Appetite gone, I stood up, staring stonily at him. “I’m afraid I can’t say the same.” I looked down at Theo, whose eyes had rounded comically. “You can have my burger. I’m leaving.”
“Wait, wait.” Preston held up his hands defensively, expression confused. “What happened? Did I do something to offend you?”
Staring at his pretty-boy face, I wanted nothing more than to smash my fist into it. But I wouldn’t. I did, however, want him to know that I knew he was scum. “We have a mutual friend in common. Aria Howard.”
Something like uneasiness flickered in his expression, but he brushed it off with a lazy smirk. “Oh, yeah, Aria. I don’t have a problem with Aria. If she has a problem with me, that’s not my issue.”
Arsehole.
I glanced at Theo. “I’ll see you around.”
“Oh, I’m done here for the evening.” Theo pushed to his feet. “I’ll walk you out.”
Without another look at Preston, I turned to leave.
Then the fucker said, “It’s bad enough Wesley Howard won’t work with me now … I should’ve known that frigid bitch would go around tarnishing my reputation. I guess that’s what I get for pity fucking a fatty to get to her daddy.”
A red haze of fury clouded my brain and before I could stop myself, I whirled around and slammed my fist into his face. All my weeks of training hit the actor with such impact he might as well have run headfirst into a brick wall.
His legs buckled and he crumpled to the pub floor.
Gasps filled the room and then stunned silence as Preston groaned, semiconscious, blood gushing from his nose.
“Out, out, before the phone cameras appear.” Theo rushed me, physically hauling me from the pub before anyone could snap a photo of me standing over Preston’s prone body.
A glance back inside saw his security team appear out of nowhere to help him. One of them glared at me, daring me to come back. Preston was conscious, so the urge to run back in and deck him again was strong. Even if I had to go through his security guys to get to him.
A hard smack on my back stopped me.
Looking dazedly at Theo, I found him grinning, highly entertained. “Feel better?”
My knuckles throbbed. “Marginally.”
“Well, the prick deserved it for maligning Ms. Howard. It’s fuckers like him that make women feel bad about their luscious bodies. Fat, indeed.” He scoffed. “Her body is a thing of beauty.” He cut me a look. “You lucky dog.”
“Do you want smacked in the face too?”
“I’d rather you not mar its perfection.” He smoothed a hand over his cheek. “You almost killed the bloke.”
A knot tightened in my gut at the thought. “Do you think he’ll press charges?”
Theo snorted. “And have the entire world know North Hunter took him out with one magnificent, movie-worthy punch? No. Absolutely not. He’s too much of an egomaniac for that. Aria dated that wanker? What the hell was she thinking?”
Irritated, I ignored his question. “How do you know him?”
“At the Oscars when he won. The arsehole is obsessed with status and seemed overly impressed by my father’s title. Which, of course, made me despise him. Which, of course, made me a tantalizing challenge to the little prick.” He let out a loud whistle, causing people passing us to look. “I am going to relive you decking that fragrant man swine over and over.” Theo patted me on the back again. “You just graduated from tolerable to slightly likable.”
“I can die happy.” I wished I could be satisfied by the encounter.
Instead, it filled me with restless energy.
Theo’s apartment was in Mayfair, so we went our separate ways. I walked the thirty minutes back to my flat. It was a two-bed with an open-plan living area. The main room was a light-filled space with a wall of windows. A balcony stretched along the building so I could enjoy my waterfront view of the Thames.
I used to love this place, but it didn’t feel like home anymore.
Because I’d forgotten the agonizing lesson I’d learned as a child.
Home wasn’t a place.
Home was the people.
Aria … Aria was my person.
After icing my hand for twenty minutes and pacing my apartment as I planned, I marched into my bedroom and hauled a box out of the cupboard. Inside were all my journals. Every journal I’d kept since I was a teenager.
Rounding my bed, I pulled my current journal out of the bedside drawer. Taking a breath, I flexed my throbbing hand and wrote down the events of the day, along with my thoughts.
My longing.
My love.
Hesitating, I held the journal over the box.
I was basically handing me over. Everything I’d ever felt for the last seventeen years was in this box. It was me, stripped bare.
Give her your trust, Theo had said.
Well, this was trust on a level I’d never given to anyone.
I dropped the journal into the box and strode into the kitchen to find packing tape.
Twenty-Six
ARIA
Spring was slow in awakening this year. The breeze skating over the North Sea still held a wintry chill, ruffling my hair and sprinkling goose bumps over my bare arms. It was May, but you wouldn’t know it.
The sun peeked through the gray clouds above, spilling pale gold rays across the sky and dappling the dark waters before me.
I stared unseeing, feeling my blouse billow, my hair blowing back from my face. A sudden urge to run into the water and just swim until I could do nothing but float away on the waves swept over me. Seagulls cried in the skies above as if they could sense how empty I felt. It was strange how painful empty was. By its very definition, emptiness should feel like nothing.
But the hollowness in my chest triggered soreness to radiate out to every part of me. Even my gums ached. My cheeks. My jaw. My whole body was tense because it was afraid I would shatter apart now that this void had opened inside me and weakened my foundations.
Ironically, missing North hurt worse than any of the horrible shit my exes had said and done to me.
“Ms. Howard!” I could hear a voice calling my name over the squawking of the birds overhead.
Turning, I looked toward the dunes that led onto the estate and back to the castle. Before North, I’d rarely ventured away from the castle without telling anyone where I was going. Every day since he’d left, if the weather permitted, I’d sneak out at lunchtime to be by myself on the private beach.
Sarah McCulloch stood in her housekeeping uniform at the top of a dune. She waved. “Ms. Hutchinson is looking for you, Ms. Howard!”
Back to work, then.
Hoping for a distraction, I nodded and headed up the beach. Sarah turned and left well before I could reach her. I didn’t take offense. Upon her return to work two weeks ago, I noted a marked difference in her. While still reserved, the shyness that caused her to blush like a schoolgirl seemed to have been stomped out by the brittleness of grief. I could see it in her eyes. The light there had dimmed.
But she’d insisted on coming back to work, so I had to let her do what she needed.
As soon as I hit the path again, I brushed as much sand off my feet as possible and slipped into my heels. It was a ten-minute walk back to the castle and in the flat shoes she wore, Sarah was way ahead of me. By the time I reached the entrance, Wakefield was there to hold the door open, and I entered the great hall to find it empty of members.