Every accidental brush of fingers, every compliment he paid me, every cursory glance at Luc, set rampant butterflies in my stomach. I had hoped by setting out rules, that I would have defined the lines and taken control again, but that didn’t seem to be the case.
“No, you head home, Lyds,” I told her.
Tonight, Luc was late for dinner. Not the usual late, the type of late that had Lydia force me to sit to eat at 10 PM when it was clear Luc would not return soon.
The heavy weight of dread sat in my stomach. Although Luc still refused to answer questions about his job, it had become crystal clear the rumors were no longer just sinister tales spun by idle tongues. Every rumor was steeped in truth, and so his late return had set my nerves on edge. With every passing minute the uneasiness grew until it was suffocating me.
When Lydia left, I retired to my room with the aim of sleeping. If I slept, I couldn’t worry, but it was no use. Instead, I found myself sitting on the bed as the clock ticked the hours away.
It was the early hours of the morning and my eyelids were heavy when the sound of the door closing made my drooping head snap up once again. It took me a few moments to register that the sound had come from downstairs and wasn’t part of a semi lucid dream.
I shot out of bed and ran down the hallway.
When I met Luc, it was on the second floor of the house and the sight of him made me skid to a stop, my heart mimicking the motion of my feet.
Luc stood at the top of the stairs, looking at me. His usual black attire was stained with dirt and his hands and face were decorated with dark splatters of blood. Nausea rolled in my stomach and the bile burned my throat as it tried to win, but I swallowed it back down.
It was crystal clear what Luc did, but I had only ever been introduced to the surface. I had still never seen evidence of the darker side of his work, until now.
The respect, the money, the power: they all came with a price.
I couldn’t find my voice, couldn’t find the words as we stared at each other. The ticking of the clock in the hall was the only noise that crashed through the silence.
Luc was the first to make a move. He walked towards me, but his gaze had shifted past me. The blood and the dirt may have caused the visceral need to vomit but the dead look in his eyes made my blood run cold.
“Luc.” It came out as a broken whisper that I couldn’t be sure he had heard as he marched past me and up the stairs to the third floor. I stood, stunned by his appearance. This wasn’t a Luc I had seen before. It was as if he was completely lost.
My feet moved before I could truly register what I was doing. Down in the kitchen, I spooned sugar into a mug of decaffeinated coffee I had brewed from a box of pods that had been pushed into the back of the cupboard. By the looks of it, it had barely been used. The mug burned my hands as I carried it back up the stairs, a small trail of brown liquid splattered behind in my wake.
I stood outside Luc’s door, clutching the mug of coffee for what felt like an age before I built up the courage to knock. When he didn’t answer, I pushed the door open to see him standing by the window, back to me, overlooking the drive.
Stepping inside I called his name gently, “Luc.”
He didn’t turn around, so I walked into the room properly. Carefully, I placed a hand on his bare back and felt the muscles tense.
“Luc.”
This time, he slowly turned his head to look at me. There still seemed to be a void in his eyes, and I held the mug out to him.
“Drink,” I ordered him, surprising myself with the force behind the command. Luc didn’t argue. He took the mug and raised it to his lips. I watched as his face scrunched and he swallowed the sip.
“Are you okay?”
Luc looked at me and for a moment I thought he wouldn’t answer, or maybe even kick me out of the room, but instead his free hand came up and cupped the side of my face. His eyes were bloodshot, no doubt from how long he had been awake.
“Come to bed,” I said, taking his hand from my face and guiding him over to the bed. He followed with little resistance and sat on the bed, placing the mug on the nightstand before pulling me into him. I lost balance and Luc maneuvered me so that I sat on his lap, his arms wrapping around me.
“You should have run,” he breathed into my hair.
I should have. I should have seen blood and dirt and the early hour and let the fear guide me far away from all of this. Instead, it had been the look in his eyes that scared me most, and it hadn’t driven me away but made me want to bring him back to me again.
“You probably would have caught me,” I whispered to him.
I feel the slight shake of his body from silent laughter. My fingers pushed through his hair, which was wet from the shower he’d taken. All traces of the job he had carried out were gone. Evidence had been scrubbed away and lost down the drain.
I was surprised at the question that left my lips. “Was there no other way?”
Slowly, Luc unburied his face from my hair and he looked at me. Even in the darkness of the room, those green of his eyes struck me.
