Chapter 6
Davian
Billowing Curtains
Playing Mr. Ganz
Carlos Rafael Rivera
I stared at my best friend. That was all I was capable of as a grin spread across his lips and that bastard, dressed in one of his black suits, entered the library before closing the door behind him.
A cool breeze brushed the back of my neck, but my body was too overheated to feel cold.
“I should have known you'd be hiding in the library.”
He looked around, and the urge to peek behind me at the last shelves and block his way should he decide to take a spontaneous tour through the library grew traitorously fast.
At the same time, I felt bad for not thinking about whose house I was in before I had recklessly buried my fingers inside the most breathtaking woman I had ever encountered.
“And I thought all our colleagues' daughters were circling you like vultures again.”
My jaw tightened automatically.
Did he really have to remind me who I had fled from, all the way to the library? I wanted to be angry at Tony, at Joseph, at Brittany, but would I ever have seen her again if I hadn't ended up in this place by chance?
The urge to check if she was okay grew, but I was definitely not going to reveal to Tony that I wasn't alone here. His joking behavior was enough for me at Maplecrest University. She should be spared from this clown.
“I'm asking you for one thing, Tony.” I sounded annoyed, but I didn't care because it was driving me up the wall that Joseph's daughter had been literally glued to me for the past six months. Since when had I become a trophy man?
“Keep your sister away from me.”
It was easy to avoid the few predatory female professors or the hormone-driven female students from other departments, but the daughter of the man who was like a father to me?
Anthony raised both eyebrows. Surprise flashed through his gray eyes. And immediately I had her clear gray crystal eyes in front of my inner vision again.
“Oh, you ran away from Brittany?”
Frustration tried to fight the heat in my face and the raging storm in my stomach, but lost.
There was only her. I wanted to finish what I had begun, wanted to slide my fingers back where they belonged. And at the same time, I wanted to let hours pass as I wrapped her in a web of slowness, tenderness, and desire until she collapsed beneath my fingers.
I was crazy. Completely out of my mind.
I hadn't touched a woman in seven years. Maybe that was why I hadn't been able to keep my fingers off her. Why my cock was still pressing against my pants from the inside.
But I already knew that the truth was much harder to grasp.
She read. She wrote. She understood me. And we didn't even know each other for twenty-four hours.
Never before had I seen this extraordinary soul in this dusty little town, and the fact that she was walking around the Richter estate at the Legal Faculty Opening Gala and retreating to the family's private rooms raised questions in me that she seemed to be avoiding.
As far as I knew, there were no literary minds in Joseph's social circles.
I was an exception that didn't count, because Joseph was convinced that I had given up writing seventeen years ago.
It had been part of the deal that had provided my daughter and me with a better life.
A price I would pay over and over again.
“Next time, you can use my apartment as a place of refuge. Britt avoids my place as if I’d used anti-sibling spray there.”
My frustration caught up with my curiosity.
“I told your father that I’m not interested in getting married again. Especially not to a woman who follows me around everywhere I go and is fifteen years younger than me.”
I gritted my teeth.
Quill didn't look any older than Brittany, and the fact that I hadn't asked her age before I had practically thrown myself at her was starting to worry me.
She was young, no doubt, but I had found it difficult to guess her age.
She had studied literature, probably even gotten a master's degree, as enthusiastic literature students like her usually did, which meant she had to be in her mid-twenties.
She also seemed very experienced, scarred by a life full of torturous experiences that had forced her to this godforsaken bridge.
I didn't even want to think about it. The image of her standing there, the wind tearing at her ebony hair bathed in silver moonlight, her fists clenched around the steel rope as if everything inside her was trying to fight against the destructive chaos.
I knew what it was like when your soul was too exhausted, when you had lost too many battles and found neither rest nor salvation.
Last night, I had felt catapulted back to the night when I had almost made the biggest mistake of my life. On the same bridge. In exactly the same spot. And it haunted my mind every spare minute I had.
“I think you need to signal that to him a little more clearly.”
Tony squinted his eyes irregularly and raised his hand to show me the coin-sized gap between his thumb and index finger.
One might have thought he wanted to protect Brittany by any means necessary, but he was at odds with his sister and tried not to let her know how much he cared for her. And she didn't make it easy for him.
He was probably grateful that I had turned down his father's request for us to get engaged. He and Joseph would trust me with her, but the mere thought was unsettling. God, I had watched this girl grow up.
“We both know your father,” I sighed, pushing my suit jacket back to slip both hands into my pants pockets and suppressing with a lurking longing the knowledge that her luscious essence still lingered on my fingers.
Tony smirked and stepped past me.
My heartbeat quickened and I prayed that she would hide behind one of the window curtains.
“I know you.” He laughed with amusement. “You don’t want to disappoint Father and you stubbornly continue to think you owe him the world.”
My jaw clenched against my tense facial skin.
Because that’s the truth, Tony. Without your father, I would be long gone.
I didn't even want to imagine where my little girl would be now...
“It's a miracle you're not kissing his feet like Fitzek does to his daddy.”
I raised an eyebrow when he appeared on my other side and continued walking along the long row of shelves with the fireplace, next to where Quill and I had been sitting just a few minutes ago.
Why did this moment had to end?
“Did I miss something?” I asked suspiciously, forcing myself not to look at the bound book Quill had left behind, which was now treacherously begging to be picked up.
“Oh,” Tony laughed, sounding sensationalist. “It's bad, my friend.” He turned to me, also shoving his hands in his pants pockets. “Arnold wants to start the rivalry games again.”
A wave of frustration washed over me.
“Please tell me this is a bad joke.”
He raised both eyebrows.
“Have you ever seen Arnold joke around?”
No. But Anthony Richter, whom I valued deeply as a colleague and best friend, but sometimes wondered if he would have made it to a professorship without his remarkable intelligence.
His lectures were chaotic, disorganized, and he broke every rule that Arnold embodied with his entire conservative personality.
It could only be the Richter bonus. One that had rubbed off on me ever since Joseph had helped me out of my miserable existence eighteen years ago.
“Anyway, the gentlemen are waiting for us, and I think if we want to keep our jobs, we should show up there within the next few minutes.”
I nodded, absolutely unwilling to start an argument with the Fitzeks at Joseph's expense, while Thadd?us added his two cents and Tony expected my full support against Troy.
I had successfully avoided this stuffy daddy's boy during the summer break.
I would rather stay in the library. With her. Forget about time. Forget about myself. Get to know her way with words. Hear her talk. Watch her read. Read what she wrote. Let my fingers explore the lines of her physical existence...
That was one side of my desires. But the dark shadow of another desire was tearing me apart.
Something inside me was afraid to leave her alone. Every second I couldn't make sure she wasn't going back to that bridge and changing her mind was pure agony for me.
“I’m no one special who just happened to stray into a library.”
This woman was the most extraordinary entity to ever enter this place.
A butterfly that had strayed into a contaminated garden where all the plants would sooner or later perish.
I had seen it the moment she had walked into the reading in that black wrap dress, skillfully ignoring the stares of all the judgmental men.
Part of me was grateful that she was only here for a short time, but a much too big, selfish part wanted to seek her company, ask her to spend the rest of her time in Maplecrest with me, give her hope so that she wouldn't stop at every bridge she crossed in her life, but would keep going.
I wanted to show her that I understood her without words, wanted to know what kept her awake at night while I held her ink-caressed fingers in mine.
Those had been the only moments in the last twenty-two hours when I had felt inner peace. All the hours in between had been a battle with myself. And she was the trigger.
“Give me a minute.” I pulled my cell phone out of the inside pocket of my suit jacket. “I have to call Monica back.”
It wasn't even a lie.
She had tried to reach me twice, and I knew Lara must have asked her to take Streusel to the vet again.
That damn Australian Shepherd puppy.
“See you in Father’s whiskey room.”
I nodded, waited until Tony was gone, then turned around and hurried to the last shelf.
Threnody
Goldmund
“Quill?”
The dimly lit row of shelves was deserted. The window was open and the wind billowed the white curtain peeking out from behind the pine green one.
Once again, a cold breeze hit me.
No.
Out of reflex, I darted to the window and braced myself on the windowsill to look down at the gravel path. My pulse slowed immediately when I couldn't spot a soul anywhere.
I let my gaze wander from the gutter to the ivy-covered sloping roof below me.
Somehow, she must have made it down there.
That woman.
Taking a deep breath, I stepped back, closed the window – Joseph didn't like windows left open in his house – and turned around.
As if there was the slightest chance of finding her somewhere, I looked around until my gaze lingered on the shelf twenty feet away.
Without hesitation, I crossed the quiet room where I had spent hours studying until fourteen years ago, bent down, and picked up the first edition of The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, bound in brown linen.
I liked her taste in books. First Atwood, now Wharton? She really was out of place in this town.
I turned to page five, the page she had last been on, and inspected it as if her traces were hidden somewhere between the lines.
It became increasingly clear to me that my sanity had left me when she had shown up in this town, the moment I lifted the book to my nose and inhaled its scent.
Longing nestled in my stomach as my pathetic attempt to remember her captivating scent failed.
She was gone.
I would never see her again.
A feeling of loss overwhelmed me. I had been so close to finding the answers to questions that were haunting me for two decades now. It was like being tempted by the smell of exquisite unfamiliar delicacies, but being denied the chance to ever taste them.
Fate had already been far too kind to me. Finding her again would resemble a miracle. A miracle I didn't deserve.
“You were born to write. This chaos you fear. It is your way of breathing.”
I wanted to believe her words, wanted her to take my hand and show me how to breathe again after holding my breath for years, because I didn't know how to do it.
She had planted the memory of fresh air within me.
Hope that I had never asked for, but that my soul had begged for all those years.
Because the truth was – and only now did I realize – that it wasn't me who had pulled her away from the edge of an abyss, but her who had pulled me away.
An author's blood type is ink. But I have too little blood in my body, while it literally gushes out of you. I don't want you to bleed out as well, and at the same time, my lifeless body is drawn to you, hoping to get even a drop of your ink.
– Leaking Batteries Diary