Runaway Heart (A Game of Hearts #2) (16 page)

“Good night, Hannah.” I dug my hands in my pockets to keep them from touching her again.

It wasn’t time to break rules yet.

“Night.” She turned away to follow Charlotte and Cherry. They called out their good nights, heading for the cheery front gate wrapped in a string of white Christmas lights.

I didn’t want to… wasn’t near enough ready to, but I left Hannah outside Granny Day’s gate with a smile. As I walked back toward the car, the warmest sensation I had in months felt like it was about to burst forth from my chest.

She was here and, even though she was hesitant, I had days to work on showing her how right we were for each other. To try to get inside that pretty head of hers so I could learn every square inch of her beautifully complicated mind, because I knew what I wanted.

I wanted her. Wanted to tell her everything about me… every failure, every success, and memorize everything about her in return. I wanted to know every inch of her body like the back of my hand. Wanted to paint a smile on her face only I could give her.

She was a puzzle I was only just beginning to work out. A puzzle that required patience and understanding… two things I was excellent at.

Hannah spending time in London was somewhat a miracle gifted to both of us. I wasn’t about to waste a single second of it.

IT HAPPENED AS QUICK AND as bright as lightning crashing to the ground and then disappearing, leaving you wondering if you had really seen it. Leaving you waiting for the echoes of sound that told you what you saw and felt was real.

Seeing him in the alley unreeled every emotion I’d worked so hard to gain control over on the plane ride to England. It was like being on a hardcore diet of only lettuce and air, and then being shoved into a restaurant that had all of your favorite foods.

It didn’t matter who you were… you were going to order a plate.

How could I have
not
gone up to him and said hi when I’d first seen him outside the bar? How could I have ignored the way my heart felt? Like it had been transplanted inside the body of a girl who knew how to feel and react to the guy who held it.

I wasn’t that girl. I didn’t fall in love. I didn’t wake up and fall asleep thinking about the same guy. Thinking about what he was doing in that moment. Wondering if he was thinking about me too. Getting butterflies at every thought, and then getting jealous when another girl entered the picture.

Maybe I wasn’t her before Rum Cay… but I am now.

I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment where I lost control. Maybe in between the kisses and passion back in Rum Cay that swallowed up my soul and spat me out on a plane home without a real idea on where we stood and a constant itch to return there.

Maybe it was the conversations that happened between us as easy and as effortless as breathing. The words that rushed past my lips in waterfalls enchanted with an uncommon need to show him who I was on the inside, despite my reservations.

Or maybe it was the way his eyes lit up every time he looked at me… every time he
really
looked at me, like he saw past all my bruises and inner scars, down to the core of who I was, and actually
wanted
that person.

Maybe it was that.

Morning came and went. The preliminary bouts slipped through my fingers like water, leaving my head spinning with the excitement of tomorrow’s bout. I was one step closer to my goal, and one step further from having any form of control over the organ pumping mad amounts of blood through my body as I got ready in my room to meet up with Ed.

That’s why you set rules in place, Hannah. To protect yourself. To have the control you so easily give up around him. Think of the rules and you’ll be safe.

Right. Safe.

How could I be safe when he was knocking on my door and my chest felt like it could explode from the force of my heart beating?

I gave myself a quick once over in the mirror, spritzed some floral perfume on my neck and wrists, and then dashed for the door shouting, “Coming.”

I lost my breath the moment it opened.

Beautiful. That was what he was. There was no denying it, and… and I agreed not to lie to myself. I was attracted to him like a moth to a flame.

I knew I was about to burn myself in all the worst ways.

“Hello again,” he said, slightly dipping his head. “That was a bloody good bout. I knew you were tough, but damn.”

I smiled, shutting the door behind me, and waved off his compliment. “It was just another day in the rink.”

He made a chortling noise in his throat. “You make it sound like it was a walk in the park. How many forty-minute matches did ye compete in today, because I have to be honest with ye… The wheels in my head are still spinning. Pun intended.”

I laughed as we headed down the front steps. “Four today, one tomorrow, and then however many it takes the next day to make it through the quarterfinals to the finals.”

“Jesus.” He rubbed his hands up and down the back of his head. “And here I thought men were tough.”

“That’s what you get for thinking,” I teased, nudging into him. Wishing I hadn’t, because it made him look at me in a way that made me want to break too many rules to keep up with.

LONDON WAS COLD.

It consistently felt like glaciers took turns breathing down my neck. Like tiny paper cuts slicing into every inch of my exposed face each time a breeze moved past me. I felt my share of winters before, but the constant blast of arctic air felt like the sun decided to go on vacation.

“It’s not like your winters at home, yeah?” Ed asked as we followed him and Charlie toward the destination they claimed would knock our American socks off.

My teeth chattering like a machine gun and my flat gaze was my answer to that.

“It’s not so bad,” Cherry said as she walked in stride next to Violet.

“Yeah. Nothin’ a little whiskey can’t fix,” Violet added, smirking back at me.

If only I had a bottle. It would surely be gone.

We rounded the corner, Ed keeping a safe distance next to me, and then he and Charlie stopped and turned with lemon-wedge-sized grins.

“Well, ladies, our tour stop today would be the glorious Big Ben!” Charlie announced, directing our eyes up.

“Of all the places you could show us, you take us to a clock tower” I asked, looking up at the iconic monument, wishing I felt whatever it was you were supposed to feel when standing in front of a structure so culturally important.

All I felt was the bitter cold touch of the wind and the dry itch in my throat.

“This isn’t just any clock tower, lass. This is
the
clock tower,” Charlie said, chest out and arms up in glorious pride as we all gazed up at it.

He and Ed started spouting off facts as cars and double-decker buses whizzed by us in a blur. I wondered where the passengers were going. If they were late for a meeting or secretly meeting up with a lover.

Or if they were just as lost in life as I was.

My eyes drifted from the building to the people walking around us, heading in every direction. Their chatter filled the air with the sort of energy you felt when in the midst of a tourist trap. The giddy anticipation. The overzealous need to take as many pictures as you can. Probably more than you’d ever look back on.

I realized in all my panic of seeing Ed again, I didn’t even bring a camera. Looking over at Ed, who was pointing out a memory of his to the group, made me wish I had. That I could capture him in his natural state. The way he spoke so animatedly with his hands and body language, engaging any who were in his vicinity. The way the cold wind laced through his hair like invisible fingers. And how his cheeks reminded me of the McIntosh apples I’d pick with Maggie and her dad when autumn came around.

“Earth to Hannah,” Charlotte said, waving a hand up in down in front of my face.

I looked at her, blinking.

She grabbed me by the arm and pulled me out of earshot near a guy with a beanie snapping angled pictures of Big Ben.

“You need to tell him.”

Shit.

“Charlotte, there’s nothing to tell.”

She wasn’t fazed. “Oh, like hell there isn’t. You’re literally looking at him with that ooey-gooey look girls get when they’re in love. Not to mention you changed at least three times this morning, and you even—”

She grabbed a lock of my hair, her smile full of teeth.

“You even did your hair,” she added, as if that was a telltale sign for love.

“I changed because I wasn’t sure how cold it would be, and I did my hair because I simply felt like doing my hair. Can’t a girl do her hair without being in love?”

She batted her lashes at me.

“And I don’t even know what ooey-gooey eyes are. I was looking at the clock tower,” I lied, feeling like every ear around was tuned in on us. “And keep your voice down.”

I found my gratuity in the cold as I touched my burning cheeks.

She glanced over her shoulder at our small group, and then turned back to me, waving me off. “They can’t hear me, and that’s not important anyway. What’s important is that you don’t blow this second chance.”

I needed to nip this in the bud.

“We’re just friends, Char. That’s it. We both came to an understanding last night. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a clock tower to stare fathomlessly at.”

I moved past her, trying to keep my stomach from moving up into my throat. Ed watched me walk back, a slightly curious look in his eyes. I smiled, trying to assure him all was good, but I wasn’t sure he believed it as his words trailed off and he let Charlie take over explaining all the hellish things they did in that area when they were younger.

“You okay?” he asked as Charlotte walked around me, muttering
tell him
before joining Charlie.

“I’m fine,” I said, smoothing my hair down and rubbing a phantom itch from my nose. “Charlotte was just asking me about my plans for dinner later.”

He eyeballed me, eyebrows raised. “And here I thought I’d be the first one to break a rule.” The corner of his mouth lifted in the cutest kind of way.

My confidence stumbled all around my tongue. “What?” I managed to ask.

“You’re lying. That’s not what Charlotte asked.”

I jerked my head back, my blood heating up. “And just how would you know that?”

He wore a faint, almost subliminal grin. “Because when ye lie, ye do this cute little thing where you rub your nose as ye’re speaking, almost like ye’re trying to hide the words ye say.”

I thought back to when I lied and realized I’d actually done that. And he’d paid that much attention to notice. “I uh—” I started to say, searching for words I knew wouldn’t come. Not when he was right and I’d broken a rule. “Well, shit. Can we… can we just agree it was a lie and leave it at that?”

“Sure,” he answered with an easy shrug.

It took me a second to realize he had agreed to drop it. He wasn’t going to push and prod the truth from me like most would.

“So… what are your plans after this?” he asked, shoving his hands in his pocket.

“I don’t have any,” I admitted, my stomach feeling like a thousand grasshoppers were dancing around.

“Good,” he said thoughtfully, and then added, “So, ye want to go for a walk or something? Ye seem a bit bored by ‘ole Big Ben.”

“Me and architecture go together as well as oil and water.” I watched my breath wisp out in small clouds. “A walk sounds good.”

He grinned like a fool, and then jogged over to the group. A second later, they were all making kissing noises at us as he guided me in the opposite direction.

I shouldn’t have felt as if I was sitting next to a warm fire as I walked beside him. I should have headed back. Should have told him it was a bad idea, but there wasn’t an inch of my body that believed that logic.

“Do you know how to cook?” he asked, catching me off guard.

“Cook? Umm… I guess if you count microwaving a twenty-five cent pack of noodles as cooking, then sure.”

“Microwaving noodles?”

“Yeah,” I said, almost defensively. “With my schedule, cooking is a pastime I’m not interested in. What about you?”

“Ye name it, I can probably make it,” he said confidently, his chest straight.

I tested him out. “Chocolate cake?”

“Try triple chocolate cake with custard filling and a coffee-stained buttercream icing that will knock your socks off,” he said, walking me up to the front door of a pub.