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“We should celebrate this. You’re finally doing what you love and getting paid for it. Joe would be so proud.” Her voice warbles with the remark. “He loved listening to you practice.”
“He did…” Before he went off to war and came back a completely different person.
“How about I treat you to dinner? Say thank you for doing my hair and celebrate your new milestone.”
“Why not?” It’s Sunday afternoon, and for once, I’ve actually got time to myself. I’m caught up on coursework and my composition research. That in itself is a miracle, but with only one job to work three nights a week, things are looking kind of great.
For the first time since Joe died, there’s a light somewhere along the darkness I found myself in. For so long, I’ve just pushed myself to keep going because that’s what he would have wanted, and now, I’m actually enjoying life again. I want to play for myself rather than to make him proud. It feels like I’m living.
I want to get out of bed and do more than just get through the day. More than that, I’m finding myself counting down the days, hours, minutes, and second of every day until the door of the suite closes behind Henry, and he looks at me like I’m the light in his darkness.
* * *
Typical British summer—one minute, it’s hotter than an inferno, and the next, it’s raining cats and dogs. Pulling my hood over my head, I run down the steps of the Royal Albert Hall. I clutch my violin case to my chest tightly, hoping that I can make it to my bus stop on the Knightsbridge main road before I become a drowned rat.
I’m running as fast as I can when the first roar of thunder cracks through the sky, and I jump out of my skin. I’ve always hated thunderstorms. Since I can remember, I’ve had a senseless fear of being struck down by lightning. When it flashes around me, I freeze beneath the awning of one of many boutiques on the quaint parade.
“It’s just a storm. Just a storm,” I remind myself repeatedly while pacing in front of the window, hugging my violin for dear life.
For a moment, the weather settles down a tad, and I contemplate gunning it for the coffee shop, but I know that I’ll just end up freaking out the second it picks up again. Instead, I try to distract myself with the pretty dresses in the window display.
It works for a while as I admire the expensive silks and lace of the designer pieces. I couldn’t afford them even if I sold a kidney on the black market. But it doesn’t stop me from imagining what it would feel like to wear something so beautiful. I bet even the ugliest person in the world would feel drop-dead gorgeous.
“Odd time to window-shop?” a familiar voice calls over the heavy patter of the rain.
Another crack of thunder rumbles around me as I spin to look behind me, followed by a blinding bolt that causes me to scream out loud just as my eyes meet his.
Shit! Fuck! It’s just a storm, I yell at myself in my thoughts as Henry’s stare narrows on me.
“That’s probably the most reasonable reaction you’ve had to me,” he says, getting out of his car to stand beneath the awning with me. “Took you a while.”
“Lightning frightens me,” I blurt down at his feet, embarrassed before the admission leaves my lips.
“You don’t say,” he retorts before adding, “It’s just an imbalanced attraction of positive and negative. When they come together, there’s a balancing discharge that creates lightning.”
“Well, that balancing discharge kills on average two thousand people every year.”
“Worldwide,” he chuckles.
I’m glad that my stupid fear has humoured him. “What are you, the weather police?”
I glare up at him to find Henry grinning. Momentarily, I’m lost for words. My thoughts scramble at the sight. He’s ridiculously handsome at the best of times, but smiling—gosh, he’s breathtaking.
The darkness in his eyes is endless, an abyss that makes the grey skies appear brighter somehow. Even with amusement softening the sharp lines of his face, there’s still an austere severity to his expressions, regal and menacing and yet so hypnotising that I feel it tug deep in my chest, a powerful magnet pulling me to him.
Not that it lasts long, but it’s enough to distract me until the next flash hits, and I’m shaking in my soggy shoes again. The loud squelch earns me a top-to-toe inspection.
“You’re soaked,” he says in a matter-of-fact tone as he takes off his jacket and wraps it around my shoulders.
“It’s pissing dow—” Catching myself too late, I go quiet.
It’s only now that I realise he’s as soaked as I am. We’re standing on the edge of the canopy, in the middle of the pavement with the awning over me while he’s getting completely drenched.
“You’re wet,” I rasp.
The sight of his dark hair slicked to his face makes my fingers itch to brush it back or tease the waved ends into the curls they’re coiling into. Instead, I tighten my arms around my violin case, making sure they don’t act of their own accord.
“Get in the car, Eve.”
