Page 55 of Wanting Mr Black

“Yes.”

“How did you manage to get a flight at such short notice?”

“I hired a private jet.” He briefly meets my eyes for the first time since we arrived back at the room. “Did you really think I wasn’t going to track you down?” His eyes scan my body and then return to the floor. “Put some clothes on.”

I’m caught off guard by the abrupt demand. “What?”

“Put some clothes on,” he repeats, still not looking at me.

He’s got a nerve.

“Do you seriously think you can turn up and start dictating?” I snap. “Don’t you think we’ve got more important things to talk about than your issue with me wearing a bikini?”

“It’s not that. I can’t concentrate … I can’t concentrate with you looking like that.”

I’m on the back foot. I was wrong. Hedoeslike the bikini. Too much. Tough. He’s not calling the shots, and I know I’m being petty, but I’m making a point.

“You’d better try and concentrate harder then because I’m not changing.”

A muscle in his jaw twitches with tension at my defiance. “I’m taking you home.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you. Yet.”

“Do you have any idea how hard it is, talking about that part of my past?” He looks at me. “Every single day, I think about what happened. What I did. I killed an innocent man. I took someone’s life, and nothing I can do will ever bring him back. I did my time; I don’t need your condemnation. I do that to myself without your help.”

His angry words slap me round the face, and all I can do is stand there and take them. The hurt look in his eyes shows the remorse he feels and the reality he has to live with every day for the rest of his life.

“I wish you’d told me. You have to see how it looks to me.”

“It’s not exactly something that’s easy to weave into conversation.Oh, by the way, I killed a guy when I was pissed behind the wheel one time.” He shakes his head. “When I found out what had happened to your dad, it made it even harder. I was worried you’d hate me and leave … just like you have.”

Do I hate him?

My memory sparks, and I suddenly remember something. “The morning you gave me the Turner print, I told you about Dad, and you rushed off. That was the night you stood me up.”

“I never meant to stand you up that night, but Big Steve kept me at the club, trying to convince me to break up with you because he thought I was going to hurt you. He thought I was just going to fuck you and move on, like I’d done with the others, but that was never going to happen. The morning when you told me about your dad, I freaked out.”

I sink down on the other side of the bed. “And that’s why you rushed out of the apartment.” I stare down at my hands and pick at the skin around my fingernails. “I know it’s in your past and you’ve done your time. It brought everything back about Dad. When you told me, I was shocked and upset, and in that moment, you were the guy who had killed my dad.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I know it was a stupid mistake.”

“I’ve heard this before. You still lied to me.”

“I’m just so scared of losing you.”

“That’s not enough.” I twist round on the bed to see him hunched forward, arms on his knees, his back to me. “You should have told me. You should have told me about the club; you should have told me about the accident. The only reason I know about either of those things is because other people have let stuff slip. Do you know how that makes me feel? If they hadn’t, I’d still be none the wiser.”

Silence fills the room. He remains bent forward in defeat because he knows I’m right. He knows he should have told me, and there’s no getting away from it.

“For this to work, you have to be honest with me. You have to let me in.”

“I would have told you,” he says. “It might have taken a little time, but I would have told you. And I have let you in. I’ve told you more stuff than I’ve ever told anyone.”

“You made methinkyou’d let me in, but you’ve only shared the bits of you that you want me to know about. That you’re willing to share. That’s only half the story. What about the other half? I want all of you, Art, not half of you.”

He lifts his head and draws in a long breath, as if steeling himself. “Ask me whatever you want to know, and I’ll tell you.”

I stand up and walk over to the sliding door of the balcony, my brain ticking over at the carte blanche he’s thrown my way. I lean against the doorframe and eye two seagulls scrapping on the floor of next-door’s balcony.

---