thwarted. My bravery knows no limits. My fingers are lightning on his shirt buttons, hunting out his bare skin. I tug his bow tie loose and my hands slide up his bare chest in victory.

I break the kiss with a smile. Push away just enough to look at him.

He’s inked from pecs to throat. A monochrome display of pure brilliance. My jaw drops.

I’ve never seen anyone so sculpted. Never seen ridges of hard flesh as perfect as they look on him.

“You are incredible…” I whisper, but his expression is grim.

He pushes himself across the pool to the ledge that leads to nowhere, and there’s something very wrong here. Wrong enough to hitch my breath.

I’m staring at the most beautiful view I’ve ever seen. The most beautiful man I’ve ever seen, pale in the moonlight, in the most glorious state of undress as the water glitters. There’s a whole universe of stars behind him as the world falls away.

But it all feels wrong.

He feels so wrong.

I stay back, dropping myself down into the water until my hair fans all around me. I wait for him to wrestle whatever demons he’s up against, praying he’ll come out the other side and still want to know me.

Right now I’m not so sure.

I’m not so sure of anything.

He looks tortured. Broken.

Haunted by demons worse than any I’ve seen in my nightmares.

I remember our initial conversation online. It feels so long ago.

I loved hard. I lost harder.

Him the same as me.

The question is in the air, just as it was back then. The same question that landed in my inbox amongst the idiots out for a cheap lay.

The one that I asked him right back.

The one he never really answered.

Secrets.

I can hear them twitching.

I take a breath. Summoning every last scrap of bravery I have left.

And then I ask him, my breath barely more than a whisper in the moonlight.

“What happened to you?”Phoenix“I loved hard. I lost harder.”

My words are instant. My reply vague as shit.

I’m cranking open the trapdoor and staring the secrets right in their twisted faces, not knowing which one to pull out first.

I hate the way she feels so far away, her eyes so sad as she stares at me.

My breath feels tight. I feel like I’m on the edge of a confession, for sins I’m not sure are even mine.

“Me and Jake, my brother, we had a haulage company.” I begin, then correct myself. “Have a haulage company. Mariana appeared out of nowhere. Backpacking through the countryside. Wild. Looking for something she wasn’t sure she was searching for. She found us.”

I meet her eyes.

“She found me.”

Abigail nods. The water ripples as she kicks her way over. She rests against the ledge just a short way away. It feels like miles.

“She’s the one you lost?” she asks.

“I lost her long before she left,” I admit. “We were enemies sharing a bed as lovers. In the end, I wasn’t sure whether she wanted to fuck me or kill me. Probably both.”

She smiles. “Turbulent, then.”

“It was like riding a tornado. A white-knuckle ride of fucking chaos.”

“But you held on pretty tight?”

“Until the end,” I say.

“She left you?”

“In a form.” I take another breath. “She passed away just over a year ago.”

“I’m so sorry,” she says, and she is. She looks mortified.

“Passed away isn’t the right term for it,” I clarify. “Passing away is a gentle phrase. Soft. Like slipping underwater. Like falling asleep and never waking up. What happened to Mariana wasn’t gentle.” Her screams are ringing in my ears. My fists are clenched underwater. “There was a fire at the warehouse. We were storing chemicals for a client up in Huddersfield, a whole batch of them ready to truck down to Dover. The whole fucking lot went up. It was a fucking inferno. So fierce the sprinklers couldn’t hold it.”

Her eyes are wide as she intuits what I’m about to say.

“Mariana was in there. So was Jake.” My breath strains. “The place was already burning when I got there. They say it was an explosion. It blew the roof out. It was like running into a tunnel of flames.” I gesture above my head, seeing them right there, the heat on my skin. “They licked the ceiling, moved like they were alive, a blanket of flames. The heat…” I take a breath. “Jake must have been in the loading bay. The first explosion sent him flying. His head hit the concrete as he landed. He was barely conscious when I reached him. I dragged him out of there as his feet caught fire.” I hold up my palms. “I put those flames out with my bare hands. His shoes were melting. He lost most of the skin on his heels.”