‘Not OK,’ I shouted at him. ‘NONE OF THIS IS OK.’ I curled both my hands inside his T-shirt, scrunching the fabric in my fist. ‘Why did I save you? Only to have it lead to this!’
I shoved him and he hit his head against the wardrobe. His eyes grew, two big expanses of startling blue, shadowed by his frown. I felt a flicker of something unpleasant – regret, remorse? I hadn’t meant what I’d said – not really – but the words weren’t coming from a logical place.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, breathless.
I stared at my hands still curled in his shirt. I fell back from him, examining my fingers. They were twitching in and out of fists. I looked at Luca. His body was dipping towards his injured half. His lids were at half-mast. How many ways had I hurt him? How far could I go? He was letting me – even though he could stop me easily, he hadn’t. I had come at him with every drop of venom I had in me and I felt none of the relief I had expected. I felt like a damaged version of myself. My mother was gone, and in her absence I was bitter and cruel.
A familiar feeling of panic took hold of me. I didn’t know what to do, how to make him go away, how to tell him this wasn’t really about him at all. It was about her. The tears were breaking through a second time, coming harder and faster down my cheeks. Strangled cries sprang from me and I realized I was hyperventilating. I am breaking down, I realized with horror. I am losing myself.
Luca pushed against me and I thought he was finally going to retaliate, to do to me what I had just done to him. But he didn’t. He rounded on me, pulling me into his chest and crushing his arms around me. I collapsed into him, feeling the weakness in my legs. I was so startled I let him hold me, feeling the hardness of his body beneath my cheek, the frantic thrumming of our heartbeats pressed against each other.
He was talking to me, his voice low and urgent against my hair, but I couldn’t hear him. Something inside me was breaking; he had pricked the balloon in my chest and the pressure was draining. My cries were muffled against him, my tears staining pools across his T-shirt. I was inhaling his scent, my fingers pressed across his collarbone, and his hands were on my back holding me together as sobs quaked through my body.
And it wasn’t enough. I needed to be closer to him; I needed to forget myself. I lifted my head and he brought his hands to my face, his thumbs gently wiping the tears from under my eyes.
‘It’s going to be OK,’ he murmured, the pads of his fingers warm against my skin. He touched his forehead to mine. ‘I won’t let him hurt you again.’
My breath hitched in my throat. I gripped the collar of his T-shirt and lifted my chin. His lips brushed against mine.
‘Sophie,’ he breathed. ‘We can’t—’
‘Please,’ I said, moving my hands around his neck. ‘I need this.’ Whatever he was about to say got lost between us, because suddenly I was crushing my lips against his and he was twining his fingers in my hair, kissing me so hard it knocked the breath from me. This. This was what I needed. I pressed my body against him and dragged my fingers through his hair, pulling him closer, breathing him in. He groaned as he pushed his tongue into my mouth, deepening the kiss and gripping my waist as he spun me around. His hands found mine, our fingers splaying together as he lifted them above my head and pinned them against the wardrobe. He leant against me as he sealed every last inch of space between us with his body and took all the bad memories away.
He gasped for air against my lips, and I smiled as all the pain and darkness burnt away inside our kiss. He made me dizzy. He made me forget.
It ended too quickly. Suddenly, he was pulling away from me and panting, his hand clutching his chest.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, eyes wide. ‘Cazzo. I shouldn’t have done that.’
‘I did it,’ I said, heaving an unsteady breath as I unstuck myself from the wardrobe. ‘It was me.’
‘I can’t do this.’ He backed up. ‘It’s not right.’
I backed away too. What was I thinking? What was I doing? I looked a mess, was a mess. I hadn’t slept properly in days. ‘You don’t want to,’ I said, feeling the pain resurface sharply, grief and anger mingling in a cocktail of embarrassment and regret. ‘It’s fine.’
‘Of course I want to,’ he said, his voice spiking. ‘I want to more than anything. I always want to. That’s the problem.’
I forced myself to look up at him.
His expression was pained. ‘I won’t take advantage of your grief, Sophie. I’m not that guy.’
I nodded, feeling the numbing effects of his kiss melt away. Memories charged back into my head and the clouds regathered, heavy and unyielding inside me. I was too wrung out to fight it.