Wait For Me

Chapter 5.

Exhaling agitatedly, I threw on some jeans - I had settled on wearing a black fitting t-shirt with them, and some high tops. It was warm enough to go without a jacket and the shirt accentuated and clung to my muscles.

 I glared at the clock ticking on the wall. It was only one o’clock - Phil said the party was starting at seven. How could he expect me to wait another six hours when I was so close?

The door to our room was suddenly swung open, almost knocking it off its hinges with pure brute force. Speak of the devil and he shall appear; Phil grinned in the doorway, his grey eyes sparkling.

“I see you've finally had a shave Cinderella!” He barked good-naturedly. “But your hair is offending me.”

“Excuse me?” I laughed uneasily.

“Your hair, lad. I was a barber before I bought this place.” He elaborated, smoothing his hand across his hairless head. “I may be bald, but I know split ends when I see them.”

He dragged the chair from the corner of the room, letting it scrap across the floor until it was in front of me and abruptly sat me down. I watched in horror as he pulled some scissors from his back pocket and snipped them in the air a few times. Who the hell was this guy, Sweeney Todd? Noah emerged from the bathroom, one eyebrow raised as he looked on.

“Stay still.” Phil instructed sternly, his grey eyes hard with concentration as he reached forward to clip my hair. I sat rigidly, but inside I was panicking.

This mother fucker is going to make me bald.

* * *

Mystified and hot with fury, I stood there like a fool with air leaving my lungs in tiny whispery breaths; the effect he had on me would never change. His dark hair was arbitrarily tousled and his sloped nose led to the soft lips that I could almost taste on the tip of my tongue. His posture was sturdy and powerful and just... manly. He made Lachlan look like a little boy in comparison. I could feel my traitorous heart already beginning to wake from its four year long slumber – it heaved in my chest with a tender ache, as if it was trying to yank me closer to him.

“Who the fuck is this?” Lachlan almost laughed, but it died in his throat when he sensed the stifling intensity around us that was rising by the second. “Louise?”

Zach detected the use of my full name as soon as it had left the Scot’s mouth, his heavy brows shifting into a hard stare as he took a step forward. I backed up instantaneously, as if he was a fire that was about to scald me. Perhaps he was.

“I was about to say the same thing, Lou.” Zach rumbled, the hostility in his voice making Lachlan narrow his eyes.  

All this time I had been waiting and waiting, waiting to see him...waiting for this moment. Four years of my life had been subjugated by scenarios of this moment in my mind. It was supposed to feel like all my Christmases and birthdays had come all at once. Yet the feeling I expected was nowhere to be found. My heart was craving, needing him, loving him - but my mind was filled with countless emotions that only one word could be sufficient enough to describe them: abandonment.

“Why are you here?” I demanded, my tone harsh and broken as I struggled to breathe.

The man I had spent years wanting replied, his answer straightforward and honest.

“You know why.” He stared at me. The warm adoration and care he held in his umber irises making my skin prickle with shivers. “I love you. I never stopped loving you, Lou.”