Dimitrios watched as Annie and Zach fell into an easy rhythm, chatting about anything, from the local area to her schoolwork, to the law degree she was already set on pursuing.
‘I do really well in legal studies,’ she said with a small smile.
Dimitrios noticed that she barely looked in his direction. But he looked at her. He found it almost impossible not to.
‘Law is so dry, though, so boring,’ Zach was teasing, a grin on his face.
‘I like boring.’
She laughed, a sound like a bell ringing. Then her eyes dipped furtively towards him and her smile dropped, a frown taking its place before she looked away again quickly—but not before he could see the pink in her cheeks again.
‘Would you like a drink?’ she asked Zach, but she gestured towards Dimitrios too, encompassing him in the invitation.
‘Nah, we’ve got water bottles in the car.’
‘I’ll have a coffee,’ Dimitrios was surprised to hear himself say.
Hadn’t he been telling Lewis to hurry up only a minute earlier? So why prolong their time in this house?
‘O-okay...’ She stuttered a little, dipping her head forward so a curtain of blonde covered her face. ‘How do you take it?’
‘Black, strong.’
She lifted her eyes to his then and something fizzed between them—something that made sense of what he’d been feeling.
She had a crush on him!
That was why he was watching her like a hawk, trying to understand her behaviour towards him. She was young, inexperienced and her hormone-driven mind had cast him as some kind of romantic hero. Wasn’t that what teenage girls did?
He smiled to soften her nervousness, but it seemed to have the opposite effect.
‘I won’t be long.’
He startled, shifting in the bed, casting another glance at his gold wristwatch. Only ten minutes had elapsed but he’d dozed off, the past beckoning him, dragging him towards recollections he hadn’t thought of in years. The first time he’d met Annabelle she had made an impression on him. Even then there’d been something about her that had got under his skin—and it wasn’t simply that she’d had a crush on him. No, he’d found her every gesture intriguing, and he’d wanted to sit there and decode her, to make sense of her. Whenever Lewis had spoken of her after that, he’d listened with extra attentiveness. Particularly when she’d started dating some boy from a neighbouring school two years older than her. Lewis hadn’t really liked the guy. ‘But it’s her life,’ he’d said with a shrug. ‘And she clearly thinks he’s great.’
That had been the end of it. Or so Dimitrios had told himself. Then why had he gone to Annabelle the night after the funeral? It had been more than just checking up on her. It had been way more than his promise to Lewis. He’d felt compelled to see her, as though she was exactly where he needed to be.
He shifted a little in the bed, moving so he could see her, and something lurched inside him.
For whatever reason he’d gone to her, she’d deserved better. He’d had no idea she’d been a virgin; how could he have? She’d had boyfriends by then. Why would he presume a woman of eighteen hadn’t had sex when she’d been dating? Would it have changed anything about that night? That was something he couldn’t answer with any certainty.
He moved again and this time Annabelle stirred, slowly blinking up at him, the clarity of her eyes jettisoning him into the past at the same time she propelled him into the future, so he was at sixes and sevens with no clear notion of where he was in time or place.
‘I fell asleep.’ She smiled apologetically, only the slightest hint of the teenager he’d first met lingering in her eyes and on her lips.
‘Do you want to sleep some more?’ he asked, even as every bone in his body was silently praying she’d say no.
She shook her head, shyness flooding her eyes. ‘That’s the last thing I want.’
A second later, she’d lifted up and straddled him, her expression showing sensual heat. A second after that and her lips were on his, her flesh pressed to him, so thoughts and memories all burst into flames; there was only Annabelle, there was only this...
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘I DON’T WANT this to happen,’ she sobbed, hugging Lewis close, his frail frame in the bed bringing a lump to her throat that she couldn’t clear.
‘We don’t have any say in that.’ Even in his weakened condition, he smiled, trying to ease her pain. ‘Listen to me, Annie. I’m tired. I don’t know how long I’ll have, but it can’t be long. The drugs make me feel loopy most of the time,’ he said, referring to the cocktail of pain medication he’d been prescribed.
‘I know.’