“You can’t give me what I want.” I tell him.

He takes a step towards me. “Try me.”

Why does he look so earnest? The smile is gone, and looking at him, I can almost convince myself that he means something more than just sex. I swallow painfully.

“Olivia...”

I don’t hear what he’s about to say, because, at that moment, the door opens, and Elaine walks into the room.

“Oh, Jackson!” She exclaims, practically simpering. “I had no idea you were back.”

When he turns to her, the intense expression leaves his face, replaced by the charm that is the face he shows to the world. “I only just arrived.” He tells her.

She frowns. “Really, I was right outside, I didn’t see you come in.”

“That’s because I brought my boat.” His smile at her is almost indulgent, “and I came in through the back.”

Her eyes widen as the sophisticated mask drops. “A boat! Wow! Do I get to see it?”

“Of course.”

I tune out of their conversation after that. He walks towards her and they keep talking and laughing. I may as well not be in the room.

I leave them and go upstairs to my room. Outside, the day is turning to twilight, and the light from the setting sun is creating some beautiful effects with the few clouds in the darkening sky.

I should take a picture, I think, but I don’t. I don’t reach for my camera. Instead, I keep looking outside until the sun is nothing more than a faint grayness in the west.

Soon it will be dinnertime, and I’ll have to go downstairs and make conversation regardless of the turmoil bubbling inside me. I’ll sit at a table with Jackson and try to be civil even though I hate him so much and yet love him even more.

How could I have thought that I could come here without any consequences? That Jackson would let me do my work in peace without using his many advantages to revert me to the helpless girl who left here sev

en years ago.

How could I have thought I was over him? That’s the biggest lie I’ve told myself through the years, because I’ll never be over him. I'm always going to want him. To lose hold on all my senses whenever he’s near because whether he knows it or not, he did leave a mark on me.

I wish I could leave, abandon my assignment and run away from Halcyon like I did seven years ago, but I won’t give him that satisfaction. For two more days, I can look him in the eye and pretend, yes pretend that he means nothing to me.

Maybe it’s the memory of the first time I left Halcyon, but I’m suddenly seized with a desire to see my old room. I go outside to the corridor and make my way towards the other wing, where the master suite and the other family room are located. The door to the room is unlocked. I push it open, expecting it to have changed in some way, to have been redecorated to match any one of the other unused room in the house.

But it’s exactly the same. It’s almost as if I only just stepped out, and my eighteen year old self will return at any moment, to her books, her posters, and her bed.

I close my eyes as the flood of memories engulfs me. All the scenes from all those years ago, and Jackson, always Jackson, making love to me, teasing me, and talking about his plans, for himself, for us. In here, the memories are alive.

I push them away and continue inside. It’s surprisingly clean, with none of the dust one would expect from a space that hasn’t been used in a long time. I go to sit on the bed, feeling the soft mattress gives way underneath me. Again all those bittersweet memories from a lifetime ago fill my mind.

Will I ever forget, I wonder. Will there ever come a time when I’ll remember Jackson and feel nothing? When I’ll find happiness in the arms of some other man who will make me forget that I ever loved Jackson Lockewood.

It doesn’t seem likely, not when even the idea of giving my heart to someone else feels like a betrayal of who I am and what I know I want.

There is a small creak as the door opens fully, and I look up, half expecting to see Jackson again, conjured as usual from the act of my just thinking about him, but it’s only Constance.

“I was on my way downstairs and the door was open,” she says, “and I saw it was you in here.”

She looks tired, and for the first time, I notice the lines of her face, they’re few, but enough to think of how much time has passed.

“Yes, I…” I smile, “I just wanted to see.”

She nods and comes towards me, coming to sit beside me on the bed. “Did I ever tell you that this was my room when I was a girl?”

Tags: Serena Grey Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net