Chapter 284

I put my glass down and stand up slowly, eyes on his tall, strong back as he messes with the ice cannister, fidgeting to get his excessive energy under control and I walk forward. Growing in determination and confidence, knowing this is what I should do.

Watching him as I close the gap between us and sensing his own quiet despair that me knowing about what he did will send me running for the door twice as fast. I can feel his tension from afar. That scared little boy awaiting the inevitable rejection from another woman deeming him unworthy of love because of the things he was programmed to do.

Who could love someone who kills so brutally, so cruelly?

Me.

I could.

Because I understand why.

No hesitation, nothing else in my head except this overwhelming feeling that I want to do this. I need to do this. I owe him this.

I walk up right behind him, slide my arms around his waist and push my head against his back as I hug him tight for a second, and squeeze him with all my might. Somehow, I want him to know that what he did … it means nothing to me in the way it should. I’m not any girl; I’m numb and broken to this world because of all I have endured, and I understand that in his world, torture and murder don’t have the same value as out there in a safe suburban existence. Alexi killed for me … that is how he translates his devotion. It’s fucked up, crazy, but utterly right for who he is.

And I’m equally insane. Only someone like me could see the act of devotion in something so vulgar and despicable and want to reward him for it.

He feels good, too good, smells even better, and the way his touch has always brought me a sense of safe and secure envelops me again. Wrapping myself around him as his body stiffens at first with the contact and then he relaxes in my arms. Feeding my need for his touch and reassuring him that I don’t feel disgusted at what he did for me.

Alexi catches my wrist around his flat, hard abdomen and tugs me around him, lifting his arm so I’m pulled to the front of his body and hugs me back. Wrapping me up tight in his arms and pushes his chin over the top of my head so I’m cradled small and tight within his embrace. Held firmly in the safest place in the world. Entangled bodies fitting together so effortlessly. We just fit.

His tall, strong mass and my slender curves. Like two pieces of yin and yang that slot together to make one whole.

“We are a completely fucked up pair.” His low husky tone buries into my scalp along with the warmth of his breath, and my head tingles. His chest sounds hollow for a second as his voice reverberates through me and I hold tight. It’s the biggest understatement of the century, and yet he’s right.

Only someone as fucked up as him could ever truly see someone like me as worthy. We are both screwed in terms of normality.

“Maybe that’s why I like you.” I bury my face in his chest and close my eyes, breathing in his unique Alexi scent. Heart hammering through my rib cage because I admit that maybe I do. Wanting to immerse myself into the familiarity of his body. Feeling that tingle of safety and security only he has ever given me and relaxing a little.

It’s a start, I guess.

“I’ll take like. It’s something anyway. Room to grow into something more.” His voice oozes over me like smooth velvet and I hold on tighter, wondering why this man seems to be made for hugging when, in life, he is not the cuddling type. He doesn’t do much of the touchy-feely stuff but that doesn’t matter right now. He isn’t letting me go.

His hand smooths down my spine slowly, flat and strong with ample pressure then back up as he strokes down my long hair gently, flattening it out and brushes its length with his fingers. He seems to have a thing for playing with my hair, not that I’m complaining. It’s crazily sweet and unexpected from someone like him. A tender, genuine affection, and I lift my face to look up at him as I get that little tug as he plays with a strand of my hair.

“What now?” It’s a good question because I honestly do not know what we are supposed to say or do after this. I’m not ready to throw myself at this man just because he possesses a heart. I’m grateful for what he did, but as I pull myself away, feeling him release me reluctantly and straighten myself up, his eyes wander over me slowly. No further forward than we were minutes ago.

“You tell me.” He looks wary and I sigh heavily, repositioning myself against the counter so we stand a foot apart. Strained awkwardness returning now we are no longer touching.

Isn’t that just the thing? I have no clue.

There’s a long tense pause as my brain scrambles for a response, and I stare at him reluctantly, absorbing every single one of those masculine features. He truly is a handsome devil, even with those cold eyes and that brooding frown. He just continues with that unreadable expression and watches me just as intensely.

“I need time to think. I need to sleep. My head’s a mess and there are a million and one things in there flying around.” I step away from him to get a little extra space I so need right now, catching the look of disappointment as he realises the hug was a one-off, for now anyway. This is my only option to get some headspace.

I don’t know what I’m doing beyond going to bed and being alone for a while. There are a million and one things to process that are piling up to mountainous proportions, and my poor frazzled head can’t separate all of this.

London, Rick, Love, Murder … Jesus Christ, Alexi. You really are a major in terms of head mess.

“I’ll be here.” He nods towards the couch and I stare at him for another long moment.

“Will you do something for me?” It’s soft and pleading but I need it. Vision straying to that box in the background and yet I still cannot bear to let my eyes fall on them directly.

“Anything.”

His response pulls a tiny smile from me, but I curb it quickly and focus on what I need.

“Burn those journals for me, please. I never want to see them again. I never want to talk about it … or Rick. My past is the past, and all that’s connected to it doesn’t exist anymore. It all died with him. It’s a moot subject from here on in. Promise me.”

It’s a stern-voiced command and Alexi has the sense to nod and say nothing. A moment of intense staring at my face before he shifts on his feet. He turns and walks to the table immediately, picking up the box and fishes around inside it for a moment, pushing the books aside. And I glance down at my feet, afraid to see him pull one out.

I really cannot handle their existence in this room.

He puts it back down and walks to me, something small in his hand and holds it out casually, his face lightening with a hint of a shy smile.

“You may want this. Don’t think it should meet the furnace.”

I blink as my eyes focus on the black tube in his hand, confused for a second as to what I’m looking at, and I realise as my eyesight settles on it that it’s the red lipstick I lost the last time I lived here. The no longer manufactured shade of red that was always my signature colour. The exact shade of my hair. The one I looked everywhere for and realised it must have been left behind.

Weirdly, emotional trauma makes me happy gasp at the sight of it. Truly having a last psychotic break after one long evening of way too much drama.

“Oh, my God, where did you find it?”

It’s almost like everything from the last few hours fall away to nothing. Focusing on something so unimportant and meaningless, but it’s a distraction from this reality. It’s something to yank me back to yesterday before this topsy-turvy night happened and pulled the rug from under me. Normal on a wave of surreal.

“Cleaner found it under your bed and I couldn’t throw it away. It’s all I had left of you.” Alexi looks instantly uneasy at this obvious admission of feelings and I smile at him, stupidly. His words seeping in and what he just admitted to.

He kept it for sentimentality. Alexi the devil incarnate Carrero, kept a tiny piece of me, even though it was something insignificant. It’s cute, for him anyway.

“And I used to think you were devoid of all human emotions.” I jest and poke him in the abdomen for good measure, aware of my sudden jokey urge to touch him, and the instant lift of my mood over some materialistic object. I always used possessions to push my feelings away into that box in my head. Deflection at its finest. Some habits die hard.

“There she is … my sassy brit with her comebacks. I was worried I had lost you there for a little while.” He smiles back, a genuine soft dimple raising glint that reaches his eyes and hands me my tube of rare and wonderful red liquid bliss. I grip it and take a long, heavy inhale, this time careful not to graze fingers, even though I want to feel his warmth on my skin one more time before I go.

There’s just too much confusion inside of me, and my senses are telling me to walk away and give myself headspace. He’s too potent, too good at pulling me back to him. Tonight, has drained me of everything and flipped me upside down. I would be too susceptible to fall back into his bed while feeling this way, and that would be disastrous. I’m too vulnerable and I must protect myself, even if he does care about me.

“I should go to bed; I have a lot to process.” The air of awkwardness between us returns once more and we separate again by a few feet as he returns to the table to put the lid on that damned box before sliding it under his arm securely. Hiding out of sight the things I asked him to get rid of. I’m guessing he will do as I asked and remove it as soon as I’m out of the room and knows that space is probably a good thing for both of us.

Doing as I asked without question. There is hope for him yet.

“I think sleep will do you good. You look wiped out. We can talk whenever you want. I’m not going anywhere.” Alexi strays a little closer but it’s too much, I have so much going on in my head and under my skin that I move away to breathe. I no doubt have a million more questions to get out of my head before I feel able to stand and be okay with him again, but for now, I’m prickling with the need to be alone. I just feel like, right now, I don’t know him anymore.

The man of the last months is not the one who stands before me now, and having one sentence change our entire dynamic, has changed who I see before me. It’s too much. My head’s a mess.

Alexi the cruel, controlling tormentor, has become the man who murdered for me, trekked to London to find me, and confessed to being in love with me. I have so many scenarios to replay and rethink now I know these things, and the last months could do with being analysed carefully while I figure out what to do. It’s a lot to swallow.

He didn’t leave me in that hospital and discard me like an unfeeling son of a bitch. He stayed until he knew I was okay. He held my hand. It changes so much.

He’s complex for sure, and I feel like I have barely grazed the surface.

“Okay, so …” I trail off and turn on my foot sheepishly, moving away shyly and trying to go towards my bedroom. That heavy atmosphere of two people feeling strange around each other, even though only a short while ago we were having hot naked sex in the room only twenty feet away.

I blush at the memory. Another odd reaction in a tense and strained moment.

Blushing over sex? I would never do anything that weird. Sex was my life, my skill, my weapon. With Alexi, however, sex always felt different, even when he was using it against me. He took it from being a tool for me and turned it into something more. Something intimate.

I turn on my heels properly and walk to my room, gripping my lipstick tightly as though it’s the most valuable possession I own. I think maybe because he held onto it all this time, because it was a part of me and he couldn’t let it go, somehow helps me believe that all of this is real.

I’m intent on lying down in a dark space and unravelling all this mess in my head. I have so much to let loose and think over.

Alexi, Rick, the diaries, everything that happened tonight and where do I go from here. What do I want? I’m just so emotionally empty.

“London?” Alexi’s voice stops me, and I glance back over my shoulder at him.

“What?” I look at him through narrowed eyes as I catch the odd soft expression as he watches me walk away. Still standing where I left him, only now the box is in his two hands, held tightly in front of him.

“You’re not nothing … you’re everything. My everything.” His eyes on mine, voice gentle and sexily low with that half smile I see him with sometimes; a genuine moment of real Alexi.

My heart thuds heavily with a weird, painful pang that isn’t sore. It’s an odd moment of deep emotion, and I swallow the instant lump that forms in my throat, threatening to choke me. Tears hitting the backs of my eyes and I blink them away.

I have no words, no response to that. He just blew me away unexpectedly.

“Goodnight.” It’s all I can force out as my eyes mist over, despite my efforts, and I turn and hightail it to my room before he sees me break down and cry my weird little heart out; because for the first time in my life, someone said it and I believed them without question.