‘Tea?’ he said as he switched on the light in the hallway.
She stepped gingerly over the threshold into his space. ‘Thank you.’ She needed something to do with her hands, which were suddenly damp. She couldn’t stop thinking about what would have happened if she’d planted her lips on his as she’d wanted to a moment ago.
She wasn’t sure of the rules of dating these days, but she was fairly certain you weren’t supposed to share your first kiss with a guy after a confrontation with your ex. A normal person would have kept it together enough to kiss him properly. But no, Ren had nearly lost it over his beautiful tattoo.
Sacha probably thought she was grieving for Charlie. She wished she could set him straight, but that would involve telling him everything. The light goes and comes… It was a weird sign. What would he say if he understood the true extent of her limitations?
‘Come and sit.’ He opened the door to what was presumably the living room and that feeling of magic swept over her again as she stepped inside.
‘You weren’t kidding about the books,’ she murmured, gaping at the shelves and shelves, from floor to ceiling, that lined two walls of the room, and more between the windows. It was a small room in the corner of the building, with wooden floorboards and a threadbare Persian rug. The dark wood shelves were stuffed with paperbacks and hardbacks; most of them looked older than she was. The tall shelves wouldn’t have fit in her own apartment. He needed the high ceilings of the second floor of a Parisian Haussmann building.
While he disappeared again to boil the kettle, she ran her fingers along one shelf, seeing books in English and French, Arabic and even Latin and Ancient Greek. Some of the spines were worn and nearly unreadable, whereas others looked pristine. She pulled out one tattered book, a slim volume of poetry called Romances sans paroles with a black-and-white photograph of a man on the front – the poet, Paul Verlaine, she guessed.
A book in hardcover, with coloured flags all along the top, poked out of the shelf just below eye level. It was called Narcisse et Goldmund and, when she flicked through the pages, she saw extensive annotations in pencil, in careful handwriting.
She clutched the book and gazed at the top shelves, too high for her to reach. The bookcases themselves were solid and looked old and she realised she was looking at two generations of his family at least. Her family had kept a safe full of jewellery and a couple of pieces of show furniture as heirlooms. Sacha had inherited books and poetry.
Ren knew which of them was richer.
She ran her fingers over a dog-eared book that lay abandoned on the scratched antique coffee table. She couldn’t read the script and the spine appeared to be on the opposite side of what she expected. ‘You’re reading this?’ she asked as he returned with two cups of mint tea.
‘I found it at the market yesterday. It’s the collected works of Ibn Sina,’ he translated. ‘It’s a habit. I buy books in Arabic whenever I find them. When I was growing up, they were much harder to find, and my father forced Nadia and me to read everything. He was unusual like that. Most Lebanese prefer French or English, and Arabic is the language of the market, but… not my father. He made sure we could both speak and write standard Arabic.’
‘That’s useful, though. For your job? You use Arabic?’
He gave an eloquent shrug that answered yes and no. ‘I’m not a translator or an interpreter, but Arabic has been useful in my job, yes.’
‘Hmmm,’ she said with a calculating smile, tapping her lips in thought. ‘I’ll work it out one day.’
‘Sit.’ He beckoned to the sofa, handing her the steaming mug and draping a blanket around her shoulders. ‘Look, Monsieur Gnome guards the plant.’
‘Honestly, I thought you would throw him out.’
He sat next to her and gave her a hesitant look. ‘One doesn’t throw away gifts,’ he said softly.
‘Are you… going to ask why I got upset?’ She stared into her tea. Surely he was wondering what was wrong with her. Then again, maybe he didn’t care and all of this was in her head – including the almost-kiss.
‘I saw how Charlie treated you, Ren,’ he said with an abortive attempt to take her hand. ‘I have some idea of what upset you.’
‘No, you don’t,’ she said with a sharp laugh and a disturbingly reckless swell of emotion. ‘No one does. Except Grandmama. And that’s the way she wants it to stay. Her and me against the world.’ A dark and shrinking world, with danger lurking around every corner.
She heard her name again and the tea was plucked from her limp hands. Only when her head settled on his chest and his arms closed around her did she realise her cheeks were burning with fresh tears. The comfort was physical, but it was also more, reaching into the darkness she feared most because it lived inside her.
The thought of letting it out made her panic, but she also felt something new and unexpected: faith. If anyone could accept her, it would be Sacha.
‘Talk,’ he said, and the brusque order acted on her like a key in a lock.
Her jaw wobbling, she rested her head against his collar bone and spoke the words she hadn’t said to anyone since her therapy more than ten years ago. ‘When I was ten, I was kidnapped.’ The urge to stop there was strong, but the warmth of his body lulled her into an alluring sense of security. ‘They incapacitated my driver and grabbed me outside school. I was held in a garage while they contacted Asquith-Lewis for ransom. There was… no window.’ Her breath started to come more easily. ‘I don’t remember many details. I was told it was six days that I was in there. It was forever and it was no time at all.’
Sacha’s breath left him in a hiss. His chest rose and fell under her cheek.
‘It was a bad time for Grandmama. The company had a lot of debts. It was before Ziggy arrived and started turning things around. We always looked so rich, but… at that time we weren’t, not below the surface. She struggled to raise the money for the ransom. But she hired investigators and the police did what they could, even though there had been a threat on my life if the police got involved.’
Sacha’s hand fisted in her sweater. He was rigid next to her.
‘The ransom was paid, and the investigators came to get me. I can remember more from that point. Everything hurt when they picked me up and I could barely open my eyes. I had been given food and water, but… nothing made sense in that place and I hadn’t eaten or drunk in… I don’t know how long. I had been too scared to move. I’d… given up, like I was already gone, like I was the darkness.’
‘You survived,’ he murmured, in a tone that made her wonder whether he’d spoken for his own benefit.
‘My special skill,’ she joked, but it fell flat. Lightening the mood didn’t make the memories go away. ‘They took me home, these other strange men, and… Grandmama was horrified. I must have peed myself over and over. I remember her cleaning me up without a single hint of emotion. It killed something inside her. She’d already lost her only child. All she had was me and I was… damaged.’
‘You’re not damaged.’
‘I was then. I didn’t recover immediately. I couldn’t leave the house at all for over a year and the rest of my schooling was… fraught. We were all afraid it would happen again. By the time I had therapy and recovered some independence, I struggled so much I failed every subject in my first term at university. Because of Ziggy’s strategy, I at least have a place in the company.’
‘And Charlie doesn’t know any of this?’
She shook her head. ‘Grandmama was terrified – still is. The police never caught the kidnappers. She was worried that people would find out how vulnerable we really were. She was mortified that she’d been forced into paying the ransom at all. She’s been… holding everything together all alone for a long time.’
‘She made you act as though it hadn’t happened.’
‘Everything is an act, my whole family, my whole life. We’re pretending it’s safe, when all the money in the world won’t make us truly safe.’ Her brain sluggishly caught up with her words. Grandmama relied on wealth and power to make her feel safe. Ren had always understood that wouldn’t work. Why had she allowed herself to be trapped by her grandmother’s fears and misapprehensions? And how could she make Grandmama see that the world didn’t have to be full of darkness? ‘I feel safe with you,’ she murmured before she lost the courage to say it.
‘I’m not sure you should,’ he replied, but his soft hand on her face told her something different. ‘I’m angry at everyone who’s ever hurt you – including your grandmother.’
Her breath caught at the passion in his words. ‘She never expected to raise a child at her age and… she loves me in her way.’
‘I understand. And I see your courage – perhaps better than you do. There’s courage in every one of your smiles.’
‘You thought I smiled too much,’ she accused gently.
‘No, I feel… something when you smile.’
‘Your frowns are beautiful, too.’ I love you. She wondered if he could hear the words. It was ridiculous. She’d known him just over a week.
‘You are stronger than you think,’ he murmured.
‘I hope you’re right.’ She felt stronger, as though keeping the secret had been a dressing over a festering wound, when what it needed was water, fresh air, and rest. Life was such a wonderful, complicated, messy thing outside of the walls she was accustomed to.
Her eyes drooped, exhaustion swift-acting and powerful. She sighed deeply and turned her face into his neck. He never moved, lending her his warmth and his body, the poignant words on his neck and his quiet dignity, as she drifted to sleep.
