Page 107 of Replay
“That’s not what I’m doing.”His brows knit themselves together.“Alle, please.Just be gentle.I know you don’t feel you owe me anything, but I’m begging you.”
Her emotions were on the point of breaking.How dare he?This wasn’t her fault.He couldn’t pin it on her.She had a right to be damn furious.“Just let me pass, Xane.I’m done talking to you.I want to speak to him.”
She took a step to the side, in order to walk around him.Xane’s hand shot out and caught around her arm.“He loves you, Allegra.”
“Let go of me.”
He released his grip.“He’s terrified of losing you.He’s convinced that if he tells you who he really is you’ll want nothing more to do with him.And that you might pass what he says along to your brother.”
She shoved him away from her.“How dare you?I’ve never spoken to Marshall about him.I’m never going to speak to him or anyone about Spook.”Blood now boiling, she stormed towards the double doors, ready to crash through them.The heat of her rage was licking tongues of fire across the top of her chest and through her neck and cheeks.
“Allegra,” Xane yelled, fiercely enough to bring her to a stop before her hands thrust against the glass.“I didn’t say you would.I said he fears it.Don’t yell at him.”
He left before she could offer any sort of retort.
***
Alle reached for the door handle, but instead wound up with her brow pressed to the glass.She could see Spook from here.His outline was distorted by the double glazing, so that he was fuzzy around the edges and not entirely whole in the centre where the black of his clothing melded with the black of the night.He had his back to her, his gaze on the far horizon where hazy stripes of moonlight lay like welts upon the water.
He must have heard the door, for he turned around as she stepped outside.“Alle.”He didn’t move towards her.“Ash said he’d let me know when you got here.”He frowned at the phone in his hand.“Guess there’s no signal.”Then pushed it into a pocket.
“I haven’t seen Ash,” she said.“Are we going to talk about this like adults?”
Instantly, his head bowed.His fascination intimately intertwined with his own feet.She watched his jaw move, teeth grinding over one another.
“Spook?”She was holding it together here.Giving him a chance.Keeping her cool like Xane had asked her to even though part of her wanted to do the exact opposite simply to spite the lanky bastard.
“We should—we should do that.Somewhere quiet.”
“It’s quiet here.”
He swayed his head from side to side, gaze still on his feet.“This isn’t a conversation I want to have somewhere we could be overheard or interrupted.The things I need to say—it’s going to be difficult.”
“How about my cabin?”The only person likely to knock on her door was Ronnie, and based on his discomfort when she’d flung herself at him earlier and sobbed into his torso, he was unlikely to come calling until he was certain she wouldn’t repeat the behaviour.
Spook nodded into his chest.“Okay, I guess.”
Their assigned cabins were the same two they’d held on the outbound journey, the doors facing across the broad corridor.
Alle dumped her bag and jacket.Her cabin was a mirror image of Spook’s minus the veranda with the panoramic view over the ocean.“Where do you want to sit?”
He swallowed and nodded towards the sofa.The sofa, not the bed.Alle let him go ahead.He didn’t sit.He perched, so he barely made an indent in the cushion.Like he was poised to flee.
“Drink?”
“Uh,” he looked bewildered.“No.”
Rather than sit beside him, Alle pulled over the armchair so that they were knee to knee.The nail varnish he’d applied before the gig was already severely chipped, and as she watched, he nervously pushed his thumbnail between his teeth.
Alle gently tugged his hand away from his mouth, and clasped her hands around his.“I’m sorry I stormed off earlier.That didn’t help.”
“Alle, you’ve nothing to apologise for.You did nothing—”
She raised two fingers to silence him.
“Let me… I was hurt.Angry.I still am.But, I don’t think you slept with him just for the hell of it.There’s a story here, and I want to understand.Last night, that woman—she was your ex, right?The one you’ve spoken about.The one who asked you to break her wrist.”
It was like the air had frozen around them.Spook shivered.Alle too.Beneath the skin, his pulse was racing.He squirmed, legs jerking like he was gearing up to bolt.Alle gripped his hands tighter.
