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Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath and let it out shakily, willing for some of this to make sense.
The only thing that flurries through me with complete certainty is the life Kane said he wanted for us – the family and the home and the sound of children’s footsteps singing through the walls, making every moment star-bright and perfect.
“Lena,” I say, walking over to her bedroom door. “Before we go, can you tell me how your work is going? I know you like to talk through things sometimes. Plus I’d like to sit down before we head down to the bus stop if you don’t mind?”
More guilt chews away at me, telling me this is wrong, so wrong, and yet her life is in danger. The best I can do is convince her to stay for as long as I possibly can, and then hope that Kane returns and…
And what?
And he leaps out in front of Lena with a grin on his face, maybe saying ta-da like he’s just pulled off a magic trick?
Lena’s face lights up and she nods enthusiastically, causing her ponytail to dance around. “Yes, you know how much I love talking about my work. But if your plan is to try and get to stay in all day, you should know I’ve only done thirty pages. So, you see, you haven’t got enough ammo.”
I laugh, forgetting for a moment about all the madness whirring around this situation. Then it slams into me and I have to fight to stop my lips from turning down into a frown.
Lena drops onto the bed and wraps her hands around her knees, rocking slightly as her passion for her story moves visibly through her.
“It’s a forbidden love romance,” she says. “Like my first book.”
My belly swirls as the words forbidden love bounce around my mind, a whirlpool threatening to suck me in as I consider how horribly ironic this is. It makes me want to scream that I’m the one having the forbidden romance… with her father, just so I don’t have to contain it inside of me anymore.
“A Maltese man studying chemistry and a traveler fall in love. She’s running from a tragedy in her past – she lost both her parents in a car accident when she was a kid.”
The details are different, but the end result is the same. Lena is also running from a tragedy, constantly burying herself in her work so she doesn’t have to think about what happened to her mom when she was a girl and her dad when she was a teenager.
“He’s collecting specimens on the beach one evening and she’s going for a walk after a fight she had with her boyfriend… and that’s when they meet. But the twist is her boyfriend is his childhood friend.”
Suddenly my throat is dry and I feel like my legs have turned to jelly.
I stumble across the room and collapse into the chair near the window, gripping the windowsill and letting out a shaky breath.
“Kelly?”
“Sorry. It’s the heat. What does the friend say when he finds out?”
Again, the details are slightly different – it’s a friend instead of a parent – but the similarities are enough to send my mind into manic overdrive, skipping over the scenario with guilt throbbing in my chest.
My heart thunders and my chest feels like it’s constricting, like it’s going to crush my heart and stop it from beating forever.
She pauses, considering, as she eyes me with her head tilted slightly. “I’m not sure yet. I haven’t worked that part out.”
“Is there any coming back from that?”
“From cheating on your boyfriend?”
“No, I don’t think there’s any coming back from that,” I say passionately, the thought causing a wholly different kind of sickness to stampede through me.
A lot about this situation makes me uncertain, but loyalty to one’s partner is not one of those uncertainties.
Loyalty to one’s partner, claiming them, choosing them, and sticking by them no matter what means a lot to me, perhaps because of the example my parents have set.
“What then?” Lena asks.
“Betraying a best friend like that,” I murmur.
Lena takes a frustratingly long time to answer. She leans forward and strokes her chin slowly, letting my thoughts dance away from my reason, returning to the way Kane stared at me when I told him I was a virgin.
I thought he was disgusted at the time. But then he told me it made him want me more. The word more charts a burning path across my mind, joining the words need and desire and wrong.
Finally, Lena speaks, but her words don’t make me feel any better.
“I’m not sure,” she says. “I haven’t gotten to that bit yet.”
Chapter Twelve
Kane
A Russian approaches me as I walk down the hill toward the village. He’s wearing a white vest that shows his tattooed arms, and his hair is jet-black and slicked to the side. I peg him for a member of the Bratva before we’re within a hundred yards of each other.
