Inconsolable (Love Triumphs 2)

Why wasn’t she frightened of him? Why didn’t he tell her, tell her all of it? The research, the experiments, the trials, the industry, statutory and government approvals, the runaway success of the drug. Then the accolades, the money, the streaming, raging, never-ending river of it that put the world at his fingertips, before time showed how wrong, how corrupt it all was.

If he told her that, he’d never see her again. If he told her, he might as well die. He did what he was good at. He walked away.

21: Attacked

Foley found him at the bottom of the sweeping Gone With The Wind staircase. Drum, Patrick, Trick. She didn’t know what to call him, what to make of him, this enormous half-empty house, his care of her when she was sick, the way he wrestled with his emotions, with whatever guilt, fault, horror he thought he’d unleashed.

He was sitting on the last step, head in his hands. She went down and sat on the step behind and adjacent him, and he registered her presence with a ripple of muscles across his shoulders.

As a kid she’d had a sixth sense about bullies, about people who weren’t nice, had less than honourable intentions. The kind of kids who’d nick someone’s lunch, dob you in for a minor crime, make up nasty stories about you, embarrass you on purpose. That’s how she’d picked Gabriella, with her nice suits and pleasant ways and her self-serving agendas.

It wasn’t an easy skill to acknowledge, to trust, because it meant believing the worst in people. She hadn’t trusted it with Jon, she’d had a sense of his duplicity, but was so tied up in the life less ordinary of him, in the extravagant sex, she’d ignored it, until it kicked her butt and put a whale-sized dent in her confidence.

She had no sense of anything threatening about Drum, not at first, not beyond the time she’d challenged him, and not now that his complications were more in her face. While the weather raged, she gave up second-guessing. She would trust in him.

She touched his shoulder. “I’m here if you want to talk. But I’m here if you don’t, too.” He didn’t react so she slid down the smooth step to sit beside him. “I’m not giving up on you.” She had so many questions but she forced them to queue behind his needs. His hand was on the step, close enough to hers that if she spread her fingers their little fingers would touch.

He turned his head. “It’s cold, it’s late, early, whatever. You have to work. Go to bed, Foley.”

It was cold, her feet were going numb and despite the robe, made out of something lightweight but beautifully soft and warm, she had a case of shivers. He was cold too, but in a different way, he was intent on freezing her out.

“What will you do?”

“I have a mattress, I use it down here.” He nodded at the space between the front door and the staircase. It would be cold, drafty, and hideously uncomfortable.

She wanted to curl up with him, defrost him. “I’ll stay here with you.”

“No.”

So quick. No room for debate. He’d shaved and the temptation to touch his face, to learn him cheek to cheek and use her lips to taste the smoothness of him was ridiculously primitive, like gluttony after long starvation. She separated her fingers and pressed the edge of her little finger against the side of his.

He whipped his head around to face her. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I do. I want to be with you.” First, now, in this moment, but beyond that, to take this extraordinary connection, give it sunshine and water it into life.

He didn’t move his hand, but his whole posture went on the defensive. “That’s meaningless.”

“It means something to me.”

“What could it possibly mean to you?”

Things too difficult to contemplate; surprising things, like stimulating conversation and unrestrained laughter, like contented silences and something shaped more like admiration than compassion. She moved her hand till it covered his. “Comfort.” It was what he needed.

His eyes went to their hands. “Do you need another blanket?”

“I need you.”

He flipped his hand and captured hers, threading their fingers together, but said nothing. The tension in his jaw, at his eye, showed her his agony of indecision. He wanted, he wanted and he would not take.

She slid across the step till her hip was against his. She waited for him to react, and when he accepted her closeness with a long exhale and a softening of his spine, she laid her head on his shoulder. Her stomach was full of grumbles and twinges and she needed to sleep, but she was so aware of him, soap and water clean and strong, she felt wide awake and perfectly well.

He brushed his cheek on the top of her head. “You don’t need anyone and that bed upstairs would be more comfortable.”

“Not possible.”

“It doesn’t matter if I sleep, but you must.”

“I want you. I’ll sleep here with you.”