Fractured(57)

‘I kept that!’ I cried out involuntarily, before correcting myself. ‘Or rather, in my other life I did. I kept it in my jewellery box. I couldn’t throw it away, it seemed like my last link with you.’

He smiled, but said nothing. And then another thought occurred to me.

‘And we’d made arrangements for the following day. I remember that now. You’d asked me to go round the next day to see you and you’d sounded really mysterious about it. I wondered about that for years. What had you wanted to talk about?’

Was it the light, or had his cheeks really deepened in colour at my question?

‘Oh I don’t know. I can’t remember after all this time.’

I let it go without comment, not wanting to divert him from his tale. But I couldn’t help wonder why he had just lied to me.

The story continued true to my memories until we reached the point when we had all begun the frantic dash from the table to escape the oncoming car.

‘… and we all managed to get clear of the window before the guy drove into it.’

‘But I was stuck. I couldn’t get free, a chair was blocking me in. Didn’t it happen that way?’

He was silent for a moment, seeming to almost weigh up what to tell me.

‘It all happened so quickly, it’s hard to say. Perhaps you were the last to get clear.’

There was something he was glossing over here and I wasn’t about to let it rest.

‘No. I wasn’t the last. My dad said that you got hurt, so obviously you were still near the window when the car crashed through. What happened?’

I realised then what he was reluctant to tell me.

‘It is as I remember it, isn’t it? You came back for me. You pulled me clear.’

He looked strangely embarrassed to admit it.

‘We all kind of helped each other get away.’

I shook my head. I could still see it so clearly: everyone had moved back, everyone had been safe, everyone but me. But one of them had come back to rescue me.

‘You saved my life.’

For a moment it looked like he was going to continue to deny it, but then he heard the certainty in my voice and went instead for humour.

‘I couldn’t let you die and take my lucky penny with you.’

But I wasn’t going to let him divert me.

‘You saved my life.’

His answer this time lost all flippancy, and with desperate honesty he replied, ‘How could I do anything else?’

I didn’t know what to say. There are no words to cover that sort of gratitude; to repay that kind of debt.

‘And you got hurt.’

I raised my hand and lifted the hair away from his forehead, revealing a small white jagged scar that ran down from his hairline to the level of his eye.

‘It’s so like mine,’ I breathed in wonder. ‘The one I thought I had,’ I corrected. ‘Except mine was deeper, longer.’ I let my finger trace the line of his scar. ‘Mine went down here,’ my finger ran over his cheek, catching slightly on the roughness of bristle, ‘and then went to here.’ My finger continued to etch the blueprint of the remembered scar, but instead of stilling where my disfigurement had ended, I continued to trace a pathway to his mouth, coming to rest upon his slightly parted lips.

Electricity crackled between us. The moment in the bathroom suddenly paled into insignificance compared to the potently charged atmosphere.

Gently, oh so gently, he drew the tips of my fingers in between his parted lips, flicking against the sensitive pads with his tongue. My entire body shuddered with a frisson of excitement.

And then I was in his arms. I truly cannot say who made the first move, it could have been either of us. All I knew was the force of the passion in his kiss and the feel of his long hard body pressed against mine.

Time became suspended as our kisses deepened; the heat of our passion welding my body to his with an intensity that astounded me. His hand trembled slightly as he slid the nightgown from my shoulders, but he had no need to be hesitant. I wanted this to happen just as much as he did, maybe even more. And in a sobering revelation of clarity, I finally acknowledged that I had been waiting for and wanting this very moment for years but had been too blind to see it.

As his lips and hands travelled over my exposed flesh I heard a low throaty murmur of pleasure escape me. I couldn’t believe how wantonly and readily I was responding to his touch. It was like nothing I had ever experienced before.

The bed covers were kicked aside and I felt no embarrassment to be naked in front of him. Given our long friendship I would have expected this to feel wrong, maybe even vaguely incestuous, but nothing before had ever felt so right. Our ragged breathing tore into the silence of the room and the trembling that coursed through Jimmy’s body as he covered mine shook me with its intensity.