Sexy as Hell Box Set (71 page)

I waited to see how she’d deal with that—waited for her to laugh scornfully and tell me not to be such a soppy fucker.

She didn’t.

“I see,” she said. “I had a feeling but I didn’t like to…”

She didn’t like to what?

“I didn’t like to assume you felt the
sa…”

Say it, woman. Just bloody well say it.

I took a deep breath, let it out, then decided to go for it. “Felt the…?”

“Same as me,” she said.

Oh, fuck. I’d wanted her to say it, and now she had… How could I do what I wanted to on this sodding train? How could I gather her in my arms, swing her around, and shout that yes, my God, she loved me? A bubble of excitement burst inside me, and I couldn’t suppress a grin. I watched her mouth to see if she would allow a little smile, but she looked as stony-faced as she had before she’d said it, as though her confession had been nothing more than her reeling off something much more mundane. Judging by her expression and body language, loving me was something she didn’t want at all.

She was stiff, sitting bolt upright, stilling her finger on her lip then lowering her hand to fold both of them beneath her armpits. It reminded me of Catherine, a defensive gesture, Zara hugging herself as though by doing that she could hold all the emotions inside, stop them spilling out. She was one pent-up woman, and I was at a loss as to what to do. My happiness
was quickly doused, anxiety and concern taking its place.

“Don’t you have anything fancy to say?” she asked, her tone dead, devoid of her usual snappiness.

“I don’t, no. I’m not quite sure how to be, how to go on in this situation. With you like this, I mean. You’re not…like you usually are.”

“No. And that’s your fault, you know.”

A part of me was glad she’d placed the blame firmly at my doorstep, something she’d usually do, except she hadn’t said it in a waspish manner, looking at me with her eyes flashing, a flicker of defiance in them, her challenging me to say different, to refute what she’d said. She’d sounded defeated, as though loving me was the worst thing in the world. And perhaps it was for her. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Was I not the right man for her, was that it? Why shouldn’t she love me? Was I that bad?

“What’s my fault?” I asked gently, thinking I may as well hear it now, get it all out in the open, know where I stood.

“Me not being how I usually am.”

“Oh, right. How come?” I held my breath, waiting for it, her mean words designed to make me hate her.

“Because, my beautiful virgin,” she all but whispered, “you made me care for you, and I don’t ‘do’ caring. It hurts. I’ll be hurt, and I promised myself I’d never go through that again.”

Through what? I’d kill the bastard who had made her like this.
“I won’t hurt you. Ever. Zara, please look at me.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because then you’ll see.” She turned her head further away from me, towards the window again.

“See what?”

“Everything. And I can’t let you see everything until I’ve told you everything, and I don’t know if I can.”

Victor reached across and took hold of my fingers, trying to prize my hand from beneath my armpit. His touch was right, something I wanted yet didn’t. Just the skin on skin contact told me I should turn to face him, to rest my cheek against his chest like I so wanted to, his arm around me. But I couldn’t allow that. Wouldn’t.

I wasn’t seeing anything outside the window, was too busy struggling to squash the contents of my mind back into hiding. The huge can of worms had opened itself without my permission, the lid slowly peeling back since I’d earwigged back in Tuscany, listened to him say he was in love with me. I’d dropped that glass in shock, even though I’d known deep down how he felt. To hear it, to hear him telling Catherine that he couldn’t be with her because he loved me, had been something I hadn’t anticipated. I’d thought we could just carry on the way we were, pretending everything was all right, that we didn’t have feelings for one another, because feelings…

Like I’d told him, feelings hurt.

I sighed. “I can see now that everything I did, all the advice I gave you to do with Catherine, was meant to split you up,” I said. “I should be sorry, but I’m not. I told myself I was doing it because she wasn’t the right one for you, when all along…”

I couldn’t bring myself to continue. Saying so much at once, well, it wasn’t me, was it? I frowned as he squeezed my fingers, a silent signal that he wanted me to go on, to finally open up to him. To trust him. And I could—trust him, that was—but how did a person change themselves after such a long time of being a certain way? How could I embrace this…this love crap and stroll off into the sunset when so much shit was in my mind? I’d learnt to get a handle on it all, to file it away, but things had changed and I didn’t think I could try romance or anything remotely ‘normal’ with Victor this weekend unless I told him a few things.

Things that would more than likely make him
want to run. And I wouldn’t blame him either. I wouldn’t want to deal with my baggage if I were him.

“When all along,” I said, “I wanted you for myself, knowing I couldn’t have you.”

“I’m glad you did it,” he said. “I mean, we wouldn’t be here now if you hadn’t, and even though Catherine’s been hurt… She’d have hurt a damn sight more if I’d have let things go any further. It was best to end it now. I was just kidding myself that I could be without you.”

“A bit like I was doing.” There, I’d revealed some more. It wouldn’t be enough for him, I knew that, but it seemed short sentences were the way to go. They were more than he’d ever got out of me in the past. “And there’s so much more to say. Too much.”

“I’m listening. I’ll always be here to listen, you know that.”

I nodded. I
did
know that, and I wanted to turn to him again, to tell him that he was the best thing since sliced bread, that he was my everything, the man of my dreams, but the thought of all that hurt if things went wrong made me want to clam up. Oh, I knew all that bollocks about taking a leap of faith, throwing caution to the winds and all that, but really, when you’d been hurt as much as I had…

“I should have gone to a counsellor, you know,” I said, smiling wryly. “I heard they can fix anything. That telling a stranger all your rubbish was better than telling someone you know because…well, because they’re not emotionally involved.”

“Yes, I can see how that would work.”

He’d sounded so damn gentle, so
Victor
, that I was hard pressed not to cry. And me finally letting myself tell him a few things while sitting on a packed train had been a good move. I could stop at any time, make out I thought someone was listening, whereas in private, I couldn’t get away. Couldn’t run or have an adequate excuse not to blurt it all out.

“But I didn’t,” I said. “Decided I could deal with it all myself, because I’d dealt with everything else before…before certain things happened, so I could do it again.”

“And did you?” he asked. “
Did
you deal with it all right?”

I went to nod automatically then shook my head a bit instead. “I thought I had until you came along. Another thing to blame you for.”

I imagined him smiling, and it was a test for me not to check. If I did I’d be undone by the look in his eyes, the concern I knew would be on his face. He was far too good for me, my Victor. I didn’t deserve him.

“You know when we went into the summerhouse that time?” I asked, knowing what I was about to say would either rip me up so I couldn’t finish the tale or make me blab it in a torrent until it was all out and I never had to say it again, “I was amazed I didn’t break down in there.”

“Go on…”

“You won’t have any idea what the smell of wood
, of musty sheds was like for me at one time, although when we were in the summerhouse I didn’t allow myself to give it a thought. I shut things out. Maybe I even wanted to go in there as a test, to see what it did to me. Subconsciously. I don’t know, because most of the time I do things and have no idea why, because the reasons that I’d be doing them are buried so deep even I don’t remember them anymore. Yet at the same time I do remember, I just don’t remember them as vividly as I could. They’re there but not.”

God, that had been a bit of a speech. He squeezed my fingers again.

“There were these lads,” I said, seeing them in my head.

I suppressed a shudder. I knew their names, but I wouldn’t say them, wouldn’t give them titles. That would mean allowing them importance, like they
mattered
, and they didn’t. They didn’t.

Maybe one day I’d be able to say their names without being affected.

One blond, one black-haired, one auburn.

“I must have been about eighteen
,” I said. “No, I
was
eighteen, I must stop making out I don’t know these things. Anyway, they decided—and I’ll give you the bare bones because it really is too much to go into—that they’d quite like to lock me up in a garden shed and do things to me.”

Could I tell him what those things were?

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Victor said.

“He won’t help,” I said, letting myself smile a little. And no, I couldn’t tell him what they’d done. All I needed to do was show him how much of a fuck-up I was, why I couldn’t love him
and then make him understand that it wasn’t him, that it was me. “Let’s just say that it wasn’t pleasant and that my mother didn’t even report me missing for the three weeks I’d been gone. I shouldn’t have expected anything else.” I laughed.

“Zara, please… Won’t you look at me?” He tugged my fingers.

“No.”

“At least let me hold you?”

“No.”

“I’m feeling helpless here. I need to…I want to make it all better, make it all go away.”

“It’ll never go away. I thought it had, and here we are, me telling you my shit and you listening to it. I shouldn’t have even started talking, but I had to. You need to know why I can’t let there be an us after this weekend, that I’m incapable of giving back to you what you seem so willing to give to me.”

That had come out wrong.

I rushed to continue. “If we carry on, I’m going to get hurt, and I can’t allow that to happen. Can’t go through pain like that again.”

“Did you love one of the lads, is that it? Did you love him before they put you in the shed, and then they did things and you realised he couldn’t have loved you if he did whatever it was he did?”

I laughed again, louder this time, a laugh more like my usual scorn-filled chuckle. “If only it were that simple. No, I didn’t love any of them. I didn’t even
know
any of them until that night they took me.”

“Fucking hell… Do you know them now? I mean, do you know where they live?”

I waved my hand dismissively. “Probably on the same council estate where I grew up. I don’t know, I haven’t been back since…since a little while after I got away.”

“Zara… Oh, God, Zara. Please, just let me hold your hand properly at least.”

I could allow that. I let my hand fall to my lap, and he took it in his immediately, stroking the back with his thumb then placing his other on top, covering it completely. I kept my gaze fixed outside at the hills, didn’t dare to glance down and see what our hands looked like. Mine enclosed in both of his would be poignant, a symbol I didn’t want to see—having it as a thought in my head was bad enough.
I’m here for you, Zara, I’ll take care of you—just let me hold your hand forever and everything will be all right.
That’s what it meant, and I knew that’s what he’d say if I gave him half the chance.

“So,” I said. “I got away, went back home, realised my mother hadn’t seemed to notice I’d even been gone. I knew she didn’t care for me, not properly,
and saw me as a burden, something she wanted to get rid of, yet I still walked into that living room and broke down, told her everything.” I huffed out another chuckle. “And she called me names, as if I’d invited what they’d done.”

I sighed, felt some of the weight I’d been carrying for
what felt like a lifetime lift off me. A few years ago I’d told Geoffrey as much as I’d just told Victor, and he’d helped me, given me coping strategies by teaching me to dominate and regain control. I was grateful to him for that, always would be, because it had meant I’d got close enough to him to finally have sex again, though he’d been tied to a bed the first time, his face scarlet from my slapping. It was the only way I could bring myself to do it.

But there was so much more
to tell, so many damn things that had happened to make me behave as I did, and the journey wasn’t that long, so I had to get the gist of it across before we pulled into the station.

“To cut a long story short, in that shed I did anything they wanted, just so it would please them and they might let me go. When it was clear they weren’t going to, I told myself that no man would ever get close enough for me to allow them to make me submissive like that again.”

I left the sentence hanging. Victor would know that the gift I’d given him of me being a sub for him had been an expensive one. He sighed, and in my peripheral I saw him rubbing his chin with his fingertips. I felt guilty for dumping all this on him, but he had to know, had to understand that when our weekend was over, it was over—
we
were over. I wasn’t capable of giving him what he needed, what he deserved.