‘It doesn’t matter anymore,’ he said softly.
‘It matters to me.’ She knew what came next, and she needed to see it. Needed to see the regret stitched upon his face as clearly as it had been stitched upon Jem’s. Needed to feel it as it happened, a thousand iron bars shuttering her heart.
But instead of regret she saw only pain, the same aching thread that had wound itself around her heart tugging too at his.
‘Tell me the truth,’ she repeated, a tear sliding down her cheek. ‘Please.’
‘The truth is …’ His eyes were dark upon hers, endless pools, and she wanted to sluice the sadness from them, wanted to brush it away as easily as she could trace a finger down his cheek.
Behind them, the door rattled.
‘This is the truth, Ava,’ said Damien.
And then he kissed her.
And this time it wasn’t like it had been before.
It wasn’t soft, and slow, and searching.
This time it was as though he would consume her, his mouth hot upon hers, his hand gripping her waist, and the ice in her stomach transformed into something molten, something that thudded all the way from her stomach to her toes.
‘This,’ he breathed, and she felt as though her entire body was aflame, as though her pulse was ricocheting through every inch of her, beating in every cell, and she did not want the delicious, thudding feeling of it to end.
And then he was gone, and there was cool air upon her face once more as she heard the glass of the window shatter, as he hoisted himself upwards, bundling himself through the jagged hole he had punched through the frame.
‘Damien,’ she said, one hand reaching up to touch her lips, still warm from his kiss, as he disappeared.
As the door burst open behind her, and Jem and Mr Briggs tumbled through it.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Damien stopped – his breath coming in jagged pants, the cold air making his chest ache with the effort. He knew he should feel a thousand and one things – anger, fear, betrayal, sadness, loss, longing – but instead he could only feel the prickle in his lungs, the cold air rushing down his throat as he tried to catch his breath; as images fizzled and popped across his mind like the searingly white potassium flash of cameras.
Ava’s expression as she’d said:You’re not a monster.
The press of his lips against hers.
The sharp, stabbing pain of the glass across his shoulder as he’d scrambled out through the window.
He reached up now to the rip in his coat, his fingers coming away bloody. Oddly, he could not feel it. He could feel the throb of a paper cut just a moment after it had happened, but the wound deep enough to score his coat in two was painless.
All he wants to do is talk.
Damien sucked another deep breath into his lungs, trying to will the power back into his legs.Tommyrotdid the man just want to talk. He’d been breathing down his neck since London, and Damien’s little stunt in Leeds had only shaken him for a moment.
He wanted to drag Damien back to his father.
But Damien would not be caught. Damien would not be dragged. He needed to move, regardless of whether or not the man was watching the ports, the roads. He needed to get out, and he needed to do it under a different name. There was a cold sort of calmness spreading over him now, for he had walked this path before – and he had escaped. It was how he’d spent the better part of a decade, in a game of hunter and hunted that he was only ever a half step ahead of.
But this time, something was different.
Because this time he found himself paralysed by one thought, repeating at the same relentless rate as his own sawing breath.
You won’t see her again if you do this. You’ll never see her again.
The thought mingled with all the others clamouring for his attention, until he slammed his fist into the cold brick of the alleyway.
He had a ticket. He had a way out. But the boat wasn’t due to leave for another few days.
