‘I don’t know!’ The last word came out, horrifically, as a sob. ‘I couldn’t just stay there!’ She banged her palm on the steering wheel, the burning sensation in her throat, behind her eyes building and building. She was going to break, flood the city, destroy everything in her path. ‘I can’t fix it. It’s over.’
‘Nothing’s over.’ His hand wasn’t on her thigh anymore; he’d reached over the steering wheel, gently prying the keys from the ignition so she didn’t kill them both. ‘You’ve got your family, you’re safe. That’s what matters.’
‘Myfamily?’ She laughed. ‘You mean the lying, poisonous, murdering bloodline I’ve been cursed into? Myfamilywho’ve profited off a lie for the past hundred years? My family who hired a man to help them prove they hadn’t stolen Antonio La Marca’s recipe, only for him to die when he started sniffing around the truth? What does that tell you, Jett? It wasn’t theLa Marcaswho killed Clarkson. It was us ... my family ... Tom or Mum or ...’
‘Nella.’ Jett had seen her cry before. The leather in the back seat of his car was kept supple from all her tears that had soaked into it over the years. Tears after too many drinks, a fight, a heartbreak, a case she’d thought wasn’t going to affect her, a foiled abduction attempt she should have seen coming, a non-consensual encounter with Oliver, and nights with countless other men who saw her as nothing more than a conquest, a trophy, something to have. But nothing like this – not broken. No one had ever seen her broken.
Because Nella Barbarani didn’t break. And she certainly didn’t break in front of her chauffeur. The man who’d always been there when she was at her lowest, when she was too ashamed to call anyone else, when she had no one else to turn to – he was always the one who’d taken her away from anywhere she didn’t want to be. But he couldn’t drive her out of this.
But the way he was looking at her ...
She fought against the roar of the wave, the rolling sense of losing control, of letting go. She had to stay tethered. She’d never known anything else.
She dragged a shaking hand across her eyes, pulling herself back together, tightening the strings. She wasn’t actually going to run away, she just had to feel the wind, that sense of not having a clear plan. ‘I ... I ...’ Her jaw shuddered uncontrollably. ‘I have to fight this ... I still ... I have to prove ...’
‘Hey.Hey.’ His voice was stern but his fingers were gentle as they brushed a piece of hair behind her ears. ‘You don’t have to prove anything. Not to me.’ That gentle brush sparked memories of the office, that touch she’d never be able to have again. He reached for her.
‘It was all alie.’ The last word was a scream, but it was muffled by Jett’s shoulder as he pulled her towards him and she shattered everywhere.
If it was anyone else there, right then in that car, she could have done it, she could have built her armour back up. He was the only person she could break in front of. The only one who’d scrape up all the pieces and glue them back together.
‘My whole fucking life – every time I’ve defended them ... all the shit they’ve done, the people they’ve stampeded to get on top. Every snide comment, every person who’s tried to pull me down, abduct me, kill me, rape me – because of who I am, because of who I come from – I could deal with all of it, because I knew my privilege was at least earnt. My grandfather earnt his fortune. He came from nothing. But it was all a fucking lie.I’ma lie!’
‘You’re not,’ he breathed into her ear. ‘You’re not a lie.’ His arms tightened around her as he pulled her closer. ‘You’re the truest thing I know, Nella Barbarani.’
She sobbed into his shoulder, guttural, wet sobs that were probably making him wish he’d never got on the plane.
‘You’ve earnt every single thing you have. You refused your dad’s money, unlike your brothers. You and Eliza rented a dodgy share house in Willetton that I still claim, to this day, was a reformed meth lab. You worked two shitty jobs to support yourself through law school. And don’t think I’ve forgotten how he tried to break you. How he goaded you at Christmas and Easter to take his handouts, to give up, but it just made you more determined. I saw all that, Nella, and even once you graduated, you didn’t use the Barbarani fortune to set up your practice, you did that all on your own. Everything you are, everything you have, you have earnt, you deserve. I don’t think you were trying to prove yourself to him. I think you were trying to prove yourself toyou.’
Her sobs were now shudders – rough, choppy water after the tsunami, crashing against the hardness of his chest, his heartbeat thumping louder the more he spoke. And he wasn’t finished.
‘Whoever made that original recipe – your grandfather, Antonio La Marca or the two of them together – it doesn’t hold any weight against the person you are, Nella. It doesn’t mean your family is inherently bad or evil. Do you thinkI’mbad?I’mevil? My mother injected heroin into her veins while I was still in her womb. Am I bad because of this?’ His warm hand found hers and dragged it up, over his pecs, past his neck to the back of his shoulder – the part she’d dug her nails into a few nights ago, but only through the fabric of his shirt. Bare, her fingers found the ridges and rough circles of old scars – the exact circumference of a cigarette, a slice of a knife, and other shapes she couldn’t understand.
‘Of course not,’ she breathed, her fingers acting of their own accord before he could stop her, tracing the thick, jagged line cutting down his face. ‘Of course you’re not.’
His breath was ragged. He closed his eyes. She could feel every muscle in his face tense, but he didn’t stop her.
‘So why,’ he said, as she traced to the end of the scar near the corner of his mouth, ‘is it any different for you?’
You don’t have to prove anything to me.
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
He snatched her hand away, gripping her fists in his, forcing her gaze up from his chest to his liquid black eyes. ‘Look at me.’
It was the easiest command to obey. She wanted desperately to touch him again, to ask him again how he got his scar – not for personal gratification, this time, but to truly know him, to see him. She needed to know how all his pieces fit together.
To be his friend. Because that, she had to remember, was all she could ever be to him.
‘You deserve everything,’ he continued. ‘You’re not the sum of your family’s bank account, or their reputation, or their history. Your surname means shit all, because you are your own person. Your own fierce, independent, loyal, infuriating person. Your family respect you as a lawyer – that’s obvious from the fact that they wanted you to represent them in the case, not Clarkson. You’ve even earnt yourbody.I remember how hard you pushed when we ran together. I guess the only thing you haven’t earnt, that’s out of your control, are your looks, but you ...’
His impassioned rambling had apparently run out of fuel.
‘What?’ Her breathing had stabilised and she was making sense of her surroundings again, and becoming very, very aware of how she was basically drooling into his lap. ‘My looks? Are you trying to say you think I’mpretty?’
It was a useless attempt to soak up her despair, a reminder to herself, more than anything, that Jett needed an out from this awkward, crying, emotional scene. That’s what friends did. But all it did was clench up his features.
‘No.’ He glared. ‘I’d never say that.’
