Page 70 of Tears of Glass

“No. Not really. It hurts missing him.”

“I know. I’m sorry, Faith.”

I glance up, finding a frown on his face, and shift myself so I can lay next to him and stare at the ceiling. “I saw Dad. When I was in Brighton.”

Eli’s hands still against my skin. “And?”

“And nothing. He wanted to talk.”

Silence passes between us for a moment. I’m thinking of Dad at Al’s funeral. Faith, I want to talk to you about it.

It’s too late for that, right?

“What do you think?” Eli’s voice cuts though my memories. “Do you think talking will help?”

I roll back over and stare into his bright eyes. “Not really. But I also saw Aiden.”

Beneath my body it’s like Eli turns to stone, his breath evaporating. “Why? Why did you see him?”

My hand soothes over his skin, like I’m the one soothing him and not the other way around. “I was in the shop about to start a job. He walked past.”

Eli lets out a huff of a sigh and shakes his head. I lean up onto my elbows to meet his gaze. “You were right.” My fingers tilt his face, pressing against the stubble on his chin. “I need to speak to someone about it. Maybe tell the authorities. He shouldn’t be walking about. What if he’s grooming another girl, a girl who also won’t be able to say no?”

Eli grips my face in his hand. “And you said no, that night? No matter what you told yourself your body was to blame for, you did say no?”

What is he asking?

Splintered and fractured memories slowly morph together. The shards of the moment are like the glass heart I smashed, millions of them, scattered. But if I try, I know I can piece them back together.

Aiden, you need to stop. It hurts.

Lay still, Faithy, and it won’t hurt so much.

“I said no.” I nod at Eli like I’m almost still convincing myself. “It hurt, it was horrible, and I said no. I cried, but he brushed away my tears and told me it was meant to be like that.”

Eli startles me as he rolls me, pinning my hands to my sides, his handsome face intent as he stares at me for a long hard moment. “I will never let anyone hurt you ever again.”

Then his mouth is on mine and our bodies become one as we lose ourselves in one another until in the final moment we scream together and set our small universe of past and present into wild flames.

Chapter Nineteen

“I need to go back to the flat.” I watch his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He’s shaving, and it’s kind of hard not to stare as he tilts his face this way and that removing all the stubble I love to run my fingers across.

“If you’d moved some stuff in here like I suggested at the weekend, you wouldn’t be spending your time traipsing across London to get clean knickers every day.”

We’d come home from France late on Sunday and I’d expected him to drop me home, but he’d driven straight to his Mews and well, here I’ve stayed. In his big bed, discovering things about him I’m sure people find out way before they start to live together. Like spooning is a real thing. He doesn’t sleep unless his arms are tight around my waist.

Sunday evening was three nights ago.

I pull a face and he chuckles. “You are still as sexy as fuck, even when you do that.”

I glow with his words—it’s all levels of pathetic.

I’m all levels of pathetic at the moment. With the studio space he’s created for me out in his garden and the fact he’s here with his big comfortable bed. I don’t seem able to leave and do all the things I would have done before I met him.

Tabitha and Lewis seem to have taken up residence in my little Islington flat. So basically, none of us are where we should be, apart from Eli.

“I need clean knickers.”