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His hand presses down on the door handle before I open my mouth to say one last thing that surprises even me.
Chapter 12
Matthias
"Thankyou."
Her words halt me just as I'm about to open the door, and I feel my hand freeze on the door handle, my foot rooting to the spot.
"Pardon?" I say, as I face her. I can't have heard her right.
Her face, in turn, blazes red, a marked change from how pale she was upstairs. Even as we sparred, she still looked scared. It's why I'm still standing here when normally I would've run from Clarissa Masters's company a long time ago.
She was scared. Sheisscared.
A frown flashes across her forehead and she bites down on her lower lip.
Fire streaks down my body.
My mid-region threatens to harden and I hold my breath pushing the urge back.
"I said 'thank you'. For helping me before. I... I don't know what would've happened if you'd hadn't been there."
There's a tiny peek of enamel as she bites down on her lower lip.
I just nod, burning the picture of her standing there, a thank you on her lips, into my mind.
And leave.
***
Four hours later, I'm back.
Freshly showered, changed into a charcoal pair of Brunello Cucinelli slacks and a light blue Dolce & Gabbana button-down shirt, with an iPad in my hands.
I have work to do, but if the way Clarissa had acted before was any indication, I can't trust her to not leave the club before I come pick her up and get her checked out. And she needs it.
I saw how hard Patrick slapped her.
I felt it reverberate through my whole body, and I am at least a good foot taller and have a good seventy pounds on her. At the very least, she is probably suffering from a splitting headache, and who knows what else.
I tell myself that I would do it for anybody, for perfect strangers on the street. And yes, absolutely, I would have dropped them off at the hospital, made sure they could pay their bill, and that they had someone to come and pick them up. But I probably wouldn't replay the way her head had jerked backward, banging against the couch, and the pure look of pain that had flashed across her face. The way tears had instantly flooded her eyes.
I've known Clarissa since I was thirteen years old and she was only six. A perfect porcelain English rose.
Damien was the one to whom she attached herself, and they were thick as thieves until high school graduation. After he left for college though, she never quite found her way. When Damien turned thirty and was still single by choice, she'd approached him with a deal, that they marry each other for convenience. He would gain a trophy wife, one who could schmooze the hardest, stuffiest of business adversaries, charm the men, and befriend the women. And Clarissa would be taken care of for the rest of her life.
Damien, never having the tiniest interest in romance, had more or less found this a palatable enough deal. But Clarissa, being Clarissa, had pushed his patience and Damien had called off the wedding.
Through it all, all the summers spent together, all the family dinners, all the late nights with my brothers when she'd loiter in the background, hoping we'd let her play with us, she was only there because Damien made sure to include her.
Even now, I remember her cheating at games; I remember her fiercely arguing her position on everything; I remember her storming off if we teased her and coming back with insults she'd practiced until they became second nature to her.
But never with tears in her eyes.
Never.
Until now; and it's a memory I wish I could burn from my brain.
