Crash

by Vanessa Waltz

  Icy water sank into my shoes. “No, stop! Ok, fine! I’m sorry!”

  Laughing, he stepped back and I found solid ground. I never saw him look so happy. “I can’t believe you did that.”

  “Me neither,” I said, my breath caught in my throat. I was back safely on the ground, but his arm was still wrapped around my waist. I could feel every contour of his muscles and his rapid heartbeat. If I just lifted myself on my toes, I could kiss him.

  The laughter slowly died and Will’s eyes looked at me with something entirely different. His fingers splayed on my back and he seemed to finally be aware that he was holding me.

  He bowed his head, still smiling. All of his heat surrounded me; I felt his lips claiming mine, my mouth open in shock. The gentle heat I felt in my heart amped to a blazing forest fire. His hard body was against mine, his hands almost lifting me up. I actually dug my fingers into his wild hair and loved how soft it was. His kisses were filled with gunpowder; they were nothing like the sweet pecks Ben always gave me. I leaned into him and bit his bottom lip.

  Somehow, we stumbled back against the fence. Will’s mouth weakened me over and over, and then he was planting searing hot kisses under my jaw and down my throat. I moaned as his hands swept around my waist and moved up my abdomen. Then he seemed to become aware of where we were and he pulled away. Not completely, just enough to make me really disappointed.

  My nerves and skin were tingling all over, oversensitive. When Will’s fingers grazed my neck, I seized as if I was in pain.

  That was amazing.

  I wanted to kiss him again, but Will winked at me and stepped back.

  “C’mon.”

  A bit of awkwardness followed that intense make-out session. How were we supposed to behave after that? Will didn’t make any attempt to touch me again, but when he looked at me, it was in a completely different way than before. He gave me a secretive smile that made me confused and hot all over. I didn’t understand it. It was like being a kid again, discovering a new crush.

  We walked to Upper Slaughter and back in silence, appreciating the old-world, gorgeous scenery. What a charming little village.

  As we returned to the car, my purse buzzed. It startled me so much that it broke me out of my peaceful mood. I dug inside and found it, my heart sinking. It was Ben. Why was he calling me?

  “Who is it?” Will asked.

  When I blushed in answer, he stepped closer to me and tried to read the screen. I answered the phone, ignoring him. “H—hello?”

  “Hey, Natalie.”

  I gulped at the sound of his voice and tried to turn away from Will, who seemed keen on listening in. “Uh—this is a surprise.”

  He cut right to the chase. “I saw pictures of you at the airport with a guy. Then I called your parents and they told me you have a new boyfriend. What the hell, Natalie? Is this what you meant by ‘maybe’?”

  Well, fuck. I wasn’t aware that there were photos of us. “He’s not really my—hey!”

  William snatched the phone out of my hands and pressed it against his face. I tried grabbing it back, but he was too tall. His expressive face was animated with energy, like a hound that caught scent of a rabbit. He sneered into my phone.

  “Why don’t you leave her alone, you pathetic loser.”

  Ben’s reply was so loud that I could hear it. “Who the fuck is this?”

  “I’m William Pardini, who the fuck are you?”

  “I’m her fiancé!”

  His low voice chuckled into the phone. “Yeah, well, I don’t see a ring on her finger. She’s with me now. I suggest you take a hint and move on.”

  “I’ll kick your fucking ass!”

  Will bent his head back in mirth; his eyes glittered with savage triumph. “Oh, please try me. I beg you.”

  I leaped for my phone again and wrenched it from his hands. “Ben—Ben, it’s not true.”

  But there was nothing but dead silence on the other end. I looked at William, fury shaking all of my limbs. He was smiling as if he did me a favor.

  “Why the hell did you do that?” I yelled, completely shattering the quiet, peaceful environment.

  Several passersby looked at me in alarm, but I didn’t give a shit. William was still laughing. I grabbed the scruff of his collar and couldn’t decide whether I wanted to shove or punch him.

  He ruined any and all chance of ever reconciling with Ben forever. I never wanted that. I certainly never wanted someone to make that choice for me.

  “What did I do?” he said, shrugging. “You two were on your way out anyway.”

  I released his collar. “You do not get to make that decision for me! You—you piece of shit!”

  He backed away when I swung at him and a scowl narrowed his eyes. “Dammit, Natalie. Calm down.”

  “You deserve it and I am pissed off.” Suddenly, the gravity of losing Ben forever made my shoulders curl forward. I clutched for the door of the car as I drew a shaky breath. “You’re a bastard,” I said in a thick voice.

  I didn’t want him to see me crying so I opened the car door and sat in the backseat, which was scattered with Tom’s fur. I don’t know why I felt so out of control. Ben just felt like my last lifeline, the man who’d always made me feel loved. Safe. He wasn’t perfect, but at least he made my parents happy. Then I thought about how fucked up that was and cried like a baby, burying my face in my hands.

  The car door opened a crack and I whirled to him, expecting to see a gloating smile on his face. Instead, he looked scared.

  “Natalie, can I come in?”

  I looked away from him and shrugged as if I didn’t care. I heard the sound of him sliding inside the car and closing the door. The air felt stifling.

  “I’m really sorry.”

  “Duly noted.”

  The leather squeaked as he turned towards me. “Why are you so upset? I thought you and him were over. I was just trying to—”

  “To what?” I exploded. “To mess with him? I was happy!” I slammed my fist into the leather seat in front of me. “I was doing fine. I had everything I wanted and then Jessica just had to get Luke. And Ben made a mistake and I threw six years of us away. Why? Why the hell did I do that?”

  It all came crashing down on me. The possibility of being alone forever felt very real. I felt like a ticking clock—already twenty-six. I’d never felt loved by my parents but I finally found someone who loved me. I had Ben and I should have kept him.

  “You did it because you weren’t in love with him.”

  Will’s voice was smooth and self-assured. That made bile rise in my throat. What did he know about any of it?

  “I did love him!”

  “If you did, you wouldn’t have come on this trip with me. You wouldn’t have kissed me.”

  He took my arm and I wanted to jerk away, but I made the mistake of looking into his eyes. He refused to let me look away. I was trapped and he was drawing me into his sticky web, towards certain disaster.

  “You’re scared of being alone.”

  My eyes watered. He always said things that no one else would dare say out loud. I couldn’t deny it. “Yeah, so what?”

  “Natalie, you’re better than him and you deserve better. He doesn’t love you, if he did, he wouldn’t have fooled around right after you broke up. He would have fought for you. That phone call was just him pissing on his property.”

  I didn’t want to hear this shit. I knew that every word he said was probably true, but I didn’t want it. All he was doing was twisting the knife.

  “Who else is there?” I asked hopelessly as tears slipped down my face. There was no one else. Where would I find another guy? On a dating website? I made a face. My own mother told me that Ben was the best I could’ve gotten. “I’m nothing special.”

  I stopped short of calling myself nothing, but I think Will sensed that I had been on the verge of ending the sentence.

  Will slid closer to me and pulled me onto his lap. My chest shook at the sudden contact, as if
my body had been craving human contact for months and was now finally getting what it needed. With his arms around me, stroking my hair, I sighed into his chest and felt my muscles unknot.

  “Natalie,” his voice boomed through my back. “Your worth doesn’t depend on any man or woman. It’s through our actions that our worth is defined.”

  “I’m not brave. I know that if I get the chance, I’ll go back to him.”

  Yes, I would go back to the man I had lukewarm feelings for. I was disgusted with myself.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” he sounded almost disappointed. “Is that really how you want to live the rest of your life? Why did you come here with me?”

  My thoughts were barreling along like a high-speed chase. Why had I come? “Because I’ve never been to Europe and—and I wanted something different. A change.”

  “That’s right. A change.”

  His voice throbbed in my ear almost like a sigh, and suddenly a light flickered on and I felt hot all over. I was in the arms of a gorgeous man in one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been.

  He would have fought for you.

  Did I want Will that badly? Was I going to let him slip away, just like that? I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t at least try. Yes, he was damaged. He wasn’t perfect, but I was never going to find the perfect man. Then I made the decision: I was going to make him want me. I was going to be brave for once in my life.

  “You’re right, Will. I’m sorry for acting like this.”

  I looked up and our faces were inches from each other. His breath billowed over my face. I unclasped my fingers from his neck and smoothed them over his chest. His breath ever so slightly caught in his throat. Now his gaze seemed to tremble within mine—he was uncomfortable with this closeness.

  A smile appeared on his face. “I guess I should apologize for taking your phone, but I’m not that sorry.”

  Though I didn’t want to, I slipped from his lap and his arms unwound themselves from my back. “Let’s get back to the bed and breakfast. I need to work on those designs.”

  “Okay,” he said, giving me a strange look before he got out of the car.

  * * *

  While William sat in a meeting with Mary downstairs, I sat at the small white desk in my room with my tablet PC and drew. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted a pastoral theme or a fairy-tale, children’s-book-type theme. There was something idyllic about this place that I couldn’t quite articulate in words. I cycled through the photos I took during the day. It reminded me of movies I watched as a child, when I believed in magic and secret gardens and fairies. This place almost made me believe in them again.

  The kissing gate in front of the cottage was ensnared with vines and flowers, almost as if it was guarding something secret. I drew little, circular avatars of the kissing gate, the cottage with a little river wrapped around it, the mill, the green pastures and moody skies. William and his team could decide which ones they wanted. Then I began the website banners, and there I could incorporate every detail that I loved about the Cotswolds and this bed and breakfast.

  “Nice work.”

  “Shit!” I was so immersed that I didn’t hear Will creep up behind me.

  Will smirked as he took a seat on the bed. “Too bad all that work will probably be for nothing.”

  “Why?” I said, aghast.

  “I’m just not sure this place lives up to the Pardini brand. People who go to our hotels expect excellence. Luxury. This…” he shook his head as he gazed at the ceiling, his eyes focusing on the chips of paint here and there.

  “Oh, come on. This is affordable, isn’t it? And it’s a cottage. It’s going to be cramped and small.”

  He shrugged. “This isn’t what I had in mind.”

  Giving up, I returned back to my drawings. No matter what, I would put all of my effort into them.

  The next day, we bid farewell to Mary and gathered Tom back into his cage to drive to the next destination: Bath. Will offered to drive, but I shot him down with a look. No freaking way. I was a lot less nervous driving than yesterday, so it wasn’t catastrophic.

  Back at Cheltenham, we returned the car and took the train to Bath Spa. We found ourselves on a hill, with rows and rows of yellow and beige houses. The train tracks ran straight through the suburbs. Fantastic green hills surrounded us, but it was clear that we were far away from all the attractions.

  “Why couldn’t we call a cab?”

  “Because we’re here to experience England like everybody else. Or something like that.” He smiled at me.

  “Did you go to boarding school too?”

  “Nope,” he said, sounding proud of that. “I went to private schools in Chicago with my brothers. Mom didn’t want to send us away.”

  I wondered about his upbringing. I knew that his cousin, Luke, was bitter about being sent away to a boarding school. Was he better off?

  “So did you grow up getting everything you wanted?”

  “Yeah. I was a spoiled little shit. When I grew up, I became an asshole. I was just drunk on the power of being really rich and able to get literally anything I wanted. Then…” his face darkened.

  And then you got into a car accident, and it changed you.

  The pain twisted his face. “I didn’t really become a human being until a few years ago.”

  It was such a strange thing to say, and yet I understood what he meant perfectly. Up until that point, Will had lived like a wild animal; taking what he wanted and devouring every opportunity without a thought of how it would affect anyone else. Then he changed. He developed thoughts and feelings that contributed towards a desire to help other people, breaking free of the crazed, hedonistic drive of adolescence.

  How old was I when I “became human?” I think it was when I escaped my parent’s clutches and was able to think for myself for once in my life. When I was outside of their influence and when I learned that not everything they told me was true, it was like a door opening in my mind. One I never knew existed. I remembered all the strange lies they told me, like how everyone who used paper plates must be worthless white trash. That was what Mom always said and we only had ceramic dishes in our house. It was ridiculous to think about.

  That was one thing Jessica couldn’t ever understand. What it was like to grow up with parents telling you what to do and what to believe in all the time—and suddenly having that ripped away. And feeling lost. Utterly lost.

  William learned that lesson the hard way. “I’m scared of that part of me. I almost completely disappeared. I was the only one of my brothers to go off the deep end. So that’s why I try to avoid relying too much on my wealth.”

  Because that’s when bad things happen?

  “Life shouldn’t be easy.”

  And that, apparently, was why we were dragging our luggage up a steep hill. “No, but it sure is nice sometimes.” I gave him a sly smile. “Never know when you’ll need to bribe someone.”

  He chuckled. “Luke called me to bitch about that. Apparently, the guy was irate. The bank almost called the cops on him.”

  I shook my head. “You guys behave like children. Why do you hate Luke so much?”

  Will made a face. “I don’t hate him. I just think he’s an arrogant bastard. Telling me to stay away from you, like I’m a toxic person.”

  We finally had the bed and breakfast in sight. “I think he’s angry with you because your dad tried to sell the shares in his trust.”

  He wheeled around. “What?”

  My heart jumped. “Didn’t you know that? Luke is suing your dad.”

  “Holy shit,” he moaned. “I can’t believe he’d do that.”

  I could see Will’s mind boiling with what I said the whole day. We finally found the bed and breakfast, which was owned by a cheery man with an affinity for country music.

  Designing the logo for the Bath location was easy; the Roman baths were the main attraction and it was easy to draw a quick sketch of the yellow pillars and the green, bub
bling pool. Below the room, I heard Will grilling the owner about his profits. I heard his heavy footsteps climbing the stairs and I braced for the moment when he would burst inside the room.

  He had a habit of violently opening doors and scaring me to death. Sure enough, seconds later, the door swung open and nearly banged the opposite wall. He scowled when he realized there was no bathroom attached to the room. And there was still only one queen bed.

  “We can share the bed. It’s no big deal.”

  Will removed his jacket, watching me carefully as if I was up to something, but he was too tired to argue. Both of us were exhausted from walking to and from the Roman baths and exploring the abbey.

  My hands were feeling a bit stiff and I swiveled in the chair, wringing my fingers.

  “Take a break for God’s sake. Watching you work is exhausting.”

  I set the stylus down and sighed, leaning into the chair. My eyes widened when Will took the hem of his white t-shirt and lifted it over his head. It was like being injected with adrenaline. Suddenly, I felt much more awake.

  “What are you doing?” Shut up, idiot! Let him take his clothes off!

  “I’m just getting ready for bed. You don’t have to stare, you know.”

  I was unable to look away. Under his t-shirt was a carved abdomen. His defined chest and shoulders made my mouth water. My eyes raked up and down, taking note of the small dark patch of hair on his chest and the faint line dipping below his belly button. He caught me staring at him and smiled. “Like what you see?”

  Of course, I do and you know it.

  Then he yanked his jeans down and my breath caught in my throat. “Jesus.”

  A pair of tight, black briefs hugged his ass. I wanted to bump against him and run my hands all over him, but he merely slid into the bed and closed his eyes, smiling slightly.

  Now what? Do I join him? He said he had no interest in me, but he kissed me.

  I already wore my pajamas, which were just a loose t-shirt and flannel pants, with no bra. I walked to the bed, cursing the loud noise of my feet creaking the wood floorboards. Peeling back the comforter, I got a nice view of his body and simultaneously felt like a pervert. I slid inside and joined his warmth, shaking with nerves.