Let Her Go

Flash

Flash: [noun] a sudden brief burst of bright light

He couldn't stop staring, couldn't stop replaying the sequence of her expressions, that first glimpse of her green eyes and the tight line of her lips, the backless dress with the smooth golden skin and the tousled hair and the roof, they'd been on the roof.

And now they were dancing, slow and familiar, and he was reminded that he'd only ever taken her dancing once.

"What are we doing here, Jude?"

"You wanted to dance, didn't you?"

Until that moment he'd forgotten that she'd been a dancer before she'd ever dreamed of being a model. She'd had a pink leotard and glittery hairclips and her teacher had always scolded her for forgetting to smile during her routines. But Harlow didn't ever just smile, she felt. She laughed and cried and frowned and stared and understood every emotion with something deeper than mindless instinct – an intuitive awareness that moved far beneath the skin, somewhere close to the soul. Except no one ever told her that sensitivity, empathy, wasn't recognised until you were older, so at eight years old she'd been rebuked and admonished over and over again until her spark had been whittled down to an ember. By the time she turned twelve that ember had spluttered out, and it had been years before she danced again.

"You don't dance."

"For tonight we can pretend I do."

He wondered if Wyatt, dark Wyatt with his gliding steps and his attentive stare, knew that about her. He wondered if it mattered.

"Jude." Allison smacked his arm and he started, tearing his eyes away from the couple on the dance floor.

"I—what?" He blinked, focussing on the blonde's face, pinched with irritation. "Sorry, what were you saying?"

"Have you heard a word I've said?" She pouted, looking up at him through her lashes. "It's like you don't even want me here."

That's because I don't.

The cruel, twisted part of him wanted to say it, wanted to see her gasp and recoil and turn away. Wanted to push everyone and everything away. Wanted to tear it all down and leave it in ruins. It was all so fragile, this shimmering, silvery world with all its lights and grandeur, and for the first time in what felt like a lifetime he felt himself slip – felt his fingers slip on that intangible ledge, felt his head slip beneath the water, felt all those spotlights and false smiles rush down his throat in a suffocating cascade.

Instinctively he sought out Harlow, just as he'd learned to do when he'd experienced these episodes before, but she wasn't there. She'd been swallowed by the crowd, pulled into that hungry, gaping mouth, and now he could feel it turning on him, stretching its jaw to show him all those rows of sharpened teeth...stretching, yawning, biting down hard.

There. She's there.

Not beside him, not even near him, but it was enough for now just to see her. Just to know she was there, somewhere, sharing space with him.

In much the same way that it had come over him – abruptly and without warning – the flash of distress was gone, banished to a corner of his mind that he thought he'd managed to rid himself of years ago. To find that he hadn't didn't just shake him, but also left him with trembling hands and a racing heart.