The fading warmth that was still in Tom’s skin as she lifted his hand to press her lips and then her cheek to it.
The softly smoky smell of his aftershave.
The horror of finding that every sequin on her dress was like a miniature mirror.
A thousand tiny imprints of Tom’s face that had somehow escaped any major injury. Images that were obliterated as they moved when she had to drag in a new breath and then the shiny surfaces could only reflect the bright red of the blood that had soaked through the sheet covering his chest.
Blood that was still on her clothes and hands when she was finally able to shut the world away only to be faced with the blinding cleanliness of the white dress hanging on the back of her bedroom door.
She could still hear the raw grief in Hannah’s voice as she screamed at Luc.
‘You’d been drinking? But you were driving the car?’
And his words that were so lacking in expression they were robotic.
‘Yes. I was driving the car.’
15
Every train of thought was taking her straight back to that kiss.
Making it impossible to sleep.
Safely tucked up in her own bed, Sophie had been unable to resist going beyond the sensation of falling into that touch of Luc’s lips on hers. With the memory so intense she could still conjure up the tingle with a feather-light touch of a fingertip across her lips, Sophie had allowed herself to go back into a totally forbidden space. She had unlocked a mental door and floated into what might have come next, if that kiss hadn’t been broken so decisively – as if the enormity of what they’d just done was too huge to acknowledge, let alone begin to process.
Sophie certainly wasn’t ready to try and see into the future. Instead, she was tapping back into what had been her shameful secret from all those years ago. Stepping into the fantasies of what it would have felt like to have Luc’s lips touching hers. His hands on her body. The ultimate intimacy of feeling him inside her. And yes… that desire was just as powerful as it had ever been. More powerful, in fact, because she now knew that the reality of his touch blew anything she’d imagined out of the water. She could feel the physical wanting of him like an electric current running through every cell in her body. Sophie had never,ever, felt like this about any other man and she knew she never would.
So yeah… the pull was still there.
But perhaps there was even more reason to resist it? Twice now, Sophie had experienced the grief of losing a loved one and having the life she knew and felt so safe in upended to the point of complete destruction. Why would she make herself so utterly vulnerable yet again? Who could survive that kind of pain a third time?
Her emotions were so tangled. There was no way she could go to sleep until she had, at least, decided on which thread she could trust enough to untangle first. One that wouldn’t break. One that she could wind up into a tiny ball and tuck into a corner of her heart.
She could see it, that thread. Glowing. Only visible because, for the first time, she’d gone past that final moment of physical intimacy in her fantasy and could imagine what might come afterthat. She might still have missed its significance if it hadn’t been for that life-changing beat of time as that kiss had filled her senses.
That feeling of being where she belonged.
The sheer comfort of cominghome.
The colours of this thread were still warm but much softer. A golden shade like sunshine, at dawn or dusk.
It was that feeling of having found what she’d been searching for her whole life. Something that she’d seen before but hadn’t been brave enough to acknowledge, let alone reach out to touch, because it was too closely entwined with the flame-like flickers of a purely physical passion that could never be trusted.
She could sink into sleep creeping closer as she drifted into what it might feel like to be lying here with Luc’s arms around her.
To feelthatsafe…
* * *
She was trying to run but it felt like she was trapped in quicksand. How could anyone run when they were wearing a ridiculous meringue of a wedding dress, the hoops of the underskirt a cage around her legs and the fabric like arms trying to catch hold of her and pull her away from where she had to go?
She tripped and fell, again and again. She could feel the pain of grazed knees and the shredded palms of her hands as she fought to get up again and follow the endless roads – lost on the outskirts of a vast city she couldn’t recognise. She could feel people watching her from the shadows but no one was coming to help her and she’d never felt so alone.
Racking sobs that sounded like his name were trying to claw their way out but no sounds emerged from her throat no matter how hard she tried to force them.
Tom… Tom…
She found the mangled but still oddly shining blue carcass of the car but she couldn’t see through the windows because of the smeared and dripping blood…
