Had To Be You (Romance/Drama) [COMPLETED]

Chapter 4 - Hum

The police had been in and gone within the hour, having investigated what was evident. The man, whose name was Armand Akbar, had been arrested, and bright yellow cautionary tape had been put around the cottage. He had never been jailed for his part in Naomi's attack, but he was soon to be imprisoned with his scum master and friends for his assault and invasion.

Even though she had been attacked and violated, her door beaten down while she was alone in her isolated home, she insisted she would stay in her cottage. The best police could do was put up tape and have someone round her premises periodically.

She was "alright", she would say, and Luke would not buy it. Any of it.

He could see the unstable mixture of broken pain and fear in her eyes, the wild helplessness she tried so hard to convince everyone, including herself, was not there. It was written in the way her eyes lost their light, staring vaguely at one place while she zoomed out of the world for seconds at a time.

He wanted and needed to help her, but how could he, when he could see the way his presence made her so uneasy? Yet he stayed as her witness, as her protector.

She was sat on the couch when the cops left, her knees bent beside her while her body was wrapped in a royal blue blanket of fleece. He sat on the single armchair a few feet from where she rested, and waited as he pressed an ice bag to his bruising jaw.

He knew her mind was trying to work, to break down the walls the night's events had just put up for her. If he prodded at her she would shut him out as a result, and Luke couldn't take that. He could not. Instead he needed her to cooperate, to let him help her. He had to take that horrible shock from her eyes and melt it with security.

Naomi was trying to regain herself then, even though the effort was rapidly draining her of strength. But a necessary step to her process of self-regaining was already taken from her. She wanted to collapse and cry and scream, into the night where no one would hear or judge her. She wanted to break completely, so the process of putting herself together was simpler. Yet she couldn't, because he was there. Luke was right there.

She remembered the ways she had dreamed of this moment. In one vivid dream she had been walking by the water and he had appeared on the docks, in a boat that had steered them to a small, desolate isle. In her favorite one, he had gone mad looking for her, and taken her the night before her wedding day. There had been more, but none of them were even close to reality.

A laugh of hysteria built in her throat, but she forced it down, racked by a cold stream of nerves. Was he really there?

Yes, he was. Her heart never beat so fiercely if he was not near. Her mind never flowed this freely, and her blood, God, it never hummed like this. She felt the pieces fall into place as she felt whole again, alive, and then she felt a sliver of anger.

She restrained it.

"How did you find me here?" She still looked away from him.

"I was jogging down the shore. Then there was a scream. It all happened from there." He was talking in clipped sentences. Well, Naomi relaxed, knowing then that he was as affected as she was.

Courageous, she looked up only to regret it. Those blue eyes that she had so carefully avoided bore holes into her. Calm, electric blue, watching her with intensity. She wanted to revel in his gaze and just sit there while he stared, taking in the heat of those eyes. But she would not, because it was wrong.

It was wrong to feel as though he had never left, as though she still felt the same, as though she was not an engaged woman. It was wrong to have a potent, merciless rush of emotion and longing with just one look at him.