New Adult Romance Box Set

by Emme Rollins, Julia Kent, Anna Antonia, Helena Newbury, Aubrey Rose

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Darrell

  I was sitting on the floor, my back against a workbench. The fight with Carol had exhausted me.

  When I’d told her I was starting to have doubts about my work, she’d actually thought I was joking—the champagne she’d knocked back hadn’t helped. It wasn’t until she took a good look at my expression that she’d sobered up.

  “You have doubts?!” she’d said, disbelievingly. “When have you ever had doubts? You came to me, remember? You were the one who wanted into this game!”

  “It isn’t a game,” I’d told her tightly. “And it isn’t the same anymore.”

  I’d meant since the weapons had grown bigger, since we’d started measuring success in thousands of deaths, in city blocks destroyed. But I’d seen her eyes flick up towards the mansion. Towards Natasha. She presumed Natasha knew, of course. I didn’t correct her. I figured that if she thought she already knew, there was less chance she’d tell her out of spite.

  She’d asked me if I’d wanted more money, or an in-house workshop at the company, or an assistant. I’d shook my head and told her I wasn’t sure why I was doing it anymore.

  At which point she walked to the back of the lab and tore down my Curious Weasels poster. She’d known what was behind it, of course. I’d only put the poster up to cover it minutes before Natasha arrived to dance for the first time. I’d been planning to take it back down each time she left, but weirdly, I’d found myself leaving it in place.

  Behind the poster was a photo. A black and white crime scene photo of the SUV, twisted and blackened, firefighting foam still dripping from it. I’d asked, then pleaded, then demanded a copy and the lead investigator had eventually relented. It had been the image that had kept me going through the all-nighters, kept me pushing at the problems when they resisted every attempt at a solution. I had only to look at the photo and I’d know that I had to keep going.

  Carol had plucked it from the wall and held it in front of my face, following me with it when I tried to turn away. “Have you forgotten?” she asked me. “Do you not remember who this is?”

  And the memories had risen up inside me like a dark wave and I’d slumped to the floor. She’d crouched down in front of me and talked to me as if I was a child. Telling me how it was natural for me to be exhausted, towards the end of a long project. How I should maybe take a break—a full week or even two—before the next one.

  “You’re a hero,” she’d told me. “A bloody American hero, even if you don’t get any of the limelight. It was people like you who won the Second World War, the scientists and inventors toiling away behind the scenes.”

  We’re not at war, I’d tried to say. But my mind was full of hot desert air and the blare of the taxi as it sped past me. I’d nodded, reluctantly, and she’d stood up and left, dropping the photo at my feet. She wasn’t happy, but she knew I was back on board—for now, at least.

  I sighed and knocked my head gently against the workbench. Maybe I could stop, after this project. Finish the missile and then tell Carol it was over. Natasha never had to know. I’d managed to keep it from her so far. Another few weeks....

  I heard the elevator doors open and watched Natasha walk straight past me. The room was in half-darkness—I’d only bothered to switch on a few of the lights when I came down with Carol—and the workbench blocked me from sight. She walked right up to the missile, staring at the sheet that covered it. Jesus, had Carol told her? But she didn’t look angry...just confused. I watched as she tentatively reached a hand towards the sheet, and there was a part of me that wanted her to find out. I was so sick of lies, and I wanted so badly to talk to her about what was going on. Maybe, if I stopped work on the missile right now, just shipped it off to Carol half-finished and washed my hands of it, Natasha could forgive me....

  Except I couldn’t do that. I’d poured my soul into the project. I couldn’t stop it now any more than I could stop caring for a child. I wasn’t even sure I was going to be able to walk away from my work when the project was done, and I knew that was Carol’s plan: let me finish one and then hook me with the next.

  Natasha’s hand touched the sheet and I stood up. “Hi.”

  “Jesus!” she spun, dropping her handbag in the process, and things went skittering across the floor.

  “Sorry.” I stretched and walked over to her, pulling her into a hug.

  She wound her arms around me. “Is everything okay?”

  I gazed over her shoulder at the sheet-covered missile. “Carol and I had a disagreement. Work stuff.”

  “Yeah, I figured. I ran into her upstairs.”

  I moved her gently back, so I could look at her. “Oh?”

  She shook her head. “She was drunk. Seemed to think I was a bad influence on you.”

  I relaxed a little and kissed the top of her head. “I like your influence.” I really meant it. Being torn between her and my work was bad...but being oblivious to what I was doing, having my work and nothing else? I couldn’t even imagine going back to that now. Somehow, I had to figure out a way to have both, to keep Natasha and do right by my parents.

  “You missed the end of the party,” she told me. “Everyone’s gone. Do you want to come upstairs? Maybe sit in the garden? There’s plenty of champagne left and it hasn’t started raining—yet.”

  Actually, sitting out in the garden with her, watching the sun go down with a bottle of champagne sounded like exactly what I needed. I hugged her close again. “You go ahead. I’ll be up in exactly one minute. I just have one thing I need to do.”

  I swept the stuff that had spilled out of her handbag back into it and gave it back to her, then watched her go up in the elevator. Only then did I walk over to the workbench where I’d been sitting and retrieve the photo of the SUV. I wasn’t sure I wanted it up on the wall again, even underneath the poster, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away, either. Eventually, I settled for putting it away at the bottom of a drawer. When I closed it, I felt somehow...lighter. I wondered if I’d reached a turning point.

  I was heading for the elevator when I saw something glinting under a table.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Darrell

  I picked up the thing and examined it—it definitely wasn’t something of mine. Then I remembered Natasha dropping her handbag, and her things spilling out.

  It was like a woman’s powder compact, only bigger and rectangular, and I vaguely remembered seeing something like it in an old movie. A cigarette case.

  I turned it over and over in my hands. I knew she didn’t smoke. I was certain I would have smelt it on her. What, then?

  Obviously, I shouldn’t open it. It was something personal. I moved towards the elevator again. I’d give it back to her unopened.

  At that moment, the doorbell rang. On the security monitor, I could see Natasha knocking at the front door. Worried. Scared, even.

  I looked down at the case. What if it was something about her past? A photo, maybe, like the one I kept of the SUV. The person who’d abused her?

  The doorbell rang again. Then again. She was frantic.

  What if I looked and didn’t tell her? What if I could get a hint of what had happened to her? I could tell her I hadn’t looked, but I’d be better prepared to help her. At least I’d know what not to say. I was desperate to help her—I had to take any opportunity I could.

  I fingered the case. I knew that whoever had abused her, it wouldn’t stop me loving her. I’d never tell her I knew.

  I pressed the button, and the top sprang open.

  Chapter Thirty

  Natasha

  I knocked, then banged, then hammered on the door, the noise almost lost in a rumble of thunder from above. My panic had turned into a cold, gnawing dread in my gut. Why would he take so long to answer? Unless....

  He opened the door and I knew immediately that he’d looked inside the case. He didn’t have it in his hands, but I recognized his expression. I’d seen the same thing whe
n Clarissa found out.

  I never thought I’d have to see that expression on him.

  I took a step backwards. “You opened it,” I whispered.

  He was staring at me with something between raw anger and pity. “How could you do it?” he asked in a halting voice. “Why would you hurt yourself?” And just like Clarissa, he wasn’t asking for an actual reason. What he meant was, Nothing could possibly be so bad that a sane person would do that. Except it was that bad. He’d never understand.

  “Why did you open it?” I took another half step back.

  He took one step forwards, on the doorstep now, shaking his head. “Why would you—” He stretched his hands out towards me. “Natasha, you’re so beautiful. Why would you hurt yourself?”

  I’m not beautiful. Not on the inside. You don’t know what I’ve done. I had to keep backing away, stay out of reach of him, so I could run. I could feel the whole world sliding away from me, ready to send me tumbling six years back through time.

  We stood there staring at each other. It was worse—much worse—than it had been when Clarissa found out. She’d been a friend; Darrell was a part of me. I felt as if I was bleeding—he’d ripped something away and exposed my blackened, ugly core, the part I never wanted him to see. I wanted to scream and rage at him for destroying what we’d had together, for blowing my one chance at happiness, but I knew he wouldn’t understand.

  So I turned and walked away, scrunching down the gravel driveway towards the road, a breadcrumb trail of tears behind me.

  “Natasha, please!”

  I heard his footsteps behind me and walked faster, barely able to see, now.

  “Wait! We have to—”

  I broke into run, but then his hand was on my elbow, spinning me around, his face right up close to mine.

  “Natasha, you have to let me help you! I can’t let you keep on doing this!”

  And finally, I cracked.

  “Why?” I screamed at him. “Why? Why can’t you let me? I’ve been doing this for years and managing just fine! Why do you—Jesus, why do you think you have to fix me?!”

  He took a step back, stunned at my rage. “But you’re hurting yourself.” As if I didn’t know that. “I love you. I can’t let you hurt yourself.”

  You love what you think I am. “It’s not your right!” I was hysterical now, tears streaming down my face, crying so hard I thought I was going to throw up. “You don’t get to decide what I do with—It’s my body! Mine!”

  He shook his head. I almost understood. He wanted to protect me from myself; he didn’t realize he was getting between me and the one thing that let me cope. And I could see him starting to lose it. “I just don’t—why? Why would you willingly hurt yourself? It makes no sense!”

  I put my hands to my head. “It’s not—It’s not like I want to do it.“

  “Then stop!”

  “It’s not that easy! You don’t understand....”

  He took a deep breath. “Natasha, I love you. I love you for who you are....”

  You don’t know who I am. You don’t know the real me.

  He continued, “...you don’t need to do something like this to get me to...focus on you.”

  I think my jaw actually dropped open at that. “You think I’m doing this for attention?”

  He flushed, and I knew that was exactly what he’d been thinking.

  “Do you think that’s what I’m like—like a kid holding his breath until his parents give in?” It was difficult to speak, my face crumpled and red now from crying.

  He was getting angry now—just as Clarissa had done when she’d found out. “Then tell me! Stop telling me what it isn’t and tell me why you do it!”

  “I can’t!”

  “Why not?”

  Because you’ll hate me. The way he kept pushing and pushing for an answer finally tipped me over the edge. “I had it under control!” I screamed at him. “I had it under control—I haven’t even cut since Tuesday! It was all fine, it was better since I met you and now....” I trailed off. Now it’s all ruined.

  The clouds finally let go, three or four warning drops and then the deluge began. It was the sort of rain that hissed and chilled, like solid lances of water stabbing straight down into us. We were soaked in seconds, but we just stood there glaring at each other.

  I could see it dawn on him. He’d thought he was saving me. He was just realizing that he’d stepped between an addict and their needle, a child and their security blanket. He grabbed my shoulders, his eyes panicked. “Natasha, please. Come back inside the house. We can talk about it.”

  I shook myself free and stepped back. My dress was stuck to me like a second skin, my bare calves running with water. Everything we’d built together was ruined, and that made me so horribly, sickly angry that I shook. It wasn’t the pure, cleansing rage I’d felt before. It was old anger that was bitter and bloated and rotten from having been bottled up for so long, since the revelation that night when I was fifteen: I’m never going to be a normal person now. I’d escaped, with Darrell—for a wonderful handful of days, I’d stepped outside my fate and lived another life. And now I was being plunged back into it and that made my very soul howl in pain. I took another step back.

  “Let me help,” he said desperately. “Let me help you.” He reached for me, just our fingertips touching.

  I turned and walked, heels sinking into the soaked gravel of the drive.

  He ran alongside me, spluttering with the water coursing down his face, trying to blink it away. “Natasha, you’ll get pneumonia. It’s a mile back to the road. Come inside, we can talk!”

  I could feel myself closing down, everything drawing into a tight knot at the center of my body, the rest of me cold and dead. I shook my head, a tight little movement, and kept walking.

  I heard him stop and drop away behind me. Then he said, desperately, “Don’t give up on us!”

  I stopped. Is that what he thought—that I was giving up on us? I wanted him, more than I’d ever wanted anything in the world. But I knew where this was headed. He’d want to—need to—fix me, and he’d keep pushing for an answer. When I refused, he’d get angry again. Or he’d eventually wear me down and I’d tell him, and then he’d swing from love to hate.

  But what if I was wrong? What if I was throwing this away based on everyone else I’d met, not based on him? What if he was different?

  Every inch of my body was urging me on, pulling me towards the road. He’d stopped following me, leaving it as my decision. I could walk off, get a cab, and never see him again. My secret would be safe and I could go back to my old life.

  Only...I didn’t want my old life anymore.

  I turned to him. The rain made it impossible to see tears, but I could see how red his eyes were. I could feel my soaked dress draining every last ounce of heat from my body, and I hugged myself with my arms. Behind him, the mansion—warmth and shelter. But I couldn’t imagine being shut inside it with him, in the quiet of the workshop or the stately elegance of the dining room. I needed neutral ground, so I could run if I had to. “Out here,” I told him. “We talk out here.” It was important to me, somehow, that he accepted that condition. Maybe I had to feel like I had some control over things, or maybe I just wanted to know he cared about my feelings, after he’d so viciously invaded my privacy.

  His face lit up at the faint possibility of hope. He looked around. “But it’s—” He saw the look in my eyes, the way I was just barely holding it together. “Okay! Okay, out here.” He reached for my hand. “Come on.”

  I looked at his hand warily, as if it might bite. “I’m not going inside.”

  “We’re not going inside. Come on.”

  I took a deep breath and took his hand. I’d give it one last try.

  * * * *

  As we got closer and closer to the mansion, I started to hang back, stretching our joined hands to breaking point. But we didn’t go to the door. We went around to the side, and then into the garden, where I’d waited
for him happily on the grass. The bottle and glasses I’d brought out were still there, half full of cold rainwater. By now, I was shaking with cold, my arms and legs numb with it.

  He led me around a corner, to an area the party hadn’t reached. There was dark timber decking, with beams holding up a pointed roof—a mini-bandstand, almost. And in the center of the decking, a squat timber box as high as my hip, covered with a padded blue lid.

  Darrell pushed off the lid and steam rose up in a cloud.

  “A hot tub?” I said disbelievingly. “You want to get in a hot tub...now?”

  He indicated the crashing rain outside. “It’s out of the rain—but still outside.” He shivered, and he wasn’t acting. “And doesn’t a hot tub sound like a really good idea right now?”

  It was utterly insane. We were in the middle of a blazing row, on the verge of breaking up. But I was freezing.

  “We can just talk,” he told me. “Until the rain stops.”

  I looked at the tub, at the snakes of steam drifting upwards from it. I was trying to stop my teeth from chattering—the water looked incredibly inviting.

  “I’m not taking my clothes off,” I told him. I couldn’t bear the idea of him staring at my scars.

  He blinked at me, and then pulled off his shoes and jacket and climbed into the tub in his shirt and pants. The groan of ecstasy as his body hit the steaming water didn’t sound fake. He sat down, the water rising to his shoulders, and looked up at me.

  Decision time. Did I dare risk another talk with him? I was in enough pain already—why would I open myself up to more?

  I looked into his eyes as he sat there, that pure crystal blue that let me see right into his very soul.

  I kicked off my heels and stepped into the tub, gasping as the steaming water unfroze my bare legs. My dress stopped clinging to my skin and unfurled in the water, billowing around me. I sunk down until only my shoulders were out, and then sat on the seat opposite him. We both sat in silence for a moment, letting the heat soak into our chilled bodies.

  “I’m sorry I yelled at you,” I said at last.