Et tú, Clarissa?

Chapter sixteen

Present Day (England, Britain)

I do not know what I as most uncomfortable with, me hiding in Zac's bedroom or Zac and Grace fighting in the living room outside the door.

"It's nothing like that, please Grace you have to believe me. I would never do something like that, you know it." he gets quiet for a while, but I hear how much she has to say and I guess he does too because he is not too late to continue. "And I didn't know you were coming."

"What does that have to do with anything? Would you have done things differently if you had known?"

"Come on G, give me a break! You shouldn't be the one talking! What about Henric, Luke, Ty and Rachel?"

I feel the tension all the way in here, but none of them are saying anything. Grace walks over to the sofa and sits down. Something in her breathing tells me she finds something she is kind of shocked over as I hear how her nail goes over the wooden windowsill. She turns in the leather sofa towards Zac who stops walking back and forth.

"Okay. Look me in the eye and tell me that nothing happened between you two when you were alone."

It gets quiet. For a minute something that feels like hope grows inside my chest, but I do not understand why it would. Zac exhale heavily, just as a wry laugh, before he came to words again.

"This is ridicules!"

"Tell me!"

The silence returns for a brief moment, before he answers.

"It's nothing between us, Grace."

That something I felt in my chest, turns hard and heavy and just like someone lace my chest, I have to take a breath. My gaze falls onto my reflection in the mirror where I see I am still wearing his clothes. In the background, I see my clothes laying at the side of the bed. Before I even have time to react, I change clothes and folds the ones Zac lent me neatly before I put them on the bed.

As I open the bedroom door, they both look at me.

"I think I should leave you two to it." I say and see how something breaks inside Zac, but before he says anything, I turn to Grace. "I am so sorry, miss Saunders. For any inconvenience, but may I take your taxi?"

She looks quite surprised at first, but nodded shortly after my question.

"Of course."

I look at Zac once more before start walking towards the door.

"Clary. Stop."

I grab my big jacket, but do not bother to stop to put it on. Only open the door and throw it over my shoulder as Zac runs after me.

"Please Clary. Stop. Let me talk."

He reaches up with me right before I get into the taxi.

"Please Clary, I can't lose you."

I look at him for a minute.

"You won't, because you cannot lose something you have never possessed."

Before he has time to stop me, I jump into the car and tell the driver to 'please just drive'. Right now, I do not care where he takes me, as long it is away from this forest. As we make our way through the forest, I start thinking about it.

Why would I react like that? It is childish! Running away like that without any reason. What is wrong with me?

I am just about to ask the driver to stop when I see the hospital through the trees. Suddenly my words have left me and my eyes lock at the bare architecture. You can clearly see how the flames licked the previously white walls up against the sky and the big hole in the ground. A sudden urge to check it out hits me like a wave and I tell the driver to stop here. As he does as I say, he looks at me with serious eyes like he wants to kill me.