Page 30 of Where Wild Hearts Dance
She sighs and shrugs. “Yeah, okay. Well, I need to run. I’ll catch you in a couple days?”
“Definitely. Night Paige.”
As I watch her leave, something twists inside my chest, making me feel oddly sick. I would have loved to go out with a friend, but friendships for me simply don’t last. In fact, in my experience, friendships leave nothing but scars.
The ‘friends’ I had at school dropped me the second I lost my mom and became ‘different,’ and the ‘friend’ I later grew to rely on, took my virginity then fled, never to be heard from again. I’ve only ever been burned by ‘friends’ and I’m simply not willing to take my chances on them again.
So, it’s with this resolution in mind I finish packing my own bag and silently leave.
I wait around the corner until the removals truck has rolled past and the street is quiet but for the indiscreet presence of black vehicles with faceless drivers spaced down one side. I walk back toward the studio. I tried to fight against the idea but an inexplicable need to know if and why Benito Bernadi has actuallymoved intothe office upstairs, drives me on.
He said it was just going to be an office. There was a WC up there, so that would explain the box of bathroom items, and maybe he needs a few plates and cups for lunches and drinks throughout the day, so ‘kitchen’ items would make sense too. But a clothes rail? Abed?
I push through the door then bypass the second door to my right—the one I’d normally take into the studio—and head on up the stairs. At the top is a third door and I rap my knuckles sharply against it.
Heavy footsteps sound on the other side and I hold my breath, suddenly unsure of why I’m even standing here. When the door draws inwards and I come face-to-face with Benito Bernadi, the man I resolutely despise, I’m even less sure.
His gaze lowers over me like hot latte over ice, melting my outer edges. My lips part as I take in his upper body. He’s shirtless, and in stark contrast to his scarred face and sharp facial structure, his shoulders graduate with rounded muscle, his chest is smooth and his skin pristine, even where it is decorated with black ink.
My focus dips to the artwork displayed across his torso. Stunningly intricate depictions of everything barbarian—poisoned thorns, scorpion tails and snake tongues, as though the most lethal of defenses has been painted across his skin.
My shocked breaths pump the air as I try to get my eyeballs under control, but they’ve never been confronted before by such a brazen display of masculinity. The only other naked chest I’ve seen on a male belonged to Federico, ironically within about five feet of where I’m standing, but his was the build of a boy. The chest bearing down on me, making me feel more claustrophobic with each passing second, isall man.
“Do you have something to say to me Castellano, or are you just going to stand on my doorstep and stare?”
His words send a rupture of fire across my collarbone and flames lick at my face, dousing them in burns.
“I… um, I just came to, um…” Blood rushes into my cheeks and I feel so hot I might faint. I have absolutely no explanation as to why I’m here, other than a shallow desire to nose into Bernadi’s private business.
His brow up until now has been furrowed in a half-bemused, half-annoyed kind of way, but when nothing comes out of my mouth apart from useless stutters, it falls away and he looks… concerned.
“Are you okay? Is someone following you?”
I shake my head briskly. “No one’s following me. I’m fine.” I look back over my shoulder, wishing I hadn’t come this far, because I have a foreboding feeling I won’t ever be able to turn back. It feels like the bottom just fell out of my foundation and I have no idea why.
He looks past me and down the stairs. Through the glass half of the door at the bottom, I can see that daylight is thinning.
“Come inside. You’re shivering.”
I look up into deadly serious eyes and hug my arms around myself. He’s right—I’m shaking like a leaf. Which is odd because I feel several degrees hotter than normal, not colder.
I follow him inside and almost gasp. The place looks completely different to the last time I saw it, which, admittedly, was three years ago. There’s a Turkish rug on the whitewashed floor, a neat office set-up in thecorner, a spotless white sofa next to a brass cocktail trolley topped with several bottles of liquor. To my left is a small kitchen and beyond it a shower room, and right in front of me, visible through a partially open door, is a bedroom.
“I thought this was just your office,” I say, glancing around.
“Me too. But recent events have required me to rethink my living arrangements. Temporarily, at least.”
I side-eye him, not because I’m skeptical of anything he says, because that’s a given, but because I feel like facing him will leave a permanent imprint on my irises.
“What recent events?”
“Someone thought it would be a great idea to burn down my house.” He punctuates that statement with a shrug, then follows it with, “Would you like some coffee?”
My jaw falls but he doesn’t see it because he’s walking the short distance to the kitchen and is now fiddling with a coffee machine.
I stay rooted to the spot. “Why did someone burn down your house?”
He pauses briefly, then continues to yank at machine parts like they’re not doing as they’ve been told.
