Chapter Eight #3
‘For what?’ His voice sounds as if it is scraping across a box grater, and his eyes are moving rapidly over my face and down my body. ‘I’m the driver.’
‘Yes, but I distracted you.’
Abruptly he lifts his arm, and I feel the absence of his warmth and strength as if my own arm has been amputated.
‘You need to stop doing that. Stop taking the blame for things that other people do.’ He breathes in sharply. ‘Are you okay?
My heart is pounding, and I manage to nod. ‘I’m good.’
The rest of the drive is uneventful. Back at the villa, I follow Renzo into the hallway.
Paola comes out to greet us and I make my way up to my room.
My legs feel shaky—partly from the near miss on the road but also because of what happened before and afterwards: the two of us eating and talking together; Renzo’s arm across my body, shielding me, protecting me, that hoarseness to his voice as he said, ‘I don’t dislike you. ’
I press my hand against my shoulder, seeking out the place that still glows with the imprint of his hand when there is a knock behind me, and I turn to find Renzo standing in the doorway. ‘I told Paola what happened in the car, and she suggested this tea.’ He puts a tray down on the table.
‘Thank you.’
His gaze moves to where my fingers are curled over the top of my arm. ‘Is it okay?’
‘I’m fine. Truly, I am.’
He nods, turns slightly and then stops, hesitating, as if he has forgotten something. Or remembered it. ‘Did I scare you?’
‘No. I mean, it was a bit scary, but you were great.’
‘I wasn’t talking about what happened in the car.’ Renzo’s dark-blue gaze is steady on my face, and there is something in his eyes that shimmers through my body, a softness, that momentarily lulls me into thinking that everything is okay.
And then quite suddenly it isn’t.
‘I was talking about what happened last night. Downstairs. On the sofa…’ His voice is gentle, but it sears me anyway.
My breath shudders through me like a train hitting the buffers. I stare across the room at him, feeling his words crowd out the air as I picture the moment when my body started to lock down.
I try to reach for anger, partly because anger is always distracting, and partly because I am angry with him.
This is his fault. Normally I am so careful.
But I haven’t been policing myself the way I should.
Otherwise, I would never have thought that a man as sober and sexually experienced as Renzo Valetti would be fooled by my theatrics.
I can’t look at him, but I know he is looking at me, seeing me, and I feel so ugly.
‘I thought… I felt…’ He frowns. ‘You seemed scared for a moment.’
I shake my head, and now my legs are trembling so much I have to sit down. ‘It’s not your fault. You didn’t scare me.’
Renzo
It hurts, watching her sit down jerkily on the bed like that, like a puppet whose strings have been cut.
Suddenly she looks exhausted, but then I think she was up in the night.
I was up too, walking in the garden, staring up at her windows, replaying that moment in my head when her body stiffened beneath my tongue.
I tried to stop, to pull away, but she kept pulling me back, so I went along with it.
And now I can’t stop thinking about her body tensing and then her stumbling from the room, fleeing from me like a witness to a crime. I should have gone after her. The only reason I didn’t was because it felt predatory, and I was worried she might run. Worried she might do something reckless.
Because of me.
My heart feels heavy and misshapen. I could have stopped her easily.
I could have cross-examined her. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve donned my metaphorical wig and gown and subjected her to an inquisition, because Hennessy represents the turmoil and lack of control that so nearly pulled my brother and I apart after our parents died—the feeling of powerlessness, all the foster families, children’s homes and then, most terrifyingly of all, being homeless, penniless and alone at the age of eighteen.
I need to be in control, but Hennessy doesn’t just press my buttons, she can strip me naked with a glance. And all I want is to strip her naked too; everything else is just background noise. So, pinning her down, containing her, always felt necessary and justified.
Now, though, it feels closer to pinning a butterfly in a specimen case. I glance over to where she is sitting on the bed. She looks stunned and scared. So I do what I should have done last night. I walk over to the bed and kneel in front of her, close enough to touch but not touching.
‘But someone did?’ I am treading carefully. She looks so brittle and, when she nods, I am terrified she will splinter into a thousand pieces.
‘Who hurt you?’
‘It wasn’t like that. He didn’t do anything.
’ The ache in her voice makes me want to uproot trees, raze buildings to the ground.
‘But I was on my own, and I woke up and he was there. In my bedroom.’ She presses her hand against her mouth and now I touch her, pulling her into my arms, close enough that I can feel her heart punching unevenly against her ribs, my ribs.
I press my lips against her hair and tell her over and over that everything will be okay.
On one level it is meaningless babble designed to offer comfort, but I mean every word.
At some point, she shudders against my chest, and I reach into my trousers and hand her a handkerchief.
She stares at it for a moment and then wipes her face.
‘When did this happen?’
‘When I was nine.’
My pulse misses a beat. Nine? I was expecting her to say sixteen or something. But nine? In my entire life I’ve never felt this way. This feeling is new, unknown. All I know is that it is as intense as pain, brighter than fury and so powerful my skin can hardly contain it.
‘Charlie took me to some party, and it was really loud. I started being whiny, and he hates that. He told me to go to bed, and Katie—that was his girlfriend—she took me upstairs and put me in her room, and I was so tired I fell asleep.’ I feel her body stiffen.
‘But then I woke up and there was this man sitting on my bed. Just sitting, staring at me, and then he tucked the bedding around me tightly so I couldn’t move.
’ She breathes out shakily. ‘I wanted to scream but my voice wouldn’t work. ’
I pull her closer.
‘And he didn’t…?’
‘No. Katie came up to check on me and she put the lights on… She went crazy. She was shouting and the man left. And then Charlie was there, and she was calling him all these names, and he kept saying I’d probably just had a bad dream.’
In other words, he gaslit a nine-year-old.
‘I don’t think about it most of the time but sometimes it just creeps into my head.’
‘Like when you have sex.’
She flinches, then nods.
‘The first time, I thought I got panicky because it was my first time. But then it happened again, and it kept happening, and I got so anxious. That’s when I started to pretend.
’ I hear her swallow. ‘That makes it sound like I’ve done it with loads of men, but I’ve only properly slept with three, including you.
All the rest, the ones you see me with in photos, just make stuff up and everyone believes them. ’
The tendons on my hands pull tight. Including me.
‘So, you fake it?’
‘Always.’ She nods. ‘Except that one time in New York with you.’ There is a flush of colour on her cheeks.
‘And Vegas? Was that kiss real?’
She nods again slowly. ‘It was. I’d never felt like that with anyone. I was all churned up after seeing Jade, but then I met you, and I felt safe. I knew you’d never let it go too far. Because you’re you. You’re not like those other men.’
That nameless feeling is swamping me again. ‘Those men—and the people that take those photographs and write the stories that go with them, and the people that look at those photos and read those stories—they’re all irrelevant.’
She gives me a watery smile. ‘Because they don’t come from Praiano.’
‘Because they don’t know you. They don’t see past the headlines.
But I do. Listen to me, Hennessy—something terrifying happened to you that you couldn’t control.
’ I understand what it feels like to be that vulnerable, that scared, that alone.
But this isn’t about me. This is about Hennessy, making her feel safe, feel safer.
‘What happened last night, what’s happened before, that’s your body trying to protect you. And you did the right thing last night, going to your room, getting somewhere safe.’
Safe. I have a sudden, vivid memory of that safe room in her apartment. ‘That’s why you sleep in the panic room, isn’t it?’ I say gently.
Her eyes widen. ‘How do you know about that?’
‘The door was ajar. I didn’t go in.’ I don’t want her to feel that her safe space was violated.
‘After it happened, I couldn’t sleep. I kept waking up every night screaming, and in the end, Charlie got a panic room fitted in the house.’
‘And that helps.’
She nods. ‘It changed my life. That’s why I bought my apartment—because of the panic room. And Sam. He used to work for Charlie.’
I think back to all the places where she’s needed to sleep without her safe space. ‘So how did you manage in my apartment? And Milan and here?’
Her eyes find mine. ‘I sleep in the bathroom. It’s fine, really. I can catch up when I get home. My home, I mean.’
‘What about when you stayed over in my room? Did you sleep then?’ I thought she had. When I woke in the night, she seemed peaceful, but…
She nods slowly. ‘I did, yes. But that was something of an eventful day.’
I reach out and touch her face. ‘You make every day an event.’
‘Today was pretty quiet.’
I frown. ‘I nearly crashed the car.’
‘I still had the best time.’
‘I did too.’ And I don’t know what stuns me more—that I am telling the truth or that she is.
We talk some more, then Hennessy starts to yawn, and we lie down and talk a little more, and at some point, we must have fallen asleep, because I wake up eight hours later, still fully clothed.
The bed is empty, but I can hear the shower running and I wonder how she slept.
But mostly I wonder how I have managed to misjudge her so badly.
My body feels sodden with guilt at having been so narrow and lazy in my thinking.
And I am angry—with Charlie for being so negligent and Jade for being absent.
With the world for treating her as a character in a telenovela. And with myself for not protecting her.
I picture the near miss in the car and how I threw my arm in front of her. It was too little, too late. Thinking of her waking in that room with a stranger sitting on her bed makes my hands ache.
‘Hi.’
Hennessy is standing in the doorway to the bathroom. She is wrapped in an identical bath robe to mine. She looks better in hers.
‘Hi. How are you? Did you sleep okay?’
She nods, and I feel a ridiculous sense of satisfaction. ‘That’s good. You look…’
Beautiful. Sexy. And off-limits.
‘Rested.’
‘I feel it. I feel… I don’t know what I feel. But it feels good.’
For no reason at all, my pulse twitches. ‘I’ll let you get dressed.’
I get to my feet and make to move past her, but she moves at the same time so that we almost bump into one another. I feel light-headed with her nearness, so light-headed that I don’t get it then. I don’t even get it when it happens a second time.
I don’t get it until she takes my hand, and even then, I hesitate.
‘Hennessy…’
Now she lets go of my hand and tugs at the belt of her bath robe, and I watch as it slides down her body. And just like that she is naked.