Chapter 54
CHAPTER 54
B ELLE
While Beast is gone, I decide to tidy up a little. My clothes are scattered across the floor after last night. The ripped panties. The tank top he yanked over my head in a hurry to get to my nipples. The jeans I couldn’t get off him quick enough so I could taste his cock.
I bend down to scoop them up, but when I do, his wallet falls out of one of his pockets.
I look at it in my hands, remembering what is inside.
The angel on my shoulder tells me to put it on the dresser and walk away.
But the devil on my other shoulder tells me to go ahead and look through it again.
The first time I went through his wallet, he was a stranger forcing me into a situation I had no choice but to go along with. But things have changed since then. He’s not a stranger anymore. He’s the man I share a bed with. The man I am falling for.
Yet…
He has so many secrets.
It takes me back to the moment when I found out about Gaston being his brother, and my hands begin to shake.
What else is he hiding from me?
How can we move forward when he keeps so many things from me?
I need to see the photo again, so I remove it from his wallet.
Unfolding it carefully, I study the two little kids on the crumpled paper.
Who are they?
Why does he keep it tucked away like a precious memory?
That’s when I notice the necklace the little girl is wearing. It’s the letter B on a black leather choker. The same necklace I lost as a teenager while swimming at the beach.
But how can that be?
I squint and bring the photo closer. It’s definitely the same necklace.
Happy birthday, Bluebelle . The long-lost memory hits me hard, and I stumble backward. It’s blurred and fractured. But I can see my mom and she’s smiling at me as my dad helps me unwrap the birthday present because my little hands are struggling with the paper. He holds up the necklace and the gold letter B glints in the early morning light before he secures it around my neck.
Oh my god.
The little girl in the photo is me.
And I just know the little boy is Beast.
It’s an absolute knowing inside of me.
Another memory hits me. Us as children, playing outside. Laughing and squealing as my dad sprays us with the garden hose on a hot summer’s day.
Emotion surges through me as more memories follow. Each one getting stronger than the one before it.
Little splintered moments of days long gone.
Of my mom and dad. Of a childhood best friend.
Something outside draws my attention out the window. And then to the west tower where the forbidden room is.
The answers are there, I just know it.
In a split second, finding out what secrets lie beyond the thick wooden door and cast iron lock of the tower is the most important thing in the world.
But I’ll need a key because I know it’s locked.
Abandoning my domestic goddess duties, I start to look for it.
But after half an hour of searching, I am a worked-up, sweaty mess and no closer to finding the key.
Standing in the center of the room with my hands on my hips, I scan the room for any hiding place I could’ve missed.
But I’ve gone through this room like a tornado and there is no key.
I swipe at the hair sticking to my sweaty brow.
Fine.
If I can’t unlock the door, I will break the fucking thing down.