29
ST. ANNABEL
The next week is spent with me locked in my dance studio, my favourite room in the house, because otherwise I will let my mind wander into thinking what my father meant by having the situation handled. It worries me, I can’t help but worry.
A part of me feels like he is planning an ambush, forcing me into doing something I’ll hate to clean up his mess for when the truth gets out about Harley. I have already agreed, with little choice in the matter, to work at Astaeris. It is my legacy and birthright.
My phone incessantly rings as I try landing my jumps for the showcase, but each ring takes me out of the dance. Frustrated by the constant bellow, I stop what I’m doing and pick up without checking the caller. “What?”
“Seriously, your lack of manners is getting worse with each passing day,” Arden's deep voice says down the line, and I grumble.
“Oh, it's you. You're just disturbing a very…admittedly unproductive practice.” I lay flat on the floor, happy to have an excuse to rest. I have been going at it for hours with very little breaks.
“What you need is a break.”
“We went to Spain last weekend.”
“A different kind of break, one that could potentially help you become inspired.”
“How?” I say with a hint of trepidation.
“Open your door.”
My brows furrow as I inadvertently walk (sprint) to the front door and yank it open to reveal Arden in a matching cream ensemble, turtleneck and thick tailored trousers, with brown leather gloves in tow. He looks spectacular, straight out of a winter magazine cover.
He lazily checks me out, taking in my sweaty appearance and the stray hairs that have flown out of the bun I had it in. Then his eyes latch onto the silver necklace wrapped around my neck and more importantly its pendant.
When we were younger, him eleven and I nine, he got me the necklace before he left for TCA.
Canterbury to me as a child might as well have been the moon, and it was the farthest either of us would ever be apart from the other for such a long period of time.
I was so sad. In the days leading up to him leaving, I’d cry whenever I thought about it. Mother and father were sick of me.
Then the day before he left he gave me the necklace. I was bawling my eyes out yet again, laying flat on the floor, all the tears streaking down into a puddle on either side of me. “Saint, I got you a gift.”
My head raised, there was nothing I loved more than gifts and he knew that, “Presents?”
He gave me a nod, “But you have to promise not to cry anymore or I won’t give it.”
“Okay,” I softly said and sat up.
Then he brought out the box from behind him and opened it for me. A necklace and a bracelet, one with a key and the other with a locket. “Want to see what it does?”
I nodded with such enthusiasm, like a bobblehead. He used the key that hung off the bracelet like a charm and inserted it into the hole in the locket. It opened to reveal a picture of us both, from my birthday two weeks prior, wearing the pink dress I refused to take off for days, hugging.
My eyes began to water again and I had to fight the tears that would've fallen because I knew Arden would keep his threat to not hand it to me.
He put the necklace around my neck and the bracelet on his wrist. “It doesn’t work without my key. This way when you look at it, remember that I’ll always come back to open it for you.”
“Iloveitiloveitiloveit,” I spluttered out in a rush and hugged him. He let out an oomph from the way I jumped him but he chuckled and patted my hair as we stayed in that position.
“I’ll miss you.”
“Me too, Saint. Me too.”
I launch back to the present when his hand reaches out and gently touches it. “You’re wearing it.”
“Not because of you,” I say lying through my teeth.
“I found it while cleaning and thought, ‘ Cute, let me put it on .’” Turning around, expecting him to let himself inside, but not before catching his smile.
Not a smirk or a half-smile but a full blown grin.
And I hate myself for how much I love it.
Arden follows me all the way to the kitchen as I pour myself a cup of water, “Is there a reason you’re at my house at nine o’clock in the morning? You have no classes today, don’t you sleep?”
“Sleep is for those with no plan for their lives.” He perches himself onto a stool and waves me off when I offer him water, “I have a proposition for you.”
I raise an eyebrow, skeptical but signal for him to go ahead. “Go on a trip with me. I’ll have you back by Friday morning.”
My head shakes at once, “You don't think people are going to notice if we’re both missing. At exactly the same time.”
“Maybe. So?” His nonchalant attitude will be the death of me.
“So…our eagle eyed friends, which includes your girlfriend might I add, will get suspicious you fucking melon.”
“Suspicious about what?” He says it in a way that suggests he’s entirely clueless about what I am implying but he is entirely aware. From the twitch on his lips and glint in his eye, I know he is fucking with me.
I glare at him, “About us. Whatever the fuck it is we are doing together.”
He simply grins, again.
God he has to stop doing that.
My body unfortunately doesn’t know the difference between a heart attack and when I see Richard Arden Thorne smile.
And that in itself is a problem. He rounds the table and gently caresses my face, cupping it but pushes my cheeks into a pout instead drawing me into a kiss. “We have a flight to catch.”
I push him away in anger, but he wraps a hand around my waist and finally draws me near. My cheeks heat up as he bites my pout. Then I kiss him, like I can’t breathe without him and he kisses me back in exactly the same way.
I am pathetic. This is pathetic. How I let him sink his claws into me without nary a fight. It was easy to forget when I was with him, my life and everything in it, even if it was just for a moment.
???
“You should go.” A voice jumps me out of my thoughts and I see Harley leaning against my door with her arms folded. She enters the room and joins me on the floor. It is becoming all too frequent for us to find ourselves in this position.
“You know.” A statement, not a question.
“Obviously. The two of you are about as discreet as a cow,” she says facing the ceiling, ignoring the way my eyes bore into her. Her curly hair flattens on the ground, surrounding her face. Panic rises, if she can guess it does that mean others can as well?
She turns towards me, “Calm your tits. I’m around you all the time. It isn’t hard to put the pieces together.”
“Oh.” I’m perceptive enough to grasp that she probably wanted to bestow me with some sage advice, so I ask, “What do you think?”
“What do I think of what ?”
“Of the two of us. It’s a bad idea right? Me and him.”
“Of course it's a bad idea. But why should that mean you shouldn't do it? We don’t decide who we like, it just happens.”
“I thought you were meant to be the reasonable one in this relationship,” I whine.
I don’t know what I expected her to say but it wasn’t that.
Perhaps I am hoping she will stop me from burrowing myself deeper from the rabbit hole I have dug myself into.
She rolls her eyes at me, as she often does, and just sighs.
“I don’t know the full story between the two of you but I’ve seen the way you look at each other when you think no one’s looking. Do I think you’re going about it the wrong way? Hurting someone? Maybe. But it’s always going to be there, you and him. You might as well figure out exactly what it is.”
“Ugh, you’re right.”
And she gives me a hint of a smile, “I always am.”
We say goodbye and I find Arden where I left him. On the living room couch, typing furiously against his phone, which can only mean one thing.
“Richard senior?” His head raises to reveal angry eyes that soften when he sees me. He nods in response.
“Nothing worth our time then,” I say breezily, to make him smile and he does. Or at least he tries to pretend he isn't, rubbing his hands across his mouth.
He kisses me on the cheek, “Not one bit.”
Arden locks his hands with mine and pulls me out the door, it takes us about an hour to get to Luton airport. We spend the car ride talking and it still shocks me how it is so easy to converse about the simple things like no time has passed.
An escort leads us from a different entrance, we figured it’d be simpler, the last thing we need is someone recognising us and it being splashed everywhere. I see the helicopter and my feet start to slow, “Where’s the plane?”
“We’re not taking it, we’re taking that.” He points to the empty helicopter that the escort is filling our luggage with.
“And who is flying it…?” I ask tentatively, worried where this is going.
He raises his hand and says, “I am.”
“There is no way I’m going in that rickety thing if you’re the one flying it.”
“We’ve been through this before, either you enter of your own accord or I carry you in. Your choice.”
“Those aren’t choices and when did you even have the time to get a bloody licence?”
“Last week.”
“LAST WEEK?” I shout, and I start walking back slowly. Hoping to the heavens I can find a cab to take me back home.
Arden yanks me towards him before I can move any further, “I’m taking the mick, I got it in the summer.”
He looks down at me, “Do you trust me?”
I shake my head and he just laughs because he knows I mean exactly the opposite. I pinch my eyes together and take deep breaths before I drag him towards the helicopter, “Let’s go before I change my mind.”