AllFreeNovel
Share Us
His mouth curved. ‘It was good. I need to remember him more like that and less...’ He stopped, but she didn’t need him to elaborate, she knew what he meant. ‘I would like to hear about your family,’ he went on. ‘Tell me your good memories of them.’
A little burst of surprise went through her. ‘You really want to hear?’
‘Of course.’ He lifted a finger and brushed a curl from her forehead. ‘Will you share them with me?’
She felt stupidly shy and yet she loved that he’d asked her. It had always been difficult to remember, because whenever she did, it was always accompanied by a dragging sense of shame. As if she didn’t deserve to have even the good parts of her family. But that shame had lessened now, as if her confession to him the night before had drained the bulk of it away.
‘Oh, it’s just little things,’ she said. ‘Dad used to take me skating on the lake in winter and he’d lift me up in his arms, making me feel as if I was flying. And my mother used to make the best hot chocolate.’ She smiled, remembering. ‘I hated waking up in the mornings so she’d tell me that if I was a good girl and got up on time, there would be a mug of hot chocolate in the kitchen for me. And there always was.’ They were small memories of little moments, and now, robbed of the shame, they were joyful and it felt good to share them with him. ‘My little sister used to steal my toys and it would drive me crazy and I’d get so angry with her. But after we argued, she’d always throw her arms around my waist and beg me to forgive her.’
Atticus’s dark gaze didn’t move from hers. ‘And you did?’
‘Yes. Always.’ A familiar bittersweet grief wound through her. ‘We used to have the loudest family dinners and we’d argue with each other a lot, but we also laughed a lot too. My dad had the most ridiculous sense of humour, while my mother’s was more sarcastic and sly.’
Atticus shifted against her, pulling her more firmly into his arms. ‘And you’re somewhere in the middle, I think. Though erring towards sarcastic.’
There was an amusement in his voice that almost sounded tender and it made her chest feel tight. ‘How would you know?’ she asked, realising as soon as she said it that it sounded more like an accusation than the joke she’d been meaning it as. ‘I mean, you don’t know me that well.’
His dark eyes held hers, the amusement fading from them. ‘I know that you love swimming naked in the sea. I know that you don’t like to talk when you’re eating something delicious because you want to savour the taste. I know that you’re quick to learn, and your mind and the way you think are fascinating to me. I know that you smell of apples and that when you come, you say my name.’
A flush crept over her. She hadn’t known he’d been paying attention, that he’d been collecting pieces of her all this time. He’d called her his hope and she’d thought that was how he saw her, as an ideal, a cipher, not as a woman.
‘I know that your anger is quick to rouse,’ he went on. ‘And yet you let it go just as quickly, and that your eyes are full of sparks when you’re sharpening your claws on me. And I know that you’re very strong and very stubborn and I find that maddening.’
She flushed deeper. ‘Atticus...’
‘Yet I also know that arguing with you is one of life’s pleasures and that it excites me. I know that you like trying new things, that you ask a lot of questions, and are very competitive. I know that in the evening, in the last rays of the sun, when you’re lying on the sand, you look like you’ve been dipped in gold.’
Her throat closed and she couldn’t speak.
‘And I know that for some reason you’re afraid of something,’ he went on in the same quiet voice. ‘And you won’t tell me what it is or why.’
She looked away. ‘I’m not afraid.’
‘Yes, you are,’ he said, quietly insistent. ‘You were afraid last night, that’s why you got out of the bath.’
Elena lifted her hands and pushed against his chest, needing some space. Because of course she was afraid, she just didn’t want to explain it to him, when she barely knew herself what was making her so afraid. Only that it had something to do with wanting more from him, wanting something she knew she was never going to have.
And you know all about that, don’t you?
That was why she tried to remember only the good parts of the time she had with her family, the parts that didn’t hurt. Not the terrible ache of grief that had never left her, the wanting of something she would never have.
Atticus let her push him away, not making any move as she sat on the side of the bed, catching the sheet protectively around her, needing the distance.
All those things he’d said about her, all those things he’d noticed... They were all her, all parts of herself that Aristeidis had never seen, because for him, she suspected, she’d always been a sign that his son wasn’t completely gone from him. A second chance he hadn’t thought he’d have, and while those weren’t bad things, they weren’t entirely about her, either.
But Atticus had noticed them. Atticus had seen deeper into her, and it made her feel vulnerable.
‘I’m fine.’ She forced out the words. ‘There really wasn’t anything—’
But she didn’t get to finish, because Atticus abruptly grabbed her and she found herself hauled back and pinned beneath him on the bed once again.
She put up a cursory resistance, but then he took her wrists and pinned them to the mattress on either side of her head.
‘No,’ he said flatly, his black gaze burning into hers. ‘You’re not doing the equivalent of walking out on me, not again. Not after last night. Tell me what’s bothering you and tell me now.’
Oh, she wished she didn’t like it when he got insistent like this, when he held her so she couldn’t escape. When he made it obvious that he wouldn’t let her avoid his questions, because he wanted to know. Because she mattered to him.
She wished she had the willpower to shove him away. It would be so much easier than having to tell him the truth.
