Reckoning Point, стр. 83

When she doesn’t immediately reply he rushes on, “I should warn you, they’re not like my aunt, Selina. They’re …” he breaks off, realising he was about to label them as ‘cold’ and he frowns, disturbed that this would be his first thought in order to describe them. “They’re, different. We’re not close,” he finishes, lamely.

And another thought comes to him. He needs to put Elian straight on the lie that he told her, but he needs to make her see that even though the rotten, perverted, evil Niko is Elian’s real father, it doesn’t matter. She is she, he is what he is, or was. And if there is anyone to make Elian see that blood really doesn’t matter at all, it is his own parents and their dismissive ways towards him, their only son. A frown creases his brow as he thinks of the way they are with each other, all three of them. Distant, all those years that he lived at their house – even now he doesn’t refer to it as home – it was like he was a lodger or a roommate. He wonders why his father has extended this invitation to him, now, after all this time. He hopes his parents don’t suddenly want to play happy families, not if he intends to use them to show Elian how little DNA matters.

“Well?” he prompts.

Elian can’t pull her eyes away from his. They are dangerous, those eyes, she thinks. One could drown in them. As the word ‘drowning’ pops into her head, she thinks of her mother, and the doctor, pulled under different waters to the same death. And the man who her mother lived with, the man who her mother took with her to her watery grave.

Elian shivers. She’s not cold, even though the weather is distinctly cooler than it has been. No, this is a little shimmer of pleasure at the thought that that man isn’t her blood father. That news, combined with the test results that show she doesn’t have some disease picked up by the foul man that raped her, plus the realisation that her mind seems to be clearer now, less muddy somehow, all lend a hand to how she is feeling right now.

Light. She feels lighter, she realises.

And now Alex wants her to go away with him, to spend time with his family. Which is a little weird, as he doesn’t seem to like them much, apart from Selina, of course.

She casts her mind back over the last two months of the summer of this year. And all the years before that, from the time that Sissy abandoned her alone in London, and how Elian had lain low, not doing anything to bring attention to herself, not allowing herself friends or lovers. These last few months could have scared her back into her former reclusive state, but strangely, she finds she doesn’t want to go home and hide in her beautiful apartment in Fitzrovia. She wants to go wherever this man beside her is going. She wants to hold his hand for longer, and now she is free and clear from illness and her whole self feels clean again, she wants to lie beside him at night, in his bed, in his arms.

Shyly, she nods. “I’d love to come with you, Alex,” she says.

She expects a cheer, or something, because it feels rather monumental to her, but instead he nods at her, his mouth set in a grim line, as though there is something else there, bad news or a job to be done.

She shakes her head, smiles winningly at him and squeezes his hand. Of course there is nothing else. The bad news is done, and now they can begin to really get to know each other. All the trouble is over.

Isn’t it?

THE END

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