by Emme Rollins, Julia Kent, Anna Antonia, Helena Newbury, Aubrey Rose
Except...now he must think I was a complete psycho, just like that guy had said.
“I’m really sorry,” he told me.
I didn’t know what to say.
“Please, Natasha. Talk to me.”
You mean explain why you completely freaked out, just because I was late.
“Where were you?” I said at last. I didn’t mean it as an accusation, but immediately I could see the guilt on his face. I’m good at recognizing guilt, because I’m so good at hiding it. “What?” He closed his eyes. “What? What happened?”
He still had his eyes closed. I could tell he was fighting with himself, wanting to tell me the truth despite what the consequences would be. “I...forgot.”
“You...forgot?”
I’d run through all sorts of scenarios while I’d been sitting in the bar. A flat tire. An accident on the highway. A dying grandmother. He forgot? I was that unimportant to him?
He opened his eyes and looked straight at me, his hands in the air, trying to tame the outburst he could see was coming. “I get...kind of...into my work, sometimes. Sort of obsessed. I forgot the time.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I was less important than his work? “But...your phone was off.”
He closed his eyes as he said it, wincing, “...I didn’t want to be disturbed.”
“I was calling you,” I said, my voice lifeless and dull. “I was calling you and calling you. We were meant to be on a date—”
“I know—”
“But you didn’t want to be disturbed?”
“Natasha, I know. I’m sorry.” He grabbed my hand and held it, the warmth from his huge palms slowly soaking into me. “I messed up. I really messed up and, look—” He locked eyes with me. “It will never. Happen. Again. I swear.” And those eyes, those beautiful calm blue pools that took away all my fear...they allowed me to hope. I still didn’t understand how he could have put his work before me, if he really liked me. It still hurt. But the connection, the magic between us...that was back.
I nodded, and saw him relax just a little.
“I’m sorry I upset you.” He was looking at me with real worry in his eyes. I didn’t want to think about how I must look, or what I’d sounded like on the phone.
“It wasn’t....” I had to explain, somehow, without letting him know too much. I couldn’t let him think he was solely responsible. “It’s not all you,” I told him at last.
He nodded, and in his eyes, I saw that it was okay. And something else, too, something I wasn’t expecting. A sort of surprised understanding, as if my weirdness was the last thing he was expecting, but that it wasn’t totally unfamiliar. How could that be? He was everything I wasn’t: stable, rich and a goddamn genius. His only weirdness was that he was interested in me.
He leaned forward and gently rested his forehead against mine. It felt good.
“Some date, huh?” he murmured, and even though my eyes were still damp, I sort of laughed.
“I can drop you at your place,” he told me gently. “Or...if you want to...we could give this another go?”
I wanted to. But...“I don’t think I can face a restaurant,” I told him.
He nodded. “Me neither.” He took a deep breath. “Pizza?”
* * * *
We stopped at some place he knew, not a franchise but a tiny brick building with a faded sign and an aging, Italian owner who came out to meet us. We waited in the car, my back snuggled into his chest, until the driver returned with a huge, steaming box that he slid onto the seat next to us, its warmth filling the car.
Back at the mansion, Darrell ordered me out of the dining room while he got it ready. “Let me at least try to make this back into a date,” he insisted.
I wanted to do something about my face, and went off to find a bathroom. It was the first time I’d seen the rest of the house. On the second floor alone, there were a bewildering number of doors, but as I pushed open one after another I found most of the rooms were unused, the beds not made up.
I figured I should use the bathroom in his bedroom, because that would have towels and things. It wasn’t just about satisfying my curiosity. At least, that’s what I told myself.
In the end, it wasn’t hard to work out which bedroom he slept in. It was the nearest one to the staircase—his male mind at work—and the only one that looked remotely lived in. There was a massive four-poster bed, a half-open closet and, in one corner, a mirror with some photos around the edge. Apart from the workshop, they seemed to be the only personal touch in the whole house.
I stepped closer. Was this invading his privacy? I glanced at the door, but I could hear him still busy downstairs....
Some of the photos were from his college days at MIT. I recognized Neil, long-haired and bearded even then. There were other drinking buddies, the rowing team and some sort of fraternity. The photos seemed to be in chronological order, from freshman to sophomore...and then there was an abrupt change. After that, there were only photos like the one Clarissa had shown me online, of Darrell shaking hands with people in suits. One woman—a worryingly pretty, dark-haired woman a good ten years older than me—seemed to be in every one of them. Even through the posed smiles, I could see the way she was looking at Darrell.
There was a noise from downstairs and I ran for the bathroom before I got caught. Standing at the sink, I repaired the worst of the damage and then gripped the cold porcelain for strength. You can do this.
A moment later I walked lightly down the stairs and into the dining room...then stopped abruptly in the doorway.
A long table that would have seated twenty was set for just the two of us, and Darrell had gone all out. There were snow-white cloth napkins, crystal wine glasses and a bottle of champagne sweating in an ice bucket. And then, right in the middle, there was the still-steaming pizza box.
It was absurd, and perfect. Except...he’d added one more touch, in a bid to be romantic, and it had me paralyzed in the doorway.
He smiled at me, oblivious, and walked around to my side to pull my chair out for me.
I took a deep breath. Just get through it. I sat down.
“You look beautiful,” he told me as he sat down across from me, but his voice seemed to come from far away. I could feel myself sliding, as if my chair was plunging down towards the memories.
Focus. Under the table, I dug my nails into my palms. I thanked him—I think—I honestly can’t remember what I said.
They were drawing my eyes. I tried to look at Darrell, to lose myself in those gorgeous blue pools, but it was as if I was hypnotized. My skin was crawling, my stomach churning. I couldn’t breathe.
Darrell’s mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear. There was a noise in my ears. Screaming. My screaming, from that night—
I stood up, my chair shrieking as it scraped across the floor.
Darrell rose slowly, confused. “Are you okay?”
I swallowed, feeling sick and terrified and completely humiliated. “Can we not have them?” I asked.
He looked blankly at me. His eyes were full of concern—he was desperately trying to understand. “What?”
Of course. They were so dominating my mind, it hadn’t occurred to me that he’d have no idea what was scaring me. That’s because he’s normal and you’re a freak, I thought bitterly.
“The candles,” I told him weakly.
He blinked a couple more times and then quickly blew them out. Then he picked up the candelabra and carried it out of the room.
When he returned, the fear was dying away and I was left shaky and hugely embarrassed. Twice in one night.
“I’m sorry,” he told me.
“Not your fault.” I took a deep breath and tried to change the subject. Part of me wanted to tell him, then, but there was just no way I could. I liked him; I wanted him to like me. I managed to look him in the eye and he looked so worried that I cursed myself, while at the same time wanting to just leap across the table and hug him for being so patient and un
derstanding. He was desperate to know what was going on with me, I realized, but he wouldn’t ask. The trust he had in me...it made me go weak.
Maybe, given time, if I could find the right way of telling him....
“Champagne?” he raised the bottle.
“God, yes.” I passed him my glass.
I wasn’t a big wine drinker—it was either vodka with Clarissa or the occasional cocktail with Jasmine, if anything at all. But the champagne was different to anything I’d had before. It wasn’t the cheap fizz I’d had at weddings. It had real taste and the bubbles were sharp and perfect. All of the waffle people talked about wine, about hints of grapefruit and summers days—that all suddenly made sense. It was the same kind of revelation a driver would have, if he’d only ever known a Ford Pinto and you sat him in a Ferrari. Sipping it gave me time to recover.
“Okay?” he asked. And I knew he wasn’t just asking about the wine.
I nodded. With the candles gone, I could feel my body slowing down, all the adrenaline draining away. My face was still hot with humiliation. I had to get him talking about something else.
“Neil,” I said. “Tell me about Neil.”
He smirked and opened the pizza box. The smell of crisp pepperoni and melted cheese hit us. “Wondering if Clarissa’s safe?”
“Wondering if Neil’s safe. Clarissa takes no prisoners.”
“I met him in college—we roomed together, actually.” He passed me a slice of pizza. “He was sort of a hippy even back then. The biker part...that came later.” He was staring into his champagne glass now, remembering. “I was a little...intense, after my folks died. I was already working on my first design, and it got a little....” He trailed off. “Neil watched out for me.”
I smiled. “He doesn’t seem like an MIT graduate.” I bit into the pizza and it was fantastically good, the base delicately crunchy and the sauce tangy and rich. Gooey cheese and thick, salty slices of pepperoni. Heaven.
“More than a graduate. He’s still there, you know. Post-grad, doing his doctorate. Another few years—”
“It’ll be Doctor Neil?”
“Doctor Neil, PhD in advanced aerospace engineering. He’s talking seriously about riding the Harley up on stage to get his certificate.”
“I’d like to see that.” Talking to him was so easy. Why did the guilt drain away, whenever I was near him? Why did I feel...normal? “I have two more years at Fenbrook.” I still didn’t know exactly how old he was, and that reminded me of something else I wanted to know. “When I first came here...Neil said you didn’t have your degree.”
He nodded. “I dropped out.”
I waited, giving him time.
He looked down at the table. “End of my sophomore year, my parents died. I started working.” He met my eyes. “I mean, working a lot. And I wound up selling a design to Sabre and...I dropped out.” He was silent for a second and then his voice changed, making light of it. “I mean, I was making good money—really good.” He indicated the grand room around us. “It seemed crazy to stay on at MIT, and I figured I could always go back.”
Something had happened. Not just his parents’ death, awful as that must have been. Something had happened to him, changed him.
“You said it was a car bomb?” I wasn’t sure how far I should push. “Here?”
He shook his head slowly. “Middle East.”
“That must have been awful—them being so far away.”
He looked at me for a second, and I thought he was going to say something else, but then he just nodded. There was something there, some horror he wasn’t ready to return to.
What if he’s like me?
Don’t be stupid. No one’s like you.
He handed me another slice of pizza. “So. Where do you hang out, when you’re not dancing?” We looked at each other for a second and an understanding passed between us. We needed normality for a little while, or at least our approximation of it.
I took the slice. “Flicker. With an ‘e’. The bar, not the photo site.” And I started to tell him about Flicker and Harper’s, and Jasmine and Karen. About rehearsals and classes and auditions, and why it’s never a good idea to date an actor but every girl wants to anyway. He told me about the parties he went to—charity balls and opening nights, people with too much money and too much time.
“There’s a party the day after tomorrow,” he told me. “Twenty or thirty people. Just drinks, here at the house. Will you come? Neil and Clarissa could come too.”
Just the thought of being around that many strangers, all asking questions, made my chest go tight. But I’d be with Darrell.... “That’d be fun,” I told him.
We ate slowly, our eyes on each other as much as on the pizza. I kept looking at the little area of smooth, tan flesh revealed by his open collar. I wanted to know what his body looked like under that shirt.
There were a lot of silences, and somehow they weren’t uncomfortable at all.
His ankle grazed my bare leg, stroking down my calf, and I caught my breath. I looked up and met his eyes as he ran his warm touch up and down my leg, every nerve ending suddenly quivering. It’s amazing how sensitive a leg can be, when you’re completely focused on it. With every touch, I could feel my arousal notching higher.
He asked me about being a dancer: about how we stay up on pointe, how we remember the choreography and what the male dancers are like. I asked him about building stuff: about what it’s like to create something physical and lasting, about working for months or years on a single problem, about the frustration of abandoning prototype after prototype until you find the solution.
And then it went quiet and we just stared at each other.
All the fear I’d felt earlier had gone, and I was almost trembling with the feelings he was stirring up in me. When he stood up and walked around the table, I just sat staring up at him, helpless.
Everything suddenly felt different. This wasn’t like being down in the workshop, with Clarissa upstairs. This was two people alone.
He pulled my chair out—not just enough for me to get out, but right back a good few feet. I sat there, frozen, my whole body singing with excitement.
He bent over me, and I looked up into his eyes. He smiled that knockout smile and I swear my heart flipped over. Then his strong hands were on my waist...I shrieked in surprise as he lifted me effortlessly up and turned me around, until I felt the hard wood of the table under my ass. He sat me there, my legs swinging free.
“Natasha....” he said. He didn’t follow it with anything. It was as if he just liked saying it.
He stepped closer and I put my hands out against his chest. To stop him? To feel his body? Both, I think. I gasped at how warm he was, at the smooth curves of him, his chest like a wall. And then he was moving in, his hips pushing my knees open, and I closed my eyes as he kissed me.
The first time had been quick, the second gentle. This was urgent and barely restrained, promising much more to come. I could feel my breath starting to come in short, hot pants, our teeth clacking together for an instant as we moved into it. His tongue slipped into my mouth, searching and demanding, and mine danced with it.
His hand was on my back, pulling me to him, and the spread of his fingers made me aware of how big he was—I felt like a doll next to him. His other hand was on my hip, the warmth of it seeming to burn through the dress. I shifted my body to press against his palm and heard him groan through the kiss.
He stepped closer, pushing in between my thighs and spreading my knees, the dress riding up. His hand was sliding up my leg, up my inner thigh—
With a strangled gasp, I pulled away from him, leaning back on the table. He stepped back, but it was already too late. I knew he’d felt the scars. I’d felt his fingertips graze the rough lines.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked, panicked.
For just a second, a little voice told me to say yes, because that would have been an easy way out. But I couldn’t do that to him. I shook my head. “No, it’s...” A
nd suddenly I was crying, because I’d blown it. He’d felt the scars and now he’d have questions I couldn’t answer.
He moved in again and hugged me, and I pressed my face into his chest as I sobbed and sobbed, the sort of tears that burn as they come out. Crying didn’t make me feel better, but worse. Crying was speeding me down towards the place where I’d break open and everything would come spilling out. And then I’d lose him forever.
I pushed him away again and shook my head furiously. “It’s—” I was going to say “It’s nothing,” but the look on his face told me I wasn’t going to get away with that. “It’s—Not something I want to talk about.” I sniffed. “Is that okay?”
He nodded urgently and swept me up in his arms again. I was still sobbing, but this time it was okay because we weren’t lurching towards a point where I’d have to tell him. We were moving away, back to safety, and suddenly I was furious at myself. I’d already had two freak-outs. I was damned if I was going to let a third ruin everything.
I reached up, grabbed his face between my hands and kissed him, as hard as I could. Startled, he pulled back a little, but I followed him, feeling the hot tears trickling down my face as I moved. I was still crying, saltwater on my lips as I knitted my fingers in his hair and kissed him again and again, quick and hot and urgent.
He broke away, gasping. “We don’t have to—”
“I want to.” And my mouth was back on his, my tongue slipping into his mouth.
He started returning the kiss, his thumbs brushing the wetness from my cheeks. I could feel my tears slowing. He slid one hand down to my bare shoulder, cupping it, and the warmth of it—so real—coaxed me farther from the edge, back towards safety. I twisted into the kiss, exploring his lips, the memories slithered reluctantly back into the shadows. The now took over, and my tears finally stopped.
His hand slid into my hair, his palm cupping my head and gently tilting it back. Then he broke the kiss, leaving me gasping as he laid a trail of kisses down my throat. I felt it start, the slow swirl of heat in my belly, like I was coming back to life. His lips moved lower, down to my chest, to the soft upper valley of my breasts, and I took a deep, long breath as the heat inside spread outwards.
