Page 58 of These Tears

The doors part with a bright electronic chime, and he is already pulling me out by the elbow.

‘What do you mean?’ I manage, trying to catch my breath when the strong swipe of wind blasts into my face as we rush towards the plane.

‘“I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel.”’ The line from Frankenstein drops almost casually.

It tears through my chest like a lance and lodges there, twisting and turning.

His proximity scrambles everything. My thoughts stutter. Breath catches between a scream, a sob and a laugh, and the ground tilts further whenever I turn my head too quickly.

As we reach the stairs leading up to the front door of the plane, he stops and turns, taking me into his arms again – tight.

Tighter.

Air leaves me in a thin, startled hiss.

‘You decided to be my Victor anyway. You dug, you argued, you put a bloody lawyer on me,’ he all but snarls as he buries his face into my hair at the neck when a couple moves past us to climb the stairs. The words spill hot beneath my ear, scorching a path down my skin that my pulse tries to reclaim. I shiver from the onslaught of fear and… him. ‘It would have looked bad on me if I declined. You cracked the bars after I told you to leave them the fuck alone.’

Stepping away, he steers me upwards, his hand entwining with mine in a tight grip, but not enough to hurt me.

I almost yelp when he pulls me up the first stair.

‘You took my life in your hands, Leah,’ he murmurs, leaning in as we begin the climb, his breath ghosting my ear as if he’s whispering sweet nothings to me, his arm back around my waist. ‘So now… I’m taking yours.’

He turns, his gaze stabbing through mine. ‘Only difference is that you don’t get to walk away from what you made this time.’

My ears begin to ring.

I don’t remember walking to my seat.

I don’t remember easing into it.

Tucked beside the window, I glance around for a member of the cabin crew, even though I haven’t got a clue how I could alert them to a psychopath on board without there being consequences.

My eyes find him as his large frame moves along the aisle.

Dire consequences.

The arsehole helps every single bloody passenger around us with their luggage – leaning, crouching, shifting like some courteous titan, his massive frame folding itself barely enough to squeeze into the claustrophobic hell of the aircraft.

He keeps flashing that disarming smile, nodding greetings, murmuring apologies as he steps over knees and toes with the grace of someone used to invading every inch of space.

A woman across the aisle watches him lift a suitcase into the overhead locker. Another looks twice when he smiles at her. They steal glances at me as if I’ve won some kind of divine lottery.

God help me.

Am I like them? Have I also been pulled into the whirlwind of Elias Crane without a way out? What happens when we land? Does it stop? Does it get worse?

And then it hits me – I’ve set the stage, and he’s altered the layout.

I’ve voluntarily vanished off the grid; moved to Norway with no fixed address. Unless Anna or Marina pick up on something, unless some gut-deep instinct claws at them hard enough… I could easily disappear in his shadow for a bloody long time.

He doesn’t even need to put much effort into having his way. Just one flash of a smile, one quiet word to a passenger, and he talks himself into the seat beside me despite the cabin crew’s complaints.

I suck in a breath as he slides into the seat with wolfish ease, shoulder settling against mine. His knee is close enough to brush my leg, and suddenly the already narrow seat feels built around the shape of him. Temperature climbs along every place we almost touch.

I shouldn’t have written to him about Norway.

My vision goes spotty as Isak’s picture from the news report rises unbidden, and then the darkest thought lands – he might kill me.