Burn Me Once

by Clare Connelly

  ‘What’s the trick?’

  ‘Oh. This. Is it not working?’

  He breathes in deeply. I feel his chest move and smile.

  ‘Kind of.’ He yawns. ‘How could you have ever hated your hair?’ He murmurs. ‘I have dreams about it.’

  ‘My hair?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Of course. Your hair. Your body. Your smile.’ He yawns again. ‘Your eyes. Your body.’

  ‘You said that one already.’

  ‘It’s worth an extra credit.’

  I smile. My fingers, still held by his, stroke his chest beneath them. I touch him rhythmically, enjoying the feel of his body, the way it is so vibrant and alive, warm and smooth.

  I shift a little, burrowing against him.

  ‘Thanks for staying tonight.’

  I don’t respond. I don’t plan to stay. It would be really, really stupid. But I’m tired, and he is asleep before I can think of the words. I don’t want to risk waking him up. And besides...

  There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.

  I can say it to myself. There’s no harm in that, is there?

  * * *

  I am falling asleep. Ally is against me, our breath-sounds matching. We are our own music: a song of our bodies’ making. I stroke her in time to the lyric-less song and it is perfect. A slice of time that belongs with the stars for its beauty.

  But the stars are so far away. Beautiful, yes, but distant—and I don’t want to make that comparison with Ally.

  Nor do I want to think about how good she is at this. How right it feels.

  I don’t want to wonder about who else she has held so close, breathing in sync with him, helping him to fall asleep as she is me.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  IT IS LATE when I stir, and Ethan is no longer in bed. I blink, a little disorientated, a lot satisfied, and stretch my arms over my head, smothering a yawn. Then I am still. I listen. I hear music.

  I push the duvet back and step out of bed, padding into the lounge. He has his back to me, sitting in the wing-back armchair, looking out of the window at Manhattan. It occurs to me that no one out there has any idea that Ethan trending-on-Twitter Ash is right here, high above them like some beautiful, sexy sky-angel.

  I know the song he’s playing. It’s not his. I think it’s Bob Dylan’s. I listen, trying to catch the words, but he’s humming them quietly, as though he’s not even aware he’s singing.

  Is this what it’s like for him? Does the need to make music simply overtake him? Beyond his control, his realisation, his intention?

  Much like the way I am moving towards him, which is also beyond my intention. I have sometimes felt that there is a sort of magnetism between us. I don’t really go in for all that woo-woo universal energy stuff. Or, I didn’t, at least.

  ‘Hey. Sleeping Beauty’s up.’

  He smiles at me at the exact moment the sun beams from behind a cloud and his face glows gold. He places the guitar down as he stands and moves towards me.

  He’s wearing his favourite jeans—and now, let’s face it, my favourite jeans—low on his hips. His feet are bare. So is his chest.

  And suddenly my breath is lost. My throat is dry.

  He wraps his arms around my waist, pulling me to him. ‘How’d you sleep?’

  ‘I think I passed out.’ I smile up at him. ‘That is one comfy bed.’

  ‘You should stay over more,’ he says with a grin.

  It’s just a throwaway comment, yet prickles of danger flush my spine. I ignore the suggestion.

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He nods towards the machine. ‘You don’t like the idea?’

  ‘Of coffee?’ I wilfully misunderstand. ‘Of course I do. I live for the stuff.’

  ‘Of staying over.’

  I meet his eyes and I know my expression holds a warning. ‘Ethan...’

  His phone rings, interrupting whatever the hell I had been going to say.

  He shoots me a look that speaks volumes. This isn’t over.

  I gnaw at my lip, half watching as he moves across the room and lifts his phone off the coffee table, where he left it the night before. Something crosses his face—an emotion I don’t comprehend—and then he drops the phone again.

  ‘Dodging someone?’

  His eyes meet mine. He’s distracted. ‘No.’

  I remember the message he sent the night before. Or whatever it was he did. Was it to a friend? Or another woman? Or Sienna?

  Something like alarm bells sound in my mind. I have to silence them. Not care. Because it’s not what we are. And he’s not Jeremy.

  ‘You were saying?’

  I push a pod into thecoffee machine and wait for the light to show that it’s ready to wor.

  ‘I had fun last night. But I think it’s really important to remember—’

  ‘That we’re just fucking,’ he interrupts. Tersely.

  I am irrationally emotional in the face of his obvious annoyance. ‘Well, yeah. I wasn’t going to put it quite so crudely. I just mean that we should remember what we’re doing here.’

  ‘Right. The rules.’ He nods.

  He is keeping a grip on his temper but I know him better than that. I know he is tense and cross.

  ‘And what are they again?’

  I force a light smile. ‘Fun! No-strings!’

  ‘Right. And we can’t do that if you stay over with me?’

  ‘You’re the one who said no sleepovers.’

  He laughs—a harsh sound of disbelief—then drags his fingers through his hair. Of all the tools in his arsenal, this and this alone has the power to weaken the last threads of my resolve. He looks impossibly, edibly hot, his chest rippling, his hair spiking, and yet there is such an air of sweet helplessness in the gesture that I ache to go to him and properly explain. To tell him everything.

  His eyes lock to mine and it’s almost as though I have.

  ‘Who hurt you?’

  The machine whirls into life, pushing coffee through with its reliable hum. I drop my attention to it, pretending fascination with the dark brown liquid that is running into the bone-china cup. But my chest is moving too fast as each breath struggles for release.

  ‘Alicia?’

  God. Hearing my full name is such a weakness. When he says it I melt.

  ‘I...’

  He thrusts his hands on his hips, staring at me, and I blink my eyes shut.

  ‘This isn’t a request for state secrets. It’s not that hard.’

  I bite down on my lip. ‘Yeah, it is.’

  I swallow and force myself to look at him. I see the interest. The speculation. The sympathy.

  ‘It was serious with you and him?’

  My nod is barely a tick. A slow lift of my head. Yet it’s all the confirmation he needs.

  ‘Yeah. We were... It was.’

  ‘And it ended badly?’

  I nod again.

  He moves towards me and runs his thumb over my cheek. ‘What kind of asshole would ever hurt you?’

  My heart jumps. My body throbs. I don’t know what to say.

  ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’

  ‘God! Don’t do that, please.’ I pull away from him. ‘Don’t be so perfect. We both know you will hurt me, unless I’m very careful. Don’t...don’t make promises you can’t keep.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘We both agreed. We want the same thing here.’

  ‘And what if that’s changing?’

  ‘No.’ My denial is sharp, and panic is obvious in my voice. ‘It can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘For many, many reasons.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well... You’re not in any kind of place to be getting serious
with anyone. And I’ve just... I’ve done that. I’ve done the whole falling in love thing. Getting to know someone. Swapping secrets. Planning a future.’

  My voice cracks and I think of my engagement ring for the first time in months. Unconsciously I rub my finger, trying to focus my thoughts. Ethan is watching me, though, and I am distracted by him.

  ‘I’m not... I’m barely myself again. Eight months.’ My eyes feel hollowed out. ‘For eight months I have tried to make sense of how terribly things went wrong. I have tried to move on. To forget. To look in the mirror and see myself as someone other than that woman. It almost killed me when it ended.’

  I stare at him, willing him to understand.

  ‘I’m still so...so broken. So broken. If I let myself... If I let you in and you hurt me... God, Ethan. I wouldn’t do so well.’

  He pulls me close roughly, urgently, and he wraps his arms around me so tight, as though he can put me back together again.

  ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’

  ‘That’s exactly what he would have said.’

  He doesn’t let go. And I really, really don’t want him to.

  ‘Okay,’ he murmurs against my hair. ‘I promise I’m not going to push this. We can do it your way.’

  Relief—or I think that’s what it is—moves through me.

  ‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ he says again. ‘But I want to see more of you. I want to see as much of you as I can before I go.’

  Hurt. Pain. It lashes through me.

  Just contemplating his absence from my life, the finality of his departure, fills me with an ache I didn’t to expect.

  And I know then that we have to shift the rules slightly. Because I don’t want him to go from my life and for me to realise I didn’t see as much of him as I could. I want to grab him with both hands while I have him, so long as my heart isn’t in play.

  I nod slowly. ‘More is fine. Just so long as we both remember what we want here.’

  ‘You know what I want?’ he says seriously, his expression impossible to interpret.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I want a burger.’

  ‘A burger?’ I think for a second I’ve misheard.

  ‘Yeah.’ A sexy grin. ‘A burger. Whaddya say, Miss Douglas? Brave the streets of New York with me once more?’

  I have become used to indecision. I think one thing and want another. And then I question what I want and what I think until they become tangled together. But I am glad for this change in conversation topic and tempo. It is a relief not to be thinking about defining what we are, nor the rules we have already agreed do define us. I try not to think of them as limiting us, because that has negative connotations and our boundaries are definitely a good thing.

  ‘A burger sounds good.’

  It does. My stomach is prepared to answer that question.

  ‘I know just the place. How quickly can you get ready?’

  The promise of food motivates me.

  I shower in record time, pulling on what I arrived in the day before—a pair of jeans and an oversized shirt. I have just a few cosmetic basics in my handbag. I wipe some concealer underneath my eyes and some rouge on my cheeks, tap a little gloss over my lips. But I’ve forgotten a hairbrush, meaning my hair is wild and sex-styled. I comb it with my fingers and pull it over one shoulder.

  He whistles when I step out of the bathroom, low and soft, but it makes my tummy flip-flop.

  ‘Same to you.’

  He’s wearing jeans and a black shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He’s got a black baseball cap on his head. Groan. He’s hot.

  He puts a hand in the small of my back as we leave the hotel. The contact is nice. No, it’s better than nice.

  The elevator doors swish open and we move inside, but the second we’re in he pushes me against the back wall and kisses me, his mouth on mine demanding. It is a kiss that drugs me with its intensity and changes the parameters of my existence.

  He doesn’t break it until the elevator touches down with a gentle thud on the ground floor of the hotel.

  ‘Wait a sec.’

  I am not even sure my legs can carry me, so it’s easy to do as he suggests. He lifts a spare baseball cap off his head—I didn’t even realise he was carrying it—and places it on mine, then reaches for my hand, pulling me out of the lift.

  The foyer is as usual. There are a couple of guards by the doors. But when we step out it’s like the whole world erupts.

  Flashes go off in my face and Ethan, beside me, swears. He squeezes my hand and suddenly Grayson is there, pushing people back, cutting a path for us through the crowds. But they move with us, following, and I am afraid.

  Beside me, Ethan tosses a look over his shoulder. ‘Wankers.’

  There’s a car waiting. Grayson shepherds us into it. Ethan steps back to let me in first and I don’t hesitate. I slide in, keeping my head down, grateful for the protection offered by the cap, which shields at least some of my face.

  My breath is fierce.

  Ethan moves in beside me. He stares at me for a long second and then shakes his head.

  ‘I’m sorry about that.’

  I don’t know what to say. Questions and doubts run through me. He must have known that would happen?

  But I’ve left his hotel lots of times and not seen anything like that.

  ‘It’s the concert,’ he explains, reaching for my hand again and lifting it to his lips. He presses a kiss against the racing pulse point.

  I nod, but only because he seems to be waiting for me to say something. I’m full of doubts.

  ‘That’s... I can’t believe you live like that.’

  ‘Yeah.’ His lips compress. ‘It takes a bit of getting used to.’

  ‘I could never get used to it.’ I shudder in revulsion. It is yet another reason to be grateful for the fact that this is going nowhere.

  ‘It’s not all the time. In fact when I’m out on my own I can usually do most stuff. I should have checked the foyer before bringing you down. That won’t happen again.’

  I shrug, staring out of the window. ‘It’s only one more week,’ I point out. ‘We can keep a low profile after this.’

  He doesn’t say anything. What is there to say?

  Grayson takes us a few blocks south and pulls up outside a diner. I’ve never heard of it, but when we step inside the guy behind the counter comes over and wraps Ethan in a bear hug. I stand back and watch curiously.

  ‘How you going, mate?’

  ‘Not bad.’

  ‘See you lit up Manhattan last night.’ The man, who’s wearing chef’s pants and a white T-shirt, punches Ethan jokingly on the chest. ‘Surprised your head still fits through the door.’

  Ethan laughs. ‘Benji, this is Alicia. My cousin Benji, here, happens to make the best burgers in town.’

  ‘Think you might be biased there.’ Benji grins, but reaches across and shakes my hand. ‘Though they are pretty damned good. Nice to meet you, Alicia.’

  ‘Likewise.’

  Benji nods towards a table at the back. ‘You want coffee? Beer?’

  ‘Coffee.’ Ethan nods. ‘Ally?’

  ‘Same. Thank you.’

  He nods and moves through the restaurant, talking to a waitress as he goes. Our coffee appears almost instantly and I curl my hands around the cup.

  ‘Your cousin seems nice,’ I say, with my head tilted to one side. ‘This is his place?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘It’s our place.’

  Benji is back, handing menus over. Ethan makes no effort to pick his up. I don’t either.

  ‘Your place?’ I prompt, studying Ethan.

  ‘Yeah. Ash bought it years ago. Got me in to run it.’

  ‘Huh. So you’re a restaurateur-cum-rock-star, huh? Is there no end to
your talents?’

  Benji laughs. ‘I like her. She’s got your measure.’

  ‘She has that,’ Ethan agrees.

  ‘Okay, what’ll you two have?’

  ‘The usual,’ Ethan says.

  ‘I’ll have whatever you recommend.’

  ‘Great.’

  Benji winks and moves away, leaving us alone once more.

  Something heavy lodges in my chest. I can’t explain it, but then I realise. Ethan is renovating a house in New York. He owns this restaurant and his cousin works here. He’s not leaving in a week—not really. Not for good.

  He’ll be back again soon and then what?

  Will he call me?

  What will I say?

  Would I see him again?

  I stare out of the window.

  Worse. What if he doesn’t? What if I find out through Twitter that he’s here and he hasn’t thought to get in touch?

  And that second option is far more likely, isn’t it?

  It doesn’t matter. Because this is what I want.

  This is all we are.

  And so long as I remember that I’ll be fine. He can call. Or he can not call. It changes nothing about what we are. Nothing.

  * * *

  Hours later, back in his hotel suite, I look at him and feel myself smile. Without my consent. He’s reading.

  Yes. Ethan panty-melting-superstar Ash reads—and not just anything. It’s Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo.

  ‘Good book?’

  He presses a finger into the page and looks up at me, his own smile crooked in response. ‘It’s one of my favourites.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Sure. Why not?’

  ‘I just... I don’t know.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ He grins, putting the book down and moving closer. ‘You’re surprised I can actually read, right?’

  ‘No!’ I deny, my cheeks burning. ‘It’s just not very...rock and roll.’

  ‘So what do you think I do with my spare time? Snort cocaine and trash hotel rooms?’

  I wrinkle my nose. If anything, he’s a complete neat freak. Oh, he’s sexily dishevelled in his personal appearance, but he makes his own bed each morning and tidies up after himself.

  ‘I don’t really like the whole housekeeping thing,’ he said, when I asked him about it.