Page 56 of Tears of Glass

The drive is silent, the atmosphere crackling and heavy, pushing down on my chest until I can’t breathe.

It’s been a long evening and I’m pretty sure my face is stuck in a frozen smile. At midnight Elijah’s long fingers had cupped my elbow, and he’d whispered in my ear, “It’s time to go.” My stomach had twisted into an origami bird battling to beat its wings from under a net of repression.

We’ve been in silence ever since. I want to ask him why he hasn’t drunk, where we are going, what we are doing—not just right now but generally in life... we walked away... I ran away, so how has he got me here, silently stealing through the dark, abandoned streets? Caught in a web of silence I don’t know how to break.

The MG cruises through the security gate of his Kensington Mews and the night porter waves as he lifts the barrier and allows us to pass.

“What a bum job.” My words make us both jump—that’s how quiet the car is.

He doesn’t answer, but his eyes flick over me just briefly. I’m burning up in this slip of satin called a dress. I want my jeans and a chunky knit on, for some form of protection from the zap of electricity pulsing between us.

We get out the car, neither of us looking at the other. When he slides his key into the lock and gives it a twist, I’m shaking like a blade of spring grass in a full force gale.

I don’t know what I’m doing here.

The door opens, and he pushes it back, the blues staring at me, shimmering under the moon and the light of a nearby street lamp.

“I’m not sleeping with you!”

“Not even after my dancing? Come on, I thought that was smooth.”

I crack a smile. “I’ll give you that. It was smooth.” He walks into the hallway and tosses his keys into a bowl on a wooden sideboard. Next, he slips off his shoes, leaving them straight and lined up against the wall. He’s already loosened his bow tie, and when he turns, with his sock covered feet and his shirt open at the neck, he looks so beautiful it’s like looking at an exquisite work of an old Master. “You can stop that.” I wag my finger at him.

“Stop what?”

“That sexy thing. I’m still not hundred per cent sure I’m talking to you right now.”

He steps closer and my tongue tingles and dries. “You let me kiss you last night.”

My heart pounds, my hands slipping with a sweat that sporadically breaks out as he steps closer and then closer still until his warm breath is fanning my skin and his body is mere centimetres from mine.

“Well it wasn’t an active choice.”

His gaze lights with fire. “Was I holding you hostage again?”

“Well, no.” I back against the hallway wall, my entire body is ready to spark into flames.

This man. He’s too much of everything.

But right now, I don’t know which Elijah I have. There are two sides: the man in the suit and the man in sliders. I know which one I loved more, but it was the other who broke my heart.

Can I find the man I loved under that tuxedo, or will I always mistrust the man in the suit?

“Drink?” His lips dance close to my mouth and I suck in my breath, his scent teasing my tingling tongue. I can almost inhale him down into my lungs. My legs freeze like ice on a January lake.

I nod, not trusting myself to speak. He turns for the open-plan kitchen and living area. It seems decades ago that I spent the night here with him in his beautiful sleek home. Nothing much seems to have changed, it’s still immaculate and pristine. My eyes skim the shelves full of books and CD’s, stacks of vinyl. The pieces of my work he bought and which brought us together are missing.

He turns, two crystal heavy cut tumblers in his hand, amber liquid sloshing inside, and catches me looking. “I donated them to Whitlocks.”

I nod slowly and take the glass he offers me, bringing it straight to my lips, hoping the peat and smoke whisky will help settle my nerves and clear my head.

It does for about thirty seconds and then he sighs and leans against the granite kitchen, and the wild thrumming in my chest starts again.

“Why did you decide to come home with me?” he asks.

“Why did you do the exhibition?” I fire right back.

“Why did you come home with me?”