Chapter 24

We ate quietly. I hadn't eaten Chinese food in a long time. The atmosphere between us was thick with all the unsaid words - mostly I wanted to run, but instead I bit, chewed and swallowed.

My thoughts were of Alice. She had been a wonderful friend, faithful and understanding, even more so than Angela, but since that fated night I spent with Edward at her place, our relationship had become a little strained. He was her brother after all, and I struggled to figure him out. I was afraid I would dislike him even more at the end of it all. But looking at him while eating in silence, even carrying the weight of the world, it was so easy to forget...

"What are you thinking about?" he asked after a few minutes in silence.

"You."

"What about me?" And there was that annoying smirk plastered on his face.

"I'm trying to figure you out…"

"What conclusion have you come to?"

"Are you innately a good person and were conditioned to be this evasive and ruthless man, or was it the other way around?" Our eyes locked and he seemed less amused.

"Which one would you like it to be?" he demanded hoarsely.

"I'm not sure…"

"Hmmm… Do I have to be one or the other? Who could have conditioned me to be good? Henry More? You know I was pretty much raised by him… I am who I am today for him, because of him…"

"You didn't like him." I stated.

"It's complex."

"Why?"

"I'm like him." And from his point of view, I could tell he meant it.

I wanted to be able to say he was not. I was having ambivalent feelings when it came to Henry, just as about everything else in my life. Coming to terms with my feelings for Edward, however poorly misplaced I believed them to be, probably meant going against my preconceived idea of him, Henry's idea, and it scared me to submerge myself in all that area of gray.

But things were changing, evolving, moving.

"Alice is mad at me… because of you," I said at last.

"I'm her brother; it's about time she remembered where her loyalty should lie."

"You know why I had to leave," I mumbled mostly to myself.

"Do I?" His eyes were blank, and he returned his focus to the plate in front of him.

"I think you do."

He denied it with a brief move of his head, but didn't pursue the subject.

That's when I realized how much we were both hurt. Even when unable to name my feelings for him, I took comfort in his kisses, no matter how conflicted I was in his presence. Those, though, made me feel rotten. He must have noted the change in my stance, the guilt, because his posture shifted.

"What am I going to do with you?" He asked rhetorically.

Love me, was stuck in my throat, but we weren't there yet. We couldn't.

"What are you going to do about this James Hunter situation?" he continued when he realized his question would remain unanswered, opting for a change in the subject. That was also something I didn't want to approach.

"I'm sure I'll figure something out in due time." I answered evasively.

"He's dangerous and I'm not particularly happy to have him this close. Whatever you've got on your mind, just make it quick."

He thought I had a plan. How could I admit to him that I thought I had been played?

"Well, thanks for lunch, I think I should be going," I said, rising.

"Stay."

"I have work to do. Professor Walker is waiting for me at More Park."

"Stay," he said again more forcefully, "I'll drive you home later. I might even consider helping you out."

"Doing what?"

"What do you think?"

And there was that tone again, with slow but decisive seduction.

"I really have to work."

He smiled, sensing victory.

"You have to rest. When was the last time you took some time out just to relax?"

"When was the last time you took some time off just to relax?" I retorted, noticing the shadows under his eyes.

"Does everything have to be a fight with you? Come, let's do things regular couples do... let's watch a movie."

I frowned a little at his mention of us being a couple.

"We are a couple," he stated. "Are you seeing someone else?"

I stared, dumbfounded.

"I take the absence of a response as a no..."

"Are we having the exclusivity talk?"

"I believe we are," he answered after little pondering.

He took my hand and beat my resistance by carrying me upstairs, to what I easily identified as his bedroom.

"No, no, no..." I said, retracting, trying to escape his embrace.

"If I were to seduce you, you'd notice. I have the best TV and sound system right here and it's cosier than the theatre room downstairs."

"We'd be a lot, as you put it, 'cosier,' in your four poster bed."

"Alice said, even though I am currently failing to see her point, that I should woo you."

"And dragging me to bed is the best way to do so?" I nearly laughed bitterly at the joke.

He placed me gently in the center of the bed, grabbed a blanket, took off his shoes and lay beside me, turning on the flat screen that appeared out of nowhere, from inside the wall.

"My mom thought that the TV ruined the feeling of the room."

"TVs weren't that great in the Victorian period."

"You really dislike the house..."

"It's beautiful... I just feel like most of the things belong behind a red rope in some museum."

"Most of them do."

"We're not a couple," I stated. He gave me the remote to choose from a list of movies. I clicked the enter button over something I'd seen before.

"Yet you're here."

Atonement.

I must have slept for a while because when I opened my eyes it was already dark outside.

"Interesting choice of movie," he said against my hair.

"Edward, what time is it?"

"It's around nine p.m. I was wondering when you were going to wake up."

"You should have woken me up. Professor Walker is waiting for me. I have a lot to cover today."

"And I said earlier that I'd help you out."

"I don't need your help," I said defensively while trying to disentangle myself away from him.

"You might not want it, but you need it. Stop squirming and look at me. I know you distrust me, I can comprehend your reasons. But you need me."

"Everywhere I turn, Edward, people try to stab me."

"Of course they do. Why are you so surprised about it baffles me, because it's just human nature. You see the best and the worst of people every day but you were not prepared to deal with the high finance world. You're too principled. Henry More should have seen that! He left you unprotected and without tools to get out of the hole he threw you in."

He was pinning me against the bed with his body, but I couldn't feel the weight of him over me.

"You know what really bothers me? If he hadn't interfered, you would have been the one to go to that bloody party in Sydney with me, I would have inherited what was rightfully mine, and now we would be discussing the benefits of working in the British health care system in the aftermath of mutually satisfying lovemaking."

"I highly doubt that. The only thing people see in me right now is an easy target with 12 billion dollars written at the center. You would have used me and discarded me the same way you have to every other woman who's ever crossed your path. You'd end up married to some high class woman that would fit your standards and I would get on with my life, trying to find a way to pay my college loans. But you know what? For some reason, Henry chose me!"

I could sense a shift in him. He was furious.

"Of course he did. He did it to spite me, to keep you away from me. He did it for the sheer pleasure of haunting me from the grave. You were not his 'should-have-been granddaughter'; you were the sophisticated version of her. He fancied you the way a man fancies a woman. You were the improved version of Marie Thomas, the woman who got away because he was too afraid of to let mummy and daddy down. He was probably embarrassed of her. How could he introduce the maid to his friends as his wife? Have you considered that?"

"Edward, get off me," I said through gritted teeth, pushing him without much success.

"Things are not that simple." He was insulting my grandmother and I refused to see Henry in that light.

"I can't sleep at night because of you. My heart constricts at the thought of any man coming near you. I worry that someone is out there trying to kill you and you don't have the faintest idea of how to keep yourself safe. I could have let you drown, and I'm not just talking about that night I pulled you out of a nearly frozen river. Instead I'm here. It would be easier to take over or just to walk away from it all. God knows I've tried..." he shouted.

And then he kissed me, his lips glued to mine with full force, unmoving and undeterred by my protests. No matter how hard I shook my head he wasn't letting me go."

"I have no idea how this has happened to me," he whispered. "I've tried hard to deny it. But can't you see how much I care for you? How much you mean to me?" his voice was now soft and pleading and he loosened his grip around my arms.

All the fight eluded me when I found in his conflicted stare a flicker of something that looked a lot like longing, need and devotion, like... I held my breath. I couldn't risk thinking much of it, until he said it aloud.

"I love you."

AN:

I'm still here!

RL was really tough over the past months, with even more work, I began doing a post graduation and my grandmother recently passed away after struggling with cancer. It has been really hard. I'm not sure if you can tell how much the mood of my writing shifted because of that. Anyway, I'm not giving up on the story. This thing is going to be finished and that's a promise.

How have you been? Is anyone out there still reading this?

Follow me on twitter, I'm Nofrure86

Take care,

Nofrure.