Poison

I didn’t doubt it.

I didn’t doubt it when Mum held me tight and told me that Sebastian Maitland was gone from my life, and he’d pay the price for what he’d done.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t so sure the police would be able to deliver on that.

I was quiet on the way back home with the girls, all of us exhausted and heavy with the upset, but it sure felt good to be there with them. For once in months, it felt so good to have them on my side.

Lucas was in the hallway as soon as we pushed our way in through the front door. He folded me in his arms, and I breathed deep and collapsed in the release.

He asked about the police and about my parents, and I told him everything I could do through the fog of tiredness. But it was blurred. Blurred and fading.

“Let’s get you to bed,” Vicky said, and reached for my hand. “Don’t worry, Lucas. We’ll make sure she’s alright.”

It was such a relief when he pulled me closer. “I won’t be leaving her anywhere,” he said. “Not ever again.”

I expected them to argue with him, but they didn’t. They didn’t say a word as Lucas came through to my bedroom with me and helped me pack a suitcase with my things. They watched from the hallway as he helped me gather my toiletries together and fastened the case ready for my leaving, but didn’t they make a sound in protest.

They hugged me tight as I left, and watched me leave. No complaints. No arguments. No objections.

I was grateful – truly grateful – that I didn’t need to justify Lucas’s place in my life all over again.

I was silent for most of the way back to his place, facing him with my legs pulled up high in my seat, staring at his profile as he kept his eyes on the road ahead. The strength in his jaw, and his eyes, and the firmness of his shoulders as he drove me home. I remembered how he’d pulled up at the train station to pick me up for one crazy day, and how I’d known from that first single moment that it would be trouble, because he was him. He was Lucas. The man I’d always been in love with. The man I’d never really moved on from, not even with Sebastian the evil prince Maitland at my side.

“Penny for your thoughts?” he said, and I managed a smile.

“Penny for my thoughts is that I love you.”

“Well, that’s a good thing,” he said. “Because a penny for my thoughts is that I love you too.”

I was desperate for bed when we got in, but I took my meds, and ate a stir fry that Lucas put in front of me, and thanked him very much. I tried to help him load the dishwasher, but he shooed me away and finished up himself, and I watched him through tired eyes, realising all over again just how hard it would be to ever let him go.

I could never let him go.

Not again.

He showered with me, and wrapped me up in a towel, but he didn’t give me a running commentary on every little movement I should make.

He lit up a cigarette for me, smoked alongside me, and didn’t have a word to say on what I should or shouldn’t be doing for my health.

He was just him.

I was just me.

And we loved each other just for what we were. No conditions. No disapproval. No illusions.

He was so warm at my side in bed, legs twisted in mine and his arm so strong around my shoulder. My face was in his, breath against breath, and it felt so right.

Everything about us felt so right.

My brain was too tired to spin and churn, and my breathing slowed as I relaxed, skin to skin and heat to heat… and slowly… slowly and surely, I drifted off to sleep with him at my side.

“I love you, Anna,” he whispered, when I was right on the edge of my dreams, and I whispered back, nothing more than a ghost of a reply, but one that meant the world.

“I love you, Lucas. I always will.”

Sleep ate me up and held me as tight as he did. Dreams were a blur, and I needed them. I needed every scrap of rest I could get.

When I jolted back awake, the light was streaming in through the window, and he was still asleep at my side, breathing steady.

But I wasn’t breathing steady. Not when I thrust my hand down between my thighs under the covers.

I was wet.

The bed was wet.

I’d wet the bed with Lucas next to me, and I felt the panic. The disgust. The shame.

He must have felt me struggling to get out of bed and get the dirty sheets away from him when he opened his eyes and came to his senses.