Chapter Twenty-Two
Skye’s face had gone beyond pale and into moonstruck. Jack kept his eyes forward, concentrating on Felix, whose body was shuddering with something like repressed sobs. ‘Take it easy,’ he muttered, but for a million pounds he couldn’t have told anyone which one of them he was saying it to, or was it to himself?
Her face. Her pain. Oh God, her pain. He could see it, feel it and his arms ached with something like the desire to touch her. Was it only minutes ago that he’d kissed her? He felt so much older now, millennia settling in his bones, the weight of experience dragging at his feet as the new implications pulled at the edges of Skye’s mouth and made her expression stretch.
‘I killed them,’ he heard her whisper above the scratch and scrape of sand. ‘I killed them. It was me.’
She stumbled and it was all he could do not to drop Felix there on the dirt and catch her, wrap his arms around those frail shoulders and pull her close. Whisper into her hair that the agony would pass. It would never leave her, but it would pass, and life would take on a new sharpness as she realised she was living it not just for herself but for Faith and Michael as well. But Felix leaned in more heavily and he had to let Skye find her own feet, balance herself.
‘Take it easy,’ he murmured again, for her this time. Was this why he felt the way he did? Had he seen it coming all this time?
‘They’re dead because of me.’
No, he wanted to say. You might have been instrumental in their deaths, but their careless brutality was their real undoing. Your best friend, seeing the man you were convinced you were in love with, and him, teasing you, torturing you with thoughts of a life you’d never have. What kind of people were they? What did they think would happen?
But he couldn’t say any of it. Felix was holding his hand as if it was his anchor to sanity and it would be callous to disregard his feelings, even if it made her feel better. She was grieving all over again, not for the deaths of her friend and lover but for the death of the life she’d thought she had had.
Jack let his gaze brush over her and the sudden scalding of memory made him drop his eyes. All that emotion, everything he had denied himself, he could see it all on display in Skye. And now he was beginning to realise just how much he’d pushed away all these years, how he’d kept himself isolated just so that he didn’t have to feel anything. It was no wonder they called him the Iceman. He’d always assumed it was some kind of compliment, that the name meant he was on top of it all, his head was cool enough to deal with life; not that they’d seen right through him to the lack of caring, that lack of connection with anyone, that he’d let run him for so long.
And was he better for it? Was Jack Whitaker really a nicer man for never allowing himself to cry? Did never really letting go make you a superior person? Or did it just allow you to feel superior to anyone who suffered? Jack shook his head. Am I really heartless or am I just empty?