Page 18 of I'll Look for You, Everywhere
Taking the moment alone to collect my thoughts, I realize how absolutely fucking absurd this is. Here I am, first day back in Chivasso, sitting on the kitchen counter with my shirt above my tits and Theo Sinclair, a man I’ve barely spoken to my entire life, granted a relatively beautiful one, having to wipe up my bleeding flesh. A loud laugh escapes me, events of the past few hours reeling in my head like a fever dream. This is fucking ridiculous. It’s fucking typical that the first man to get me shirtless in a darkened room doesn’t want me shirtless and it’s not even his room.
‘Something funny?’ Theo’s voice startles me and my laughter slows.
‘This is a first for me.’ I turn my head to look at him, a slight smile still on my lips, my hands still covering my breasts. But when I meet his gaze his lips are parted slightly and his eyes appear heavy. He hovers by the door, as if afraid to come any closer. He must be pissed he’s spending his first night back like this. Suddenly uncomfortable with his prolonged silence, I straighten my spine and turn my head to look away, matching his silence with my own. My smile disappears. His footsteps are loud as I feel him behind me once again.
‘Hold still, this will burn for a second,’ he says reassuringly, and begins to wipe the cuts and scrapes up my back. A sharp pain shoots up my spine, causing a moan to escape me before I have time to smother it. The grand attempt to suffer in silence gone. I curse myself for ever going to the club, for not speaking up as those men hurled their bodies into me. Theo rubs at a scabbed-over cut and fresh blood drips down my back, reminding me of how pathetic I am. Things like this don’t happen to girls who can speak up. They throw drinks! They punch back! They don’t end up squashed under tennis club tables. But the relief I feel after knowing the worst is over lets me take a full breath in and sag at the relief.
‘At least tell me you didn’t wink at them after they threw you into a table,’ Theo says from behind.
‘Of course not,’ I say with a sigh. ‘I was saving my wink for you.’
He sucks in a breath, and I swear I can hear him smile. ‘Good girl. Now let’s clean you up some more, yeah?’
Considering he is only five years older than me, I’m impressed with his ability to make me feel so much like a child. I lower the shirt back over my breasts, somehow feeling self-conscious as Theo calls me a good girl with my tits out. An image of him clad in leather chaps with a whip enters my mind and I squeeze my eyes closed to erase the image. Thinking about Theo doing anything remotely sexual does not help my already confused brain. And besides, Theo doing any normal task is already sexual.
He continues to clean up the blood in gentle strokes, stopping every so often to give me a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder. I can’t help it, I lean into him, feeling warm and tired. With even breaths and a calm demeanour, I see that he is excellent in a crisis, the type of person you want around.
‘You don’t go out much, if I remember correctly,’ he says in the silence. It’s not a question but I feel compelled to defend myself, to tell him he doesn’t know anything about me, to remind him he left Chivasso before I did, and I could have turned into a raving social butterfly since then. But what’s the point in lying? He’ll find out eventually. And I’m too tired to lie.
‘We’re not all blessed with Anika’s social skills,’ I confess.
The cloth touches one of the deeper scrapes and I flinch at the contact. A hand flashes to my ribs, fingers flat against my lower abdomen with an intensity I feel deep in the pit of my stomach. ‘I got you,’ he whispers.
As quickly as I take a breath in, he lets go. A mistake, I tell myself, an accident born from reflex. But the feeling of his skin on mine remains the entire night, imprinted on me with unwanted permanence. I try to calm my heartbeat, to remind myself that he is only concerned for my safety because it would affect Anika’s happiness if something were to happen to me. I try to rationalize his reaction, but the heat of his phantom handprint pulses through my heart. He doesn’t respond to my answer but continues to clean silently.
‘I’ll walk you to your room and then I have a few errands to run,’ he says without prompt.
‘You have errands to run at one a.m.?’ I pick at my nails, the disbelief clear in my voice.
He doesn’t answer immediately, pretending to focus on cleaning the blood that I know is no longer there. ‘Anika shouldn’t make you do things you don’t want to do.’
I shake my head. He’s ignoring my question. Annoyed at his accusation of Anika forcing me to do things I don’t want to do, I repeat my question.
‘Theo,’ I straighten my back. ‘Where are you going?’
The only sound is the slight rattle of the ceiling fan above us. ‘They can’t get away with this, Magdalen.’ His voice is strained, and I’m struck with the need to turn around and look at him. Slowly, I swing my legs over the counter so that I’m facing him. His knees brush against mine, but he makes no effort to move them.
‘Of course they can. Just go to bed.’
‘I’m not tired,’ he whispers slowly.
‘Well,’ I breathe, exasperated by his sudden need for heroism. I know it’s just because I’m Anika’s best mate; his protective instinct has nothing to do with needing to defend me. The realization makes me sad, as I take in that no one knows me enough to want to protect me; not even Dante or Jo seemed to care that much.
‘Count some sheep,’ I suggest.
He dips his head and leans forward, breath warm against my neck, and a low chuckle reverberates through him. It’s a beautiful sound. Without warning, he slides his hands to my hips and squeezes for the briefest moment. I suck in a breath, his touch somehow different this time. Warmer.
A friendly gesture, I tell myself.
‘Oh, Magdalen.’ His voice is deep and sensual, and I struggle not to close my eyes at the sound. His lips brush my ear again and I feel him whisper in my hair, ‘There are no sheep in Chivasso.’
12
THEO
I close the back door of the Savoys’ house, and I feel my calmness disappear with it. Two hours’ scrubbing blood, watching her shoulder blades contract with pain, feeling her breath stop with too sudden a movement. And all the while she spoke five sentences to me. And all the while the image of her shirt bunched up over her breasts is burned into my memory. She has just been assaulted and you can’t stop thinking of how her body felt beneath your hands? I wipe my hands against my jeans, trying to rub off the feeling of her on my palms. Selfish and pathetic, I conclude. Maybe my father isn’t too wrong about me.
‘Get it fucking together,’ I mumble to myself as I walk back to the car parked in front of her house. The night is cool, and the slight wind is a welcome change from the heat of her skin. Stars blister from behind translucent clouds, the faint chirp of crickets following me as I walk across the gravel. My footsteps feel loud against the silence. There is only darkness and the sound of my footsteps and I remember what it feels like to not belong. To feel this intrusive.
