you is that it’s out of choice.’
Her brows drew together in confusion, and she glanced at Leo, encouraging him to continue.
He sighed before starting to speak again. ‘My family has plenty of money. Pots of it, in fact. Too much. And I do have a trust fund.’ Not something that would normally cause such distress, she thought. ‘But I haven’t spent a penny of it for years.’
‘Why not?’ It was none of her business, but she could tell this was something big, for Leo. Perhaps the tip of an emotional iceberg, something he didn’t often talk about. And she wanted to know him.
‘It’s hard to explain. I want you to understand. I want you to know why I find it hard for you to pull out that plan... I’m not making life hard for the sake of it. It’s all connected.’
Her heart ached at the note of vulnerability in his voice, the pain that he was clearly hiding. And it soared a little, too, at the fact that he was sharing this with her. Opening up to her. But Leo’s shoulders had fallen forward, and a haunted look had crept over his face. She reached for his hand, refusing to acknowledge what that contact might signify, but needing him to know that she was there to support him. ‘I want to understand, Leo. Tell me anything you want.’
* * *
‘The money,’ Leo said. It seemed as good a place as any to start. He led them both away from the water, to the very edge of the beach, with the cliff creating a natural shelter around them. He sat on the warm sand, and pulled gently on Rachel’s hand until she was sitting beside him. ‘I grew up with people who had it—lots of it. Far too much. It didn’t make them happy, and it didn’t make them good. And there were people who thought I needed it, desperately...’ He paused but she didn’t say anything, just waited for him to continue. ‘I went to a very good school—and it was hell.’
He gripped her hand, and she squeezed it back. The warmth and comfort of her touch flowed from her skin to his—he couldn’t have let go of her at that moment if he’d had to. He wanted to pull her close, to bury his face in her hair and his body in hers. Forget everything about his past; ignore everything about their future. He wanted her lips on his, wanted to hear her chuckle with pleasure and sigh with satisfaction.
But he also wanted her to understand him. Wanted her to see why any hint of feeling trapped scared him so much. He needed her to know why he would never allow himself to be trapped in a relationship he couldn’t get out of. And he knew he had to tell her everything.
‘For some reason the other boys saw me as an easy—and early—target. To start with it was whispers about money. People accusing me of stealing from the other boys. Suggesting that money had gone missing from pockets and dorms. I tried to ignore it, thinking it would pass. And then they started talking about my mum. Insinuating that my “greed” ran in the family, that she was a shameless gold-digger who’d ensnared my dad for his money.
‘She’s from a different background from my dad, her family wasn’t well off and his is loaded, and she married him when he was a widow with a three-year-old. That seemed to be all the evidence the boys needed.
‘I couldn’t ignore these whispers. I started to fight back, to defend my mum and myself, and it escalated. The older boys were determined to show me that answering back would get me nowhere. It turned violent, and nasty. I hadn’t told anyone what was going on, but after a beating that left me bruised and heaving, I knew that I had to do something. My older brother—half-brother—was at school with me.’
‘Did he help?’
Leo steeled himself to answer, but found his throat was thick, and his eyes stung. Even after all this time, he still couldn’t think about what had happened without being close to tears.
‘I’m not sure I understand,’ Rachel said gently. ‘I’m sure it must have been terrible, but it was a long time ago. You left that place—’
‘Yes, and I will never go back.’
‘Of course not, Leo. You’re a grown man. No one can make you go back to school.’
He snatched his hand back, frustrated that after explaining the parts of his past that still caused the occasional nightmare, she could brush it off with ‘you don’t have to go back to school’.
‘But I had to go back then.’ The words burst out of him, just short of a roar. He’d had to go back time after time, year after year. Stuck in that place every day with the boys who hated him. Who thought up new and different ways to torture him.
‘Couldn’t you have left?’
‘You think I didn’t want that? Even when I eventually told my father what was going on he didn’t take it seriously. The bullies closed ranks when my parents spoke to the school. Told the headmaster that the bruises were from rugby. Or that I’d started a fight. They were so convincing. All the teachers fell for it. Sometimes even I found myself wondering if I was imagining it all. If I was going mad.
‘I was trapped. Every morning I’d wake up in that dorm, and knew how my torture would pan out for the day. Taunts in the bathroom during break. Starving at lunch, too scared to risk the dinner hall. A few kicks in the changing rooms after games, somewhere it wouldn’t show when I was dressed. And at night, I was locked in with them.
‘The days the school knew where I would be and when, they would know, too. And ever since—I’ve needed a way out. The thought of being trapped—’ He stopped abruptly. ‘It terrifies me, Rachel.’
‘You think I trapped you?’ Her voice was flat and sad, more disappointed than angry.
‘It doesn’t matter, does it? Whether you did or not, it doesn’t change the fact that—’
‘That you want to escape and you can’t.’
He rubbed his head in his hands, fighting against the fear to find the logic in his argument. ‘I don’t even know if I want to escape. What I would want if I wasn’t...’
‘Stuck.’
He nodded. ‘You probably think I’m a complete jerk for telling you all this.’ He felt like one. For admitting all the reasons he was terrified of what their lives were going to become.
She shook her head, though her expression was grim. ‘I don’t. I’m glad you told me how you feel. You can’t help thinking the way that you do. I just wish it were...different.’
He reached past her to pluck a small piece of driftwood from the sand. The light played on it as he turned it over, and he kept his eyes focused on that, rather than meeting Rachel’s gaze.
‘How did you cope—at school?’
He looked across at her now, surprised she wanted to know more after what he’d just told her.
‘I spent a lot of time at the beach.’
‘Surfing? Swimming?’
‘Some of the time. I was lucky in a way— the school was only a couple of miles from the coast, so I was able to spend a lot of time there. When I had to be on campus, I escaped to the art studio.’ She looked at him in surprise. For some reason, he enjoyed that, throwing off her preconceptions of him. He was even able to crack a smile at her gaping expression.
‘The art studio?’
‘Yes—I’m an artist, didn’t I mention that?’
‘An artist.’ She said the word as if it were something alien, obviously not believing him. He nodded, still playing with the driftwood as he took in her dropped jaw, her hands indignantly planted in the sand either side of her. ‘You’re an artist.’
A laugh escaped him, surprising him as much as her. ‘I’m sure I mentioned it before.’
‘And I’m certain that you didn’t. What sort of artist?’ She still hadn’t wiped the incredulity from her face and he wasn’t sure whether to be amused or annoyed that she found