15. ARIES
15
ARIES
I buckle Lucie into the back of the car, which is challenging because my hands are shaking. It takes me three tries before the belt clicks in. I can’t believe what’s happened.
I try to ground myself, not wanting to add my emotional panic to Lucie’s upset. I’ve taken her wet clothes off and wrapped her in the picnic rug. She’s no longer shivering, but I’m wondering if we ought to be taking her to get checked out by a doctor.
“Do you need help?” Kate says. I have no idea when she appeared, but she’s here now, peering inside the car, and I’m grateful, even though I can’t focus on her. “What can I do?”
If only my hands would stop shaking, I could think more clearly. I’m shivering too, my teeth chattering. I kiss Lucie’s forehead and slip out of the car to talk to Kate.
She looks me up and down, brows drawn tightly together. “You’re freezing. Take my jacket. Please.” She strips it off and holds it out to me.
“I’ll ruin it,” I argue, glancing at my wet, muddy skin and then back at the pristine yellow suit jacket.
“I don’t care about that. Please.” She shakes it. “Just take it. You don’t need to give it back to me.”
“You’re so kind,” I tell her, taking the jacket. Inside the collar is a label. Catherine Walker. The same designer as Gemma’s suit. The one she wouldn’t let Lucie touch. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.” Kate’s phone rings and she gives me an apologetic grimace before she answers it. “I know the speeches are starting,” she says to whoever is calling. “I’m coming. Save me a seat. I’m just making sure Lucie and Aries are in the car. Okay. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
She hangs up. “I’ve got to go. You’ll be all right?”
“I will. Thank you.”
Kate pokes her head into the car to speak to Lucie. “You okay, honey? Have a nice hot bath when you get home. You were so brave.”
Lucie smiles, then pulls the blanket up over her mouth.
Extricating herself from the car, Kate gives me a final nod and strides back towards the main school building.
I suddenly feel very lost. Out of my depth. And I’m still shivering, in spite of Kate’s designer jacket.
I’d call Mr Hawkston to ask if we’re waiting for him, but the brand new phone he gave me was in my pocket when I jumped in the river. It won’t even turn on. But I haven’t told the driver to leave, so I guess I am waiting for him.
I slide into the car next to Lucie.
“Tell me again,” Lucie says, reaching out and clutching my hand, dragging it into her lap. “Tell me what happened.”
I spend the next five minutes recounting the story of what happened to her. She finds it soothing, and each time I tell her how she fell in the river and Daddy swam in to save her, she calms down even more.
“You got in too,” she says. “Tell me that bit.”
“I saw a big splash and I knew it was you, so I jumped in the water with all my clothes on. And your big brother jumped out of his boat too. We were all swimming to get you out.”
“But Daddy got me. Tell me again.”
Before I can, the car door opens, and Mr Hawkston slides into his seat opposite us. His hair is soaking wet and pushed off his face. His jacket, however, is dry, and he lays it on the seat beside him.
He’s glowering. He barely looks at either of us, and the flicker of excitement I saw in Lucie’s eyes when her father opened the car door quickly vanishes. It’s like he’s sucked out any positive energy, filling the car with his bad mood, and now we have to sit in here with him.
Lucie closes her eyes, looking drowsy.
“Has she been sleeping?” he asks. His tone isn’t exactly angry, but I can feel his fury. He’s like a pot that’s about to boil over and I’m not going to be the one to turn up the heat.
“No,” I say.
“Hmm. Doctor’s coming to the house. Just to be sure she’s fine. She’ll meet us there.”
I briefly wonder what kind of doctor is making a private house call, but I figure it’s a rich person thing. If I’d fallen in the river, Mum might have taken me to A his nipples are dark beneath the fine white fabric, and erect. I wonder what it would feel like to flick one of them with my tongue…
I push the thought away. Maybe he’s cold. The air conditioning is on, and that water was bloody freezing. It’s hard to warm up. I’m chilled almost to the bone.
What wouldn’t I give for a shower and a sauna right now…
His foot nudges mine again. This time he looks up, and when our eyes lock, everything stops. There’s a force in Mr Hawkston’s eye contact, like he’s physically pinning me down with it. My heartbeat ramps up. His lips part slightly as if he’s about to say something, but before any sound comes, his eyes slide to his sleeping daughter and then back to his phone, and we drive the rest of the way in silence.
Even after the driver pulls into the underground car park, Mr Hawkston doesn’t say anything. I can feel the anger and frustration rolling off him. I’m not even sure if it’s me he’s annoyed with or himself. Or Gemma. I don’t dare look at him in case the mere sight of me sets him off.
It’s only when he gets out of the car that he seems to switch back on, realising he has to be here with us, rather than with his phone.
He doesn’t speak to me as he lifts Lucie out of her car seat, and again she looks tiny in his arms. She’s still wrapped in the picnic rug and only half-awake, but her tiny hands cling around her father’s neck, her head lolling against his shoulder. I gather her wet clothes and follow the two of them into the house.
I drop the clothes in the laundry room in the basement, and when I get upstairs Mr Hawkston is talking in a low voice to a woman who’s standing with Mrs Minter in the hall. She must be the doctor.
At the sound of my approach, Mr Hawkston turns and passes Lucie to me. “Take her up. Run the bath, put her in her pyjamas. We’ll be up soon.”
He’s talking to me, but there’s no emotion. He’s like an automaton. Hasn’t even looked me in the eye. He’s so mad at me that he can’t meet my gaze . A nervous bubbling feeling starts in my lower belly.
I take Lucie in my arms, but Mrs Minter stops me, her hand on my shoulder.
“I’ll take her. You get changed. You need to get out of those clothes.”
Mr Hawkston is watching us, and there’s a slight narrowing of his eyes at her words, but he says nothing. I can’t read him, but I feel like I’m walking on eggshells. I mouth ‘thanks’ and shift Lucie into her arms, and she heads to the lift.
Mr Hawkston turns back to the doctor, continuing to whisper so as not to wake or alarm Lucie. Then the Doctor follows Mrs Minter.
Mr Hawkston takes the stairs two at a time. Even the way he walks up the stairs, each thick, muscular leg bulging in his wet trousers, is aggressive. His anger is a simmering fuel that’s surely about to blow.
I wait a moment before I follow him up. I don’t want to get too close. But my hope that he’s not aware I’m behind him is crushed when he turns sharply towards me on the second floor landing.
“What?” he says. “What do you want?”
My heart races, spreading nervous tingles through my torso. I hold my hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Nothing. I… nothing.”
He clenches his fists at his sides. “I can feel you judging me. Thinking I’m a bad father.”
I stand still. What does he want from me? “I’m not judging,” I whisper.
He takes one long step towards me, invading my personal space. “You shouldn’t be because it’s your fault this happened. All you had to do was keep Lucie close. You weren’t supposed to leave her alone with her mother. That fucking woman is too worried about her Louboutin shoes and her silk suits and the fucking blow-dry she got this morning to give a shit about the kids. Why don’t you judge her instead?” He jabs a finger in my direction and I flinch, but I don’t give way, despite the anger that’s steaming off him so hot and fierce it’s scalding my skin. He starts poking his own chest. “Not me. I’m fucking trying here, and I can’t do it with your eyes on me the whole time.”
He’s breathing hard, one hand fisted in his thick dark hair as he paces back and forth across the landing. I stand, rooted to the spot, watching him. He halts to look at me, his attention blasting like a series of electric shocks through every inch of my body. “All you had to do was look after her.” There’s a break in voice, and I glimpse a flash of what’s beneath the anger, as though he’s carved open his chest and exposed the panicked beating of his heart. He could have lost his child today, and the terror in his eyes causes a lump to form in my throat. “That’s your job. If you can’t even do that—”
My hand on his arm cuts him off. All I want to do is soothe him. “I’m sorry.”
He stares at where I’m touching him for a millisecond, and I dare to hope I might have stayed his anger, but he snatches his arm away. “Don’t touch me.” He’s clearly forgotten to worry about disturbing Lucie, because his voice is rough and thunderously loud, and he lets out a furious, rumbling groan, as though he’s beyond tormented. “If you touch me right now, I won’t be able to think. I can’t… fuck , Aries.” He tugs a hand through his hair, backing away from me at speed. My pulse pounds through my body, and his pain, his confusion , resonates deep in my flesh as though it’s mine. I can feel the ache of it everywhere. “This is important. It’s fucking important.”
“I know.” I try to keep my voice quiet, but it only increases the impression that I’m breaking too. “I understand that it’s—”
“No. You don’t.” All vulnerability vanishes from his expression as the angry, furious mask slides into place. “It’s not good enough. Not fucking good enough.”
It’s an effort not to crumble in the face of his fury, but I manage it, forcing myself to look him in the eye. “She was with her mother, and Gemma told me to stay back. I’m not your security team. I’m not a bodyguard and I’m not about to wrestle a child from her own mother’s arms. I don’t know your wife—”
“Ex-wife.”
I jerk my head to acknowledge his interruption. “I’d never met her before today. I don’t know her. I know nothing about her. This wasn’t a predictable event. It was an accident. Any of those kids on that bridge could have fallen into the water.”
He steps back, but his eyes are still full of fire. His jaw is so tight it looks like bone might snap. “An accident?” He shouts the words so loud, I’m sure everyone in the house can hear them. One of his hands is fisted by his side, while the other remains in his hair. “You don’t need to know her, you just need to obey my fucking rules.”
His anger is stirring up my need to retaliate. I want to lash out at him, but I don’t even know what I’d say. Maybe he’s right. I didn’t do what he asked. Maybe I did fail here…
He blows out a breath and runs a hand down his face. “If you’d done what I’d told you to do, all this could have been avoided.” The volume of his voice is lower now, but anger is a harsh scrape through his tone.
I drop my gaze to the floor. “I’m sorry.”
He closes his eyes for a few seconds before he speaks. “You put the life of my child at risk today.” Again, his voice cracks a fraction. “I don’t know where we go from here.”
I can’t disagree with him. Lucie’s fine, at least I’m pretty sure she is, but it could have gone differently…
Mr Hawkston nods in the direction of the stairs. “Go. I don’t want to see you again tonight. Tomorrow, we’ll talk.”
The rest of the afternoon passes uneventfully, but I can’t think about anything other than what Mr Hawkston said in the hall.
Tomorrow, we’ll talk.
I’m getting fired. I must be. It feels unfair and justified all at once. I didn’t do what he wanted, but what happened was an accident, and how was I supposed to know he didn’t trust his ex-wife? But I can’t shift all the blame. It was my fault. I let this happen. My negligence. Guilt gnaws at my stomach lining like a starved rat released from a cage, ravenously devouring everything in sight.
After Lucie’s bath, the doctor checked her over and said she was fine. I washed all our clothes, made Lucie a jam sandwich (raspberry, not strawberry. Apparently Mr Hawkston doesn’t have it in the house at all on account of Charlie, even though Charlie’s away at school most of the time), and a cup of sugary tea, the same as Mum used to make when anything bad happened to me as a kid. I can still remember how comforting it was to sip that sweet tea, cuddled up next to her on the sofa watching movies.
That’s what we’re doing now. Lucie is snuggled against me, and we’re watching The Little Mermaid.
We’ve nearly reached the end of the film when I become aware of a presence in the doorway. Not so much a shadow as an energetic prickle that makes the hairs on my forearms stand on end. I don’t turn because I know it’s Mr Hawkston. I can hear his breathing. And he specifically said he didn’t want to see me tonight.
He stands there for about thirty seconds—the entirety of which my breath shallows like my lungs have shrunk to a tenth of normal capacity—then he leaves.
I can’t handle this.
“Stay here,” I whisper against the side of Lucie’s head.
“Where are you going?” she asks, pawing at my jumper to keep me beside her.
“Bathroom.”
She nods, releasing her hold on me, and I slip out into the hall. There’s no sign of Mr Hawkston, but I can smell him. His scent is strong, exotic, expensive, and it switches on my hormones like no other cologne I’ve encountered. Maybe it’s more him than his scent… I’ve heard that expensive colognes mix with the individual's skin to form an entirely unique scent. And whatever Mr Hawkston’s particular combination is, I think it was made just for me.
But there’s an edge of fear to my arousal now, and as messed up as it is, I think it only heightens what I’m feeling. I must be messed up if I can summon arousal for a man who screamed at me earlier today. But that hint of pain in his eyes, the vulnerability beneath the fury… I know he’s a decent man. An angry, decent, loving man.
Maybe he doesn’t love me right now, but I know he’s not a monster.
I quickly search the basement, but I don’t find him. Nor can I hear him. I head upstairs to his office. I don’t even know why I’m doing this, especially after he said he didn’t want to see me. But I feel oddly compelled, and I’ve never been one to ignore that kind of gut instinct.
The door to his study is ajar. I knock, and the door opens a bit further. I peek in. The room is empty and I step inside.
I stand for a moment, absorbing the energy in here. It feels like he does; intense and a little threatening, but warm beneath the exterior.
What am I doing here? Searching for my boss who yelled at me? What if he has cameras in here? What excuse do I have? I’ve been standing in an empty room too long now to pass it off as nothing.
I still have the broken iPhone. It’s in my pocket. I put it there after my shower out of habit. I take it out and slide it across his desk. I’d have to admit to him it’s broken at some point, so it might as well be now.
I tiptoe out, hoping no one sees me.