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“I should call Elliot to take you home. I should promise to leave you in peace and let you fall in love with a good, steady man…but I can’t.” His eyes drifted to mine again, their deadness terrifying me. He cupped my cheek, and for just a moment I saw a whisper of the sadness he tried so hard to keep hidden. “I have to keep you.”
With those final words whispered as a cursed epithet, he turned away from me and walked into the bathroom, shutting the door gently behind him. A moment later I heard the shower running and the soft patter of water hitting the tile.
I remained on the bed, clutching my duvet, stunned by what had just passed between us. A thick layer of guilt settled into me. Why had I pushed him so hard? There was so much I wanted to know about him, and his reaction to the mention of his brother only made me want to know more. There was something hidden there, something that hurt him so badly he’d had to deaden himself just to cope with it. It was tied in with his father’s company somehow, the company he now ran, I just didn’t know how the two were connected.
I buried my head in my hands and took a breath. One day I’d learn all of his secrets, but not tonight. Right now, the man I cared about was in that bathroom, a hollow shell of the Alfie Tell I knew because I had pushed him too far. I needed to fix it. More than that, I needed to bring him back to me.
I threw off my duvet toga and climbed off the bed. I was going to go in there and make it okay again. We still hadn’t resolved anything but that didn’t matter anymore. I would kiss him softly and he would kiss me back. He would come back to me.
As soon as I opened the bathroom door I was hit by a thick billow of steam, so thick I could barely see beyond my own outstretched hand. The bathroom had become a sauna and a wave of claustrophobia hit me as I drew in a breath of dense, humid air.
“Alfie?” I called out but he didn’t respond. Maybe he couldn’t hear me over the shower. My foot nudged something soft and I looked down to see his boxers discarded on the floor. I stepped closer until the shower appeared through the clouds of steam.
Alfie was barely visible through the glass separating me from him but I could just make out the misted form of him hunched under the spray. The shower was large, practically a wet room, and I had to guide my way along the glass until I found the gap. I stepped in, peering through the steam. It cleared enough for me to make him out. I was burning up from the dense heat and sweat beaded over my skin, but everything inside me had frozen as I focused on him.
“Alfie?” My voice was a strangled whimper that he didn’t respond to. I stood there, unable to move, unable to process what I was seeing.
His hands were pressed against the tile, his arms limp and barely holding him up. His head was bowed as if in atonement for some dark sin and his back was bare under water that was so hot the smooth planes of his shoulder blades were scalded a bright, angry red. A desperate sound came from his throat, every muscle weakened with his act of contrition.
My vision blurred, my eyes filling with hot, salty tears as I realised that this was what was underneath his mask, what he kept so desperately hidden.
The all powerful Alfie Tell was a broken man.
Forty-Five
“Alfie!” I shoved him out of the way, throwing my full body weight at him to get him away from the water. I reached for the shower faucet and found myself a new victim of the scalding water. I let out a strangled cry of pain as the water hit my left shoulder and poured over me like lava.
With a visceral growl, Alfie turned, wrapping me in his arms and shielding me from the igneous waterfall, taking the pain for himself once more. He backed me up to the other side of the shower. My back pressed up against the wall, the cool tile a delicious balm on my overheated skin, but my heart was hammering too fast to find any pleasure in it. My stomach was turning, my mind unable to make sense of what had just happened. He had burned himself. On purpose.
His breaths were hot and heavy, his face buried in the crook of my neck, as if seeking solace in my presence. Solace…or salvation. I needed to see him but I was afraid to look into his eyes and see a hollow man looking back at me. I felt too small for this task. I was utterly unqualified for this job, yet it was mine and mine alone, as he was mine. I pushed at his chest until he straightened enough for me to take his precious face in myhands. I peered up at him, trying to make him out through the steam.
Where is he?
His eyes were dark, hooded and glazed over with pain. So much pain, of all kinds. His hair was a wet, shaggy mess, disturbingly uncharacteristic of the immaculate man I knew. His body hunched protectively over mine.
“Alfie…”I tentatively touched his cheek. He didn’t flinch, didn’t even seem to register that I was there. He was looking straight through me. I traced the fine line of his cheekbone with my fingertips, leaving light trails in the moisture gathered over his skin.
I needed him. I was lost, cast up into the sky once more, and the desperation I felt scared me. I would do anything to bring him back to me.Anything.I wondered if he knew that, if he knew that once more he had me over a barrel and he hadn’t even needed to use sex this time.
“What do you need? Alfie, just tell me what you need.” For long moments he didn’t respond. His face was a smooth, impassive mask, but in his eyes I could see a sign of life, I could see a drowning man struggling to get to the surface. I was about to speak when finally he broke through.
“You,” his voice sounded strangled. “I need you.”
“You have me.” I willed him to hear me, and willed myself to find the words that would jolt him out of this trance.
I wanted to get the hell out of this claustrophobic chamber but I couldn’t seem to move.
“Then say you’ll come with me.” For one sick moment I wondered if this was all some sort of play to get me to do what he wanted, but one more look in his eyes threw that thought right out of my head. This wasn’t a play. He wasn’t manipulating me. He was begging me.
“Say yes. Say you won’t leave me.” His forehead pressed against mine, his body slumped, his muscles trembling to keep himself standing.
How could I say no? How could I even think of leaving him when he needed me so badly? Visions of my mum were suddenly at the forefront of my mind, playing in front of me as if from an old projector reel, images of her final moments sitting in the car, her hand clutching mine, the terror in her eyes as water rose around us. The gentle kiss on my cheek before she had pushed me through the car window, open just enough to fit a child through, but not a grown woman.
I had left her. I had swum out of that window and left her behind. The roar of water was so loud and I could no longer tell whether it was the water of my past or my present. My mother. My poor, terrified mother. I had been unable to help her. I was too young, too scared to know what to do, but I was grown now, and now that someone else needed me, how could I leave them?
Alfie looked at me as if his entire well-being hung on my answer. This was his ultimatum to me. Hurt him or fix him.
Yes.