A Beautiful Torment

44. Traitor

The sheets were cool against my skin as I slid beneath them, pulling the duvet up around my shoulders. It was close to two in the morning – much later than I usually went to sleep. I'd returned to my suite after dinner and changed into my night things (I'd chosen a pair of white silk sleep-shorts and a matching, pale pink camisole; a little more daring than my usual cotton, but Cleontine's presence in the house bad set me on edge) and settled down on the sofa to wait for Wyatt.

I hadn't noticed his absence much at first; another episode of Lorenzo: On Tour caught my attention as well as the first episode of The Big Fang Theory, but as one hour slowly became three, I began to feel anxious. We'd never really discussed it before, but I had always just assumed that we would both sleep in my room – together – for the duration of our stay at Belmont House. Wyatt had never failed to show up at some point, before.

My brow furrowed as I stared at the dark canopy above my head. The only noise in the room was the low, familiar sound of a heartbeat emanating through the walls, otherwise it was completely silent.

Eerily so.

I'd never realized how reassuring I found Wyatt's presence before, but now that he was gone, I felt his absence like a phantom limb.

I considered sending him a mext, but a heartbeat later, I quickly reconsidered.

What if he was with her? They'd certainly looked cosy enough at dinner – what if he'd gone to her suite to engage in her... services? He had said that he used to sleep with girls to replenish his waning emotional energy, and he hadn't slept with anybody since our arrival, at least. An errant image flew through my mind – Cleontine, in all her loveliness, lying across Wyatt's bed in the room next to mine. The dark expression in his eyes as he leaned over her, fingers trailing along the side of her neck...

I huffed in frustration and shook my head, trying to dislodge the image from my head.

What was wrong with me?! My chest ached – physically ached – as the seconds ticked by, and his absence became more and more pronounced.

The longer I waited, the more furious and jealous my thoughts became. I found myself tripping back through my old memories, back to the day Emma died in the woods. A part of me wished I'd never offered him my lunch. If I'd somehow managed to escape from the Reaper by myself, Wyatt would never have felt an obligation to protect me.

He wouldn't feel like I was his responsibility.

Maybe then he would look at me the way he –

No, I interrupted that thought sharply. A sliver of resentment spread throughout my system.. I didn't need him to look at me like I was somebody worth kissing. There were plenty of other guys out there, human or otherwise, who found me attractive and were willing enough to indulge my desire to be kissed the way I wanted.

But they're not him, another part of me reasoned. None of them are Wyatt.

And that was the crux of the matter: whether Wyatt wanted me or not, I was starting to realize that he was it for me. As much as I wondered what it would be like to kiss Romeo, Romeo's kiss would never make me feel that crazy, vibrant, electric, alive feeling that Wyatt managed with just a simple look. A look that said he felt it too – like the torn, frayed pieces of our shared soul were knitted back together for that one, endless moment. Nobody else had the power to make me feel so complete the way he did. As corny as it sounded, it was undoubtedly true, in the most unromantic sense possible. We shared a soul. A bond like that was deeper than the romanticized idea of soul mates. My soul wasn't a mate for his – we shared one.