45. Why did I not?

“It's raining!” I shouted happily and ran to the window.

Big tears from the sky fell on the tiles of the courtyard, I opened the sashes and immediately a cool freshness hit my face. The sun glittered in the puddles; the drops trembling on the tips of the leaves sparkled in the rays.

“Where?” his voice rang in my ear. Grant managed to pull his lazy body away from the sofa where he'd spent the morning reading. “Shall we go outside?” he suggested first.

I myself wanted to feel the cooling splashes on my skin, for the last few days the city had suffered from hot temperatures, the stuffy air made it hard to breathe and I longed for movement and freedom. The rain gave us these sensations.

We ran out onto the lawn in light t-shirts and shorts. I kicked off my trainers and let the grass tickle my bare feet. I spun around, exposing my face to the heavenly water.

Grant kept up with me, collecting the rain in his palms and then trying to catch up and splash me.

Barg came running at our cries, enjoying his new game – biting into Siri's heels – and I squealed and ran until I was able to climb over the fence.

The dog didn't like the situation so he turned his attention to Circul Junior, and within a minute we were sitting on the low fence together, teasing Kai's pet with our bare feet.

The rain would not stop, the sun was still peeking out from behind the clouds, but the thunder rumbled more often and closer with each thunderclap, and the air grew several degrees colder.

I looked at Grant, his clothes soaked through, he was shivering in the freezing rain, his black hair curling slightly with the moisture, it was unusual to see him like this.

“If we catch a cold, Midi will kill us,” said the guy, spoiling the mood.

I had no time to say something sarcastic like ‘don't they harden you in ice holes at the military academy?’, but my sneeze rang out in the neighbourhood.

Circul must have had a second sight.

By nightfall we were both running a fever. Midea lamented the stupidity of us getting sick on the first day of summer, and then marvelled at our snotty faces, still overjoyed at the news of our engagement. Grant didn't bother to tell her that this was fictitious.

The housekeeper gave us potions and told us not to get out of bed.

And the long hours began, as we lay in each other's arms, burning with fever or dying of cold, sneezing in turns. My throat was unpleasantly scratchy, my nasopharynx sore and my nose running. In the morning we fell asleep.

Enraged by our behaviour, the president threatened to call in a psychiatrist to fix our brains, but Midi calmed him down, telling him that we would soon recover, and reminding him that Rizor himself had rarely taken care of his health in his younger days.

It rained non-stop. We woke up in the afternoon, had some broth prepared by the housekeeper and even read the newspaper that had been brought with breakfast. There was no interesting political news, just the same issues that had been discussed for months, from different angles.

I wrapped myself in the blanket and pulled it up to my nose. Grant read something funny and giggled.

“Can you smell it? It smells like something burning,” Circul suddenly looked at me.

I frowned and sniffed the air.

“You can't smell things,” I remembered.

“No, this one's so strong it hits my dead sense of smell,” the guy said, more serious than ever.

“Wiring, perhaps?” I sat on the bed and tried to take a full breath through my barely breathing nose.

“It's my heart. It's burning...” he whispered.

I choked on the curse word I was about to use and looked at Grant in disbelief. Was this his way of making fun of me out of boredom? And yes, there was a twinkle in the president's son's black eyes. He laughed at my reaction, but immediately coughed. Yeah, someone's brain had melted from the temperature. I didn't recognise him as my nemesis.

“You're kidding me, aren't you?” I glared menacingly at the naughty guy. “All right, you asked for it!”

My fingers moved to his stomach.

“Forget it? I'm not ticklish,” he told me with a touch of superiority and arrogance. “But you are.”

And with a devilish grin, Grant turned me onto my back, took me in his arms and tickled me.

How the whole house hadn't come running to my cries for help was still a mystery to me. I tried to get out of the killing zone, even crawling to the edge of the bed, but Circul pulled me back in, laughing wickedly as he tortured my body.

Then I decided to go to the ultimate extreme – a few minutes later the guy's forearms were covered in red marks from my teeth.

“It hurts!” said the guy, rubbing the bites, when we had calmed down, made a truce and divided the bed into two equal parts with a chain like normal people, promising not to interfere with the other half.

“You're a softie,” I looked at my bites and couldn't get enough. “The skin on your hands is softer than a girl's.”

He glanced at me angrily and declared a boycott. For an hour or two Grant managed to keep his mouth shut. Then the young man fell asleep, no longer sniffling resentfully in my direction. I watched him, struggling with the reality that was slipping away, my mind fighting to keep from falling into a fever.

Circul was dreaming something bad, and he frowned every now and then, making a shallow crease between his eyebrows. His black strands were sticky with sweat and spread across the pillow.

His skin was even paler than usual, but there was an unhealthy flush in his cheeks. His long, lustrous eyelashes stretched upwards, curling slightly at the tips.

Suddenly I felt an unbearable burning sensation in the pads of my fingers and, unable to resist the urge, I lightly touched his eyelashes.

Grant opened his eyes sharply. They were so close to me that I could see that there were barely visible specks of light around the edges of the black irises.

The guy's initial surprise had passed, and now he was studying my face just as intently.

“You have a birthmark here. I hadn't noticed it before,” he touched the corner of my right eyebrow.

His eyes searched my features in complete silence, as if seeing everything for the first time. His slender fingers brushed over my burning cheek, sliding down my temple, tucking my hair behind my ear, down to my chin and neck. He reached up and closed his eyelids.

I didn't even notice the moment when our lips met. The kiss was feverishly hot and tasted of the herbs Midi had put in our tea.

My heart was racing with excitement mixed with ease and confusion, it was my first kiss with a real person, so I responded, only wanting to prolong the pleasant sensation.

A wave of uncertainty washed over me as soon as we broke contact. Doubt, fear, came over me, shattering the idyll, making my ears ring.

Grant took a deep breath without opening his eyes and moved towards me again, but I thought of nothing else but pretending to be driven by a delirious fever and exhaled with a smile: “Krile... Krile, you're so gentle tonight.”

The guy froze, tense. The electrified air around us seemed to grow cold.

I swallowed, afraid of Grant's reaction, but he merely rose from the bed, avoided my gaze, dropped the chain bracelet from his hand and disappeared into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

I buried my head under the covers, face pressed to the pillow, burning with shame.

It was wrong, it wasn't meant to be. I loved the other man, even though he didn't exist, Grant had his own lover in Virtul too, we had no right to be so reckless.

My heart, pounding with the overwhelming emotions that had overtaken it, clenched painfully. I felt as if I had betrayed myself, betrayed my soul, forgotten myself for a moment.

How could I have fallen so low? My shame was as great as my fever, and my tears were hot and bitter, full of remorse.

I shouldn't have let Circul make that move, all I had to do was turn away, not let him kiss me – and no one would have been hurt. But why didn't I do it? Why did I not?