Fractured(58)

I don’t remember when he first began to pull back. One minute we were fused together, our mouths and hands exploring and delighting and then, all at once, it was just me. The hands that held my shoulders, arching me closer to him were now gently, but insistently, pushing me away.

Embarrassingly it took me several moments to realise what was occurring. My fumbling fingers were still struggling with the buckle of his jeans when his hand came down to encircle my wrist and move it away. The red mist of passion began to lift enough for me to see his face. The fire was almost gone and had been replaced by a darkly determined steely strength. Stupidly I refused to acknowledge what he doing and reached up to kiss him once again, opening my lips against his, sure I could elicit his response and reignite the flame.

But it was gone. Doused in sanity, where surely no sanity should belong. I didn’t care what his reasons were in stopping, I only knew I didn’t want to.

‘Oh God, don’t stop, please don’t stop,’ I begged, all pride abandoned. I kept my eyes riveted to his and actually caught the moment when the last ember of desire was extinguished in their blue depths.

He lifted himself off me in a quick and decisive move, half turning away to sit upon the edge of the bed.

‘I have to, Rachel. Don’t you see that?’

Clearly I did not see, and still refusing to acknowledge his withdrawal I shamelessly reached out to try to pull him back to me, but he was like a rock: cold, hard and totally immovable.

Without turning to look at me he picked up my discarded nightdress and tossed it back in my direction.

‘Cover yourself up.’

And those three words finally sliced through my desire, carving into my very core. I grasped the cotton garment and quickly struggled into it, feeling humiliated and strangely dirty at the same time. I had thrown myself at him, there was no other way to describe it; I had virtually begged him to take me and he had rejected me. How much clearer did he have to make it? Oh sure, he had responded at first, but I realised now that had just been a natural male response to a woman so obviously trying to seduce him. A physical knee-jerk reaction, nothing more.

But even physical desire hadn’t been sufficient to allow him to follow through. It was a cold and undeniable fact: Jimmy had never wanted me in that way; neither in the past nor now, and I had just made the biggest idiot of myself by launching myself at him like some third-rate seductress in a tacky novel.

‘I think you should leave now,’ I said in a quiet voice that trembled enough for me to realise that tears were only moments away. The speed with which he complied told me the truth: he couldn’t get out of there fast enough. He paused just once at the door, turning to give me a long hard look.

‘I’m so sorry, Rachel, please forgive me.’ His voice sounded truly tortured, but before I could even think of a response he had opened the door and left.

Sorry? He was sorry? What in hell’s name did he have to be sorry about? I was the one who should have apologised. I was the one who was apparently incapable of controlling her emotions and had to be told that what she was doing was completely out of order.

What was Jimmy guilty of? Nothing, except of not wanting me. And I could hardly blame him for that; for at that moment I felt like the most loathsome and disgusting creature that had ever walked the face of the earth.





Another night of crying myself to sleep. It was almost becoming a habit. If Jimmy noticed my red-rimmed eyes the following morning, he was too polite to comment on them. I had to admit that he didn’t look so great himself when we met in the corridor at the time that we’d arranged the night before. Of course, that had been during the civilised portion of the evening; before the madness had overtaken me in the middle of the night, when I had acted in such a way that I’d probably killed our friendship for ever.

On waking I had even harboured the pathetic hope that I had dreamt the entire episode, that none of it had really happened and that nothing had been irretrievably broken or damaged. But when I’d turned my head I could see the remains of the broken lamp and knew it was as irrevocably damaged as my relationship with Jimmy.

When I saw him waiting for me in the corridor I hesitated at the threshold of my room. I had no idea what to say. But fortunately it appeared that neither did he.

‘Do you want to stop for breakfast or just head back?’ were his opening words.

‘I’d just like to go back,’ I answered quickly.

Some response flickered in his eyes but he just nodded, as though this was what he had been expecting. He lifted the bag from my fingers and turned in the direction of the lifts.

‘Let’s go then.’