Anger simmers in my chest as I take her in. The tears streaming down her cheeks are like an invisible hand gripping my throat.
She’s bleeding. Crying. Choking. A helpless, barefoot mess dressed in red. She’s not wearing a bra. The almost see-through fabric of her dress is so thin I can make out the exact shape of her areolas. She covers herself up as best she can using both arms, but all it does is add to her vulnerability.
Her complexion matches that hooker-styled dress, cheeks glowing either from anger or the effort it took to smash half her glassware. A used-to-be-white, now soaked, crimson rag is wrapped around her left hand. Blood marks her cheek, neck, forehead...
More seeps from two small cuts on her knee, oozing onto the marble floor littered with shards of glass.
She’s barefoot, for fuck’s sake. One false move and she’ll slash her small foot wide open.
“This isn’t a good time.” She swats her tears away, lifting her chin a little higher to come across composed.
It’s not working. She looks so fragile I think she’ll crumble to that deadly floor if I look the other way.
I’ve neverseen her like this. Bitchy attitude and superior aura stripped away to reveal her raw form. I’ve known this girl for almost twenty years, yet I’veneverseen her so human.
So fucking real.
She cries. She bleeds. She’s sad.
Not a trace of the confidence she usually projects. Instead, she’s like a porcelain doll tipping over the edge of the shelf.
She needs someone to catch her before she shatters alongside all that glass.
For the first time, I seeher, not the spoilt, arrogant side she meticulously nurtures around people. The one she blatantly showcased at the graduation party.
Faint freckles pepper her small nose, not a trace of them across her rosy cheeks. I didn’t know she had freckles. She hid them under a heap of concealer for years. And why?
They’re fucking beautiful.
My heart pounds like a jackhammer. I want to wipe away her tears, hold her close and make everything okay. The anger that burned my stomach earlier is replaced with what feels dangerously close to protectiveness.
Fresh tears brim in those deep, dark blue eyes staring at me, a whole angry ocean of truths and secrets begging to be uncovered behind them. She’s mindlessly chewing her swollen, raspberry-pink lip, and I’m glued to the spot, my racing thoughts like F1 cars when the lights blink out.
Blair swats another tear away.
A Sisyphean task... more spill, trailing down her chin.
“Can you go?” she pleads, wrestling to keep it together, as she wipes her nose with the back of her injured hand.
Her voice cracks, hitting me in the chest like a battering ram, shattering my resolve to leave her here alone.
I should. This is none of my business. Whatever upset her, whatever happened, whoever that asshole was...notmy business.
If anything, I should be elated she’s a snotty, hurt mess, getting a taste of what she did to Mia.
But elation is nowhere in sight. I’m filled with unease, my insides tying in knots because... I can’t stand seeing a woman hurting this way.
“I’m watching the Spanish GP practice,” I blurt out, giving her a seemingly innocent reason to come with me.Let’s watch TV, my hurt, sworn enemy.I could ask if she wants to Netflix and chill and it’d be just as fucking bad. “You like F1?”
Who the hell am I?
A tense, silent moment passes. She scrutinizes my face, waiting. I don’t know what she’s waiting for. Laughter? Some trickery on my part?
Maybe. Probably...
“I like Spain,” she whispers, inhaling a shaky breath.
“That’ll do.”
