Page 45 of Last Breath (Blood Wine Dynasty #2)

Nella

‘Oh. Hello.’ His navel was at her eye level – that V-shape that ripped guys had, to be exact. Which was something she should just clock as an observation, like the colour of someone’s hair or their height.

Jett is ripped. The sky is blue. This car is old.

It didn’t need to be a thing. It shouldn’t have this hold on her. He was her friend . Friends didn’t ogle or leer or fantasise about running their tongue along the divots of muscle before—

Look up. Look the fuck up .

‘Oh. Hello? What the hell are you doing?’

‘Driving.’ She tapped the steering wheel. ‘The accelerator doesn’t work.’ She revved the engine and the noise broke Jett’s face.

‘The handbrake’s on.’ He ran around the front of the car and threw himself into the passenger side, his bare chest rising and falling rapidly.

She released the handbrake. As the car jolted forward, they both lurched towards the windscreen.

‘It’s manual. ’ His voice was strained like she was ripping his fingernails off one by one. ‘You need to put the clutch in ... NOT THAT ONE ... Yeah ... then the gear ... FIRST! First gear, Nella!’

‘Why are you helping me escape?’ She fixated on the little blue flashing light on the black box above the rear-vision mirror. ‘What’s that?’ she asked, pointing. ‘You never taught me about that.’

‘Dash cam. It’s only for people who care about their cars. How exactly were you planning on escaping when you still don’t know the difference between first and third gear?’

She tried to breathe without inhaling him. When she didn’t answer, he sighed, a deep, pit of exhaustion sigh.

‘Where were you planning on escaping to at a pace of four bunny hops per hour?’ He made a primal, animal roar as the gears ground mechanically. ‘Stop. STOP. For the love of God, Nella!’

His hand reached for her leg, which was trying to find the right pedal to stop that awful grinding sound.

The firm pressure of his palm pushed it back into the seat, his fingers grazing the inside of her thigh, and all the blood in her body rushed to that very spot.

Oxygen levels in brain: zero. All she was, all she could feel, was the pressure of his hand.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked again.

‘I don’t know!’ The last word came out, horrifically, as a sob.

‘I couldn’t just stay there!’ She banged her palm on the steering wheel, the burning sensation in her throat, behind her eyes building and building.

She was going to break, flood the city, destroy everything in her path. ‘I can’t fix it. It’s over.’

‘Nothing’s over.’ His hand wasn’t on her thigh anymore; he’d reached over the steering wheel, gently prying the keys from the ignition so she didn’t kill them both. ‘You’ve got your family, you’re safe. That’s what matters.’

‘My family ?’ She laughed. ‘You mean the lying, poisonous, murdering bloodline I’ve been cursed into?

My family who’ve profited off a lie for the past hundred years?

My family who hired a man to help them prove they hadn’t stolen Antonio La Marca’s recipe, only for him to die when he started sniffing around the truth?

What does that tell you, Jett? It wasn’t the La Marcas who killed Clarkson.

It was us ... my family ... Tom or Mum or . ..’

‘Nella.’ Jett had seen her cry before. The leather in the back seat of his car was kept supple from all her tears that had soaked into it over the years.

Tears after too many drinks, a fight, a heartbreak, a case she’d thought wasn’t going to affect her, a foiled abduction attempt she should have seen coming, a non-consensual encounter with Oliver, and nights with countless other men who saw her as nothing more than a conquest, a trophy, something to have.

But nothing like this – not broken. No one had ever seen her broken.

Because Nella Barbarani didn’t break. And she certainly didn’t break in front of her chauffeur.

The man who’d always been there when she was at her lowest, when she was too ashamed to call anyone else, when she had no one else to turn to – he was always the one who’d taken her away from anywhere she didn’t want to be. But he couldn’t drive her out of this.

But the way he was looking at her ...

She fought against the roar of the wave, the rolling sense of losing control, of letting go. She had to stay tethered. She’d never known anything else.

She dragged a shaking hand across her eyes, pulling herself back together, tightening the strings.

She wasn’t actually going to run away, she just had to feel the wind, that sense of not having a clear plan.

‘I ... I ...’ Her jaw shuddered uncontrollably.

‘I have to fight this ... I still ... I have to prove ...’

‘Hey. Hey .’ His voice was stern but his fingers were gentle as they brushed a piece of hair behind her ears. ‘You don’t have to prove anything. Not to me.’ That gentle brush sparked memories of the office, that touch she’d never be able to have again. He reached for her.

‘It was all a lie .’ The last word was a scream, but it was muffled by Jett’s shoulder as he pulled her towards him and she shattered everywhere.

If it was anyone else there, right then in that car, she could have done it, she could have built her armour back up. He was the only person she could break in front of. The only one who’d scrape up all the pieces and glue them back together.

‘My whole fucking life – every time I’ve defended them .

.. all the shit they’ve done, the people they’ve stampeded to get on top.

Every snide comment, every person who’s tried to pull me down, abduct me, kill me, rape me – because of who I am, because of who I come from – I could deal with all of it, because I knew my privilege was at least earnt.

My grandfather earnt his fortune. He came from nothing.

But it was all a fucking lie. I’m a lie! ’

‘You’re not,’ he breathed into her ear. ‘You’re not a lie.’ His arms tightened around her as he pulled her closer. ‘You’re the truest thing I know, Nella Barbarani.’

She sobbed into his shoulder, guttural, wet sobs that were probably making him wish he’d never got on the plane.

‘You’ve earnt every single thing you have.

You refused your dad’s money, unlike your brothers.

You and Eliza rented a dodgy share house in Willetton that I still claim, to this day, was a reformed meth lab.

You worked two shitty jobs to support yourself through law school.

And don’t think I’ve forgotten how he tried to break you.

How he goaded you at Christmas and Easter to take his handouts, to give up, but it just made you more determined.

I saw all that, Nella, and even once you graduated, you didn’t use the Barbarani fortune to set up your practice, you did that all on your own.

Everything you are, everything you have, you have earnt, you deserve.

I don’t think you were trying to prove yourself to him.

I think you were trying to prove yourself to you. ’

Her sobs were now shudders – rough, choppy water after the tsunami, crashing against the hardness of his chest, his heartbeat thumping louder the more he spoke. And he wasn’t finished.

‘Whoever made that original recipe – your grandfather, Antonio La Marca or the two of them together – it doesn’t hold any weight against the person you are, Nella.

It doesn’t mean your family is inherently bad or evil.

Do you think I’m bad? I’m evil? My mother injected heroin into her veins while I was still in her womb.

Am I bad because of this?’ His warm hand found hers and dragged it up, over his pecs, past his neck to the back of his shoulder – the part she’d dug her nails into a few nights ago, but only through the fabric of his shirt.

Bare, her fingers found the ridges and rough circles of old scars – the exact circumference of a cigarette, a slice of a knife, and other shapes she couldn’t understand.

‘Of course not,’ she breathed, her fingers acting of their own accord before he could stop her, tracing the thick, jagged line cutting down his face. ‘Of course you’re not.’

His breath was ragged. He closed his eyes. She could feel every muscle in his face tense, but he didn’t stop her.

‘So why,’ he said, as she traced to the end of the scar near the corner of his mouth, ‘is it any different for you?’

You don’t have to prove anything to me.

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

He snatched her hand away, gripping her fists in his, forcing her gaze up from his chest to his liquid black eyes. ‘Look at me.’

It was the easiest command to obey. She wanted desperately to touch him again, to ask him again how he got his scar – not for personal gratification, this time, but to truly know him, to see him. She needed to know how all his pieces fit together.

To be his friend. Because that, she had to remember, was all she could ever be to him.

‘You deserve everything,’ he continued. ‘You’re not the sum of your family’s bank account, or their reputation, or their history.

Your surname means shit all, because you are your own person.

Your own fierce, independent, loyal, infuriating person.

Your family respect you as a lawyer – that’s obvious from the fact that they wanted you to represent them in the case, not Clarkson.

You’ve even earnt your body. I remember how hard you pushed when we ran together.

I guess the only thing you haven’t earnt, that’s out of your control, are your looks, but you . ..’

His impassioned rambling had apparently run out of fuel.

‘What?’ Her breathing had stabilised and she was making sense of her surroundings again, and becoming very, very aware of how she was basically drooling into his lap. ‘My looks? Are you trying to say you think I’m pretty ?’

It was a useless attempt to soak up her despair, a reminder to herself, more than anything, that Jett needed an out from this awkward, crying, emotional scene. That’s what friends did. But all it did was clench up his features.

‘No.’ He glared. ‘I’d never say that.’

She was glass. Just when she’d thought her embarrassment was at peak heat, she’d somehow managed to turn up the furnace.

His glare deepened as his eyes tracked over her. ‘You’re not pretty , Nella. The girl working the ferry terminal was pretty . Daisy is pretty . You are ...’ He closed his eyes like he was bracing before a blow. ‘Beautiful.’

It was almost silent, just a breath, but she heard it. It came unwillingly, irreverently, like a coerced confession of murder.

Nella’s throat constricted. She’d been called beautiful before.

But it had just been a word. Never like this.

Never had that word meant all of her. And she’d known Jett for fifteen years, but never once had he insinuated .

.. She never thought he’d actually ...

Did he really think she was? And why ..

. goddammit, why, with every earth-shattering discovery made today, was this taking precedence . ..

‘Daisy.’ Nella’s brain fog evaporated, Jett’s earlier words coming into focus. She shifted back into the driver’s seat. Releasing herself from Jett’s warmth was like throwing herself naked into an icy lake.

‘I ended it,’ he said, his voice thick and still dazed.

‘Why?’

He shifted so his face was partially obscured by darkness. She held her breath. ‘Because I’m leaving.’

She nodded, ignoring the splintering feeling in her chest. Of course he hadn’t ended it because of a stupid kiss that was part of a ruse to stop them from being arrested.

Just because he’d said she was beautiful didn’t mean he thought of her in that way.

The way she couldn’t stop thinking about him. The way she had to.

‘What would you do if I asked you to stay? If I told you I wanted you to stay?’

His throat bobbed. ‘Are you? Asking me?’

‘Maybe? I think so. You don’t want anywhere to start to feel like home, in case it’s ripped away from you like it was when you were a kid. But you’ve been here fifteen years, and ... and ... do you really think you can just cut your ties and leave? What about Grey? Max? Me?’

‘You?’

‘Yeah.’ She swallowed. ‘We’re friends, aren’t we?’

He looked out the windscreen, his fists clenched. ‘No.’

If her heart had cracked before, this time it shattered. The pieces tore through her organs, sharp, jagged and lethal. She was going to bleed out. ‘What do you ...’

‘I can’t be your friend, Nella. I’m sorry.’

The thing about having a shattered heart was that the pieces were sharp.

And she knew just how to cut. ‘Because you think you’re so beneath me?

Because you’re the chauffeur and I’m Princess Antonella in her ivory fucking tower?

Because you think you’re the only one in the whole world who had a shit childhood, and now you’ve got a free pass to just leave whenever you want, no matter who you hurt in the process? ’

‘I can’t be your friend, ’ he hissed, ‘because whatever friendship we might have had is gone. It’s ruined. Because ...’

‘Because we kissed?’

‘Because I can’t get you out of my fucking head! I can’t be your friend with these thoughts. These ... these things that I want to do to you, these images ... I can’t ...’ His voice broke. ‘It’s number seven.’

Challenge 7 (Don’t fuck with the ocean).

‘I can’t stop thinking about it either.’ She couldn’t look at him. After everything, she still couldn’t let him see the vulnerability of that statement, the nakedness of her truth.

Jett sighed again. They were sitting at a perfectly amicable distance. Two people, two colleagues, two friends, sitting in the front seats of an expensive vintage Italian car like they were just waiting at a set of particularly slow traffic lights.

He looked at her, his eyes roving over the steering wheel, her legs lax now she didn’t have to press the pedals. ‘Why did you never renew your licence, Nella?’

She stared back. ‘Why didn’t you leave after your one-year-rule, Jett?’

And this time it didn’t matter who moved first, because their answers were the same.