Unfaithful (34 page)

“Evan, don’t be crazy!” I exclaimed.

“I trust you,” he whispered. He smiled and cautiously relaxed his grip.

“My God,” I murmured, releasing the tangle of emotions gripping my chest. “Evan, look!” I cried excitedly, but his hands were already moving slowly up my arms, caressing me. He stopped at my shoulders and squeezed them.

My heart skipped a beat. He breathed deeply into my hair and I sensed the power of his emotions: love, desire, hesitation . . . and something else I couldn’t decipher. Fear? Maybe I didn’t want to know. I tried to concentrate as Evan gently swept my hair back from my shoulder, almost as if it were the first time. I wasn’t sure I could contain all these emotions. The heat in my chest was so intense it almost hurt.

“Bravo!” he whispered in my ear, making me tremble. The next moment, a light pressure tickled my neck as Evan rested his head behind mine, burying his face in my hair. The contact was as gentle as a caress. He exhaled deeply, his breath hot, and I shuddered again. He was still for a moment and I half closed my eyes, surrendering to the rhythm of his breathing.

A moment later, he returned his hands to mine, which I carefully slid off the control stick so he could take over. “How do you feel?” he asked.

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt anything so thrilling before,” I admitted.

Evan stole a glance at me and a tiny crease appeared at the corner of his mouth. Mischievousness sparkled in his eye just as a glimmer of alarm appeared in mine.

“You shouldn’t have said that.” His wolfish smile confirmed that he’d just given me a warning.

“What—”

Before I could finish, Evan pushed the control stick. The plane tilted to the right and rolled on its axis. I shrieked, my entire body tingling, and held on to Evan with all my might. A second later, the plane leveled out and we both burst out laughing with exhilaration.

“Are you sure this thing can fly so high up?” I teased, a smile still on my lips, trying to make myself heard over the sound of the engine.

“I can take you to the moon if you want.”
His voice filled my head with endless tenderness, reaching my heart with a warm quiver that made me half close my eyes. I’d never been this happy. Not until I’d met Evan.

“Evan,” I murmured, caught between sadness and ecstasy. His laughter died away at my tone and his gaze rested on mine, listening. “Promise me you’ll never leave me.” I couldn’t look him in the eye; the fear of losing him left me breathless.

“I promise,” he whispered, his tone soothing but determined. “I’m not crazy, after all.” He hid a smile in my hair.

“I’m not so sure about that,” I said with a grin that faded before the serious look on his face.

“I wouldn’t leave you for anything in the world.” His eyes, deep and dark, were fixed on mine. “If you could read my heart, Gemma, you’d know how important you are to me,” he whispered tenderly, his lips brushing my cheek.

I closed my eyes, losing all control. “I don’t need to read your heart, I already know it.”

For a moment, we looked at each other wordlessly.

“I’ll stay with you as long as you want me.”

“Forever, then,” I replied with a little sigh.

“You don’t know how many times I’ve come up here alone.” His voice was tinged with pain. “You can’t imagine how many times I’ve felt this same sunlight on my skin. But this is the first time I’ve felt its warmth,” he said softly.

“That’s because you’re not wearing your jacket,” I whispered, my eyes still closed because of the thrill his voice was sending through me, threatening to melt me any second.

Evan looked at me, his expression serious, and brushed his cheek against mine. “It’s because you’re here.”

An unexpected shiver ran through me again.

As the plane taxied across the arid field I now realized was a runway, I felt emptied out, as though I’d just lost something or awakened from a fast-fading dream. And yet inside me I knew it wasn’t true. I was still living my dream and would continue to as long as Evan was by my side. As long as
I
stayed by
his
side. Because sooner or later, death would return to hunt me down. I was sure of it. The thought was like a punch to the stomach.

Evan switched off the engine and I looked around. The plane had come to a halt in front of the old hangar. “You’re not taking it inside?” I asked.

“You want to leave already?” he asked with a mix of surprise and disappointment.

“No,” I was quick to say. “I want to stay if it’s okay with you.”

“That’s what I had in mind,” he admitted, opening the glass hood imprisoning us and climbing out onto the wing. For a second I thought it was so he could reach the ground more easily, but then he motioned for me to join him. I squatted on the metal and took a seat beside him, my legs dangling.

“This place looks abandoned,” I said, glancing around.

His face darkened. “No one’s come here for years,” he said grimly.

“Not even Drake?” I asked impulsively.

“Especially not Drake. The memory’s too painful for him. He doesn’t even want to come near it.” He paused. “Drake enlisted. He was a pilot.” His expression grew serious as he stared into space, answering the questions I wasn’t able to ask out loud. “He was eighteen when he got his orders, a volunteer fighting alongside the British in a war that wasn’t his.” There was something in his voice, a trace of bitterness, as if he were talking about himself, experiencing firsthand the pain he was describing. “He left everything behind, even the girl he was supposed to marry.” He hid a bitter smile and I could see the disapproval on his face; he would never have done it. “Thought he could save the world. He didn’t know he’d never see her again.”

I shuddered, thinking of the deep holes in the side of the plane. “Drake died in the war?” I whispered, shaken.

“World War Two. He’d been fighting the Nazis for a year and regretted leaving everything to risk his life. But by then it was too late. He couldn’t go back.”

The revelation made my blood run cold. I’d never heard such personal details about Drake before. I’d had no idea how he had died, had never even wondered. Would I ever be able to look at him the same way again? After the last time I’d seen him, outside Evan’s house, I didn’t know if I would.

“After his . . . his death,” I began, finding it hard to say the last word out loud. It wasn’t an easy word to use when referring to people I interacted with every day. “Didn’t he go looking for his fiancée, like you did with your family?”

“Yeah, but nobody was there.” He looked me in the eye, his expression grave. “Later on he found out she’d enlisted as a Red Cross nurse so she could follow him, but she was sent to Normandy and died during the terrible battles there. The forces were parachuted in to support the disembarkation of hundreds of Allies, but not all of them reached the ground. The German counterattack machine-gunned them down as they were landing and she met the same fate.”

“How horrible,” I whispered, terror in my eyes.

“Yes. He never saw her again,” he repeated, pausing on the last words. The glimmer in Evan’s eye told me why he felt the pain as his own. It was the tragedy that most frightened him: losing me and never seeing me again.

I was afraid of the same thing, more intensely than I feared death itself.

“That’s not going to happen,” I assured him, touching his knee. I knew I was replying to what he was thinking. “You won’t let it,” I insisted, trying to convince myself.

His eyes wavered for a second, then his lips touched mine in a gentle kiss. “I’ll never let it.”

I stroked Evan’s chest and clasped his dog tag in my fingers. He looked down at my hand. “That belonged to Drake too,” he said, taking me by surprise.

“I didn’t imagine it was Drake’s. I know you never take it off.”

“Because it’s really important to me. He gave it to me himself, although I wish he hadn’t.”

“I don’t get it. That doesn’t make sense.”

“It would have been better if it had gone to the person who was supposed to get it.” He looked at me again and went on. “Drake has one identical to it. Most of the time he keeps it hidden under his shirt.”

“You’re right, now I remember seeing it. I didn’t know they had the same story,” I said, searching my mind for a picture of Drake.

“It hurts him to see it but he’s never taken it off. It’s like somehow he just can’t let it go.” He studied my reaction. “One of the tags was for him and the other was supposed to go to his fiancée Stella—I think that was her name. We never met. Drake was saving it to give to her when he returned from the war. He couldn’t afford anything more.”

“But he never made it back,” I said in a tiny voice.

“Exactly,” he sighed.

“So why do you have it?”

Meanwhile, Evan had lain down on the wing on his back, his knees raised. I lay down too, head to head with him, and we rested our heads on each other’s shoulders.

“I was the one to find Drake.”

His comment startled me. I hadn’t thought of that. I couldn’t imagine Evan during wartime or in any era other than our own. It still seemed so crazy.

“In those days evil spread quickly. A lot of people were dying and we were really needed. We worked nonstop, wandering the battlefields to help those in need, those who couldn’t let go of their bodies—and we carried out orders too, naturally.”

I shivered, hoping Evan wouldn’t notice.

“And then I spotted Drake. He was alone and in a state of shock. It was hard for me to make him leave his bullet-riddled body. Before dying he’d managed to bring the plane down without crashing it. He’s never talked to any of us about what happened.”

“You were the one who read it inside of him,” I said, anticipating his words.

“I was the first, and then Ginevra read his pain through his thoughts. He was tormenting himself about leaving Stella of his own volition when he could have protected her, for having lost the chance to say goodbye to her, and for not having been able to give her this.” He turned the chain over in his fingers.

I tilted my head to look at him, then rested it on his shoulder again, brushing his cheek with mine.

“I bonded with Drake right away. I didn’t know why. Maybe it was because I’d been the one to save him. Maybe Simon felt the same way about me. When you take someone under your wing you end up bound to them forever, I guess. Drake felt the same way about me and after a few days, when he started to recover, he decided to give me the dog tag that should have gone to her. He erased his name and engraved mine on it. When he gave it to me he told me I was the only person he had left in the world. I remember it like it was yesterday. His eyes were empty, but grateful at the same time, and what he said . . . It’s all still crystal clear in my mind. I haven’t taken it off since and neither has he.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but if it’s something so important to you and Drake, why did you decide to put our names on it?” I asked, puzzled, my eyes fixed on the sky.

Evan laughed. “I knew you’d ask that. He gave it to me instead of the woman he loved because I was the only person who mattered to him. I wrote your name on it because
you’re
the only person who matters to
me
. It seemed right that you be a part of it.”

“Now that I know, what you did means even more to me,” I told him, struck by the story. I rolled onto my side and rested my head on my elbow.

All Evan had to do was tilt his face to bring his lips close to mine. I wanted to kiss him but before I could he was already kissing me.

“It must be terrible to lose the person you love,” I whispered, heartbroken.

“I can’t imagine anything more painful.” He looked deep into my eyes and fell silent.

Evan and I had been driving back for some time now. The sun hadn’t set but the cloud cover had thickened as if to make up for our absence in the sky. The upholstery was covered with crumbs. At first I’d refused the sandwiches Evan had taken out of the glove box because I was afraid I’d get his car dirty, but he’d deliberately sprinkled breadcrumbs on the red floor mats, leaving me with no excuse.