“What do you like about them?” I press.
She blows out a sigh. “This will always be home,” she admits, keeping her gaze fixed on the coming storm. “I have a complicated relationship with my family, and I sometimes feel resentment about my inability to leave them far behind. Like you did.” Her clear eyes finally focus on me again, peering straight into my soul. “You managed to go to an entirely different country. I’ve only been able to move a few cities away.”
“Why not go farther?” I’m hanging on to her every word, craving more of her intimate confessions.
“I can’t afford it,” she admits. Then she sighs. “But it’s more than that. I don’t think I’m capable of leaving. This is home,” she repeats, but the declaration is soft with something like regret.
Does she feel trapped by her affinity for this place?
“That’s why you favor the storms,” I surmise.
Her paintings are beautiful, but her most powerful landscapes provide a glimpse into her tumultuous emotions when it comes to her home.
“Yes,” she admits. “How did you manage it? Leaving home, I mean.”
Something twists in my gut, a painful twinge. I breathe through the strange pain.
“Yorkshire is beautiful, but I’m not the sentimental type.”
She’s looking at me with that intent, open gaze. She’s holding nothing back, and she expects the same of me.
“I didn’t want my title,” I confess. “The only way my father would accept that was to leave and not return.”
“Why not?” She seems just as desperate to know me as I am to learn all of her secrets.
I find that I don’t want to hide anything from her.
“My father is not a good person,” I say, and it’s almost as though the words are issuing from someone else’s lips. “He uses his title and his wealth to cover his sins. He’s a selfish, weak man. I refused to take up the same mantle. I want nothing to do with him.”
For an awful moment, I see the blood, hear the incessant blaring of the car horn where my father’s unconscious body is slumped over the steering wheel.
I shake off the childhood memory before it can fully form. I haven’t thought about that night in years.
“And your mother?” Abigail asks softly, coaxing.
I sneer. “She just wants her comfortable lifestyle. She will accept anything my father does, as long as the family keeps up appearances.”
As much as I loathe my father, I disdain my mother. He’s a weak coward, but she’s calculating. She’s the one who ensures he goes unpunished and untarnished for his sins.
Abigail covers my hand with hers, calling me back to her. “I have a complicated relationship with my parents too.”
Before I can press for more of her secrets, fat raindrops begin to fall. I realize that the other beachgoers have fled the storm, and we’re alone. The waves creep closer, crashing in furious roars as the wind whips by us.
But the rain is warm. Cleansing.
Abigail closes her eyes and turns her face toward the sky, as though she’s soaking in the storm. It suits her more than the sunshine.
Her hair is already drenched, the purple curl relaxing under the weight of the water. The rain runs down her cheeks like cathartic tears, and her expression is soft with something like rapture.
Hunger knifes through my gut, and I capture her nape to pull her to me for a vicious, covetous kiss. I want to consume her. I want to feel the depth of her emotions. If I kiss her deeply enough, maybe I can sink into them like she does. To lose myself in the terrible beauty of the storm and the calm that will come in its wake, when the wind and rain have swept the grime away from the world.
She opens for me, meeting me with equal fervor. Her lips are feverish on mine, wet with purifying rain. The storm has broken the midday heat, but fire courses through my veins. I’m burning for her, desperate for more of her sweetness, her purity, her darkness. She’s the most delicious contradiction, the only puzzle I’ve never been able to solve.
Sheet lightning flashes behind my closed eyelids, and thunder cracks, far too close.
I want to linger in this moment, but her safety is more important.
I tear my lips from hers and gather her up in my arms, lifting her to her feet. We grab our soaked towels and start to run.
