Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
J ames
My feet move forward as hers move back, twirling us in a swift motion as I lead her around the dance floor. She looked captivating. As much as I liked her hair down and free, I found myself loving how it was pinned up in a bunch of curls, like if you pulled one hairpin out, they would all spring free. She had silver hair barrettes in several different spots of her hair, making it look like tiny little sparkling leaves were in her hair.
The white dress’s corset top hugged her body, making her chest look full and plump behind the sharp spikes of it and the bottom of her dress…fuck me. It was all Cecilia. Flowing and beautiful. White and Pure. The two high slits on each side, though, plus her black gloves, reminded me of the edge to her. The defiance she always wore with me. And her fucking heels…I don’t think I’d ever been attracted to heels before, but the way the strappy silver heels with several large gems across the top of her feet accentuated her legs made me want to fall to my knees and kiss her feet.
She was absolutely ravishing. Yet, I still didn’t understand why she was here. I could have murdered Chuck right then and there in front of the entire city, but I needed to keep my composure. He wouldn’t hurt her with all eyes on him like that, but I still didn’t trust him tonight, being here with both of us.
Was she really his date? I couldn’t think of why else she’d know to be here and stand by his side like she did. Just the memory of it made me want to light this entire place on fire just to ruin where she stood with him and burn it out of everyone's memory. Out of existence.
I looked into her eyes, past her mask, as I carried us around the dance floor. She stared back at me like she was in a trance. “What do you mean you came here for me?” I asked her.
“I thought you wanted me here,” she admits, looking embarrassed now as she looks down at the floor between us.
I narrow my gaze on her. “Why’s that?”
She huffs out a breath. “I found an invite taped to the library doors last night.”
I stop moving in my tracks, my grip tightening on her. “I didn’t leave you an invite, Cecilia.”
“Yeah, I realized that once I came. You were pretty occupied with your date,” she sneers. Fuck, this woman was going to give me whiplash. As much as I wanted to focus on her newfound jealousy, I needed to put all the puzzle pieces into place before I lost my shit.
“Baby, who left you an invite? Tell me now,” I choke out.
She sighs. “It was Chuck. That’s why it looked like I was his date. He tricked me, and I got nervous with everyone’s eyes on me. I didn’t know what to do, so I stood by him and regretted it as soon as I did. I should have just run off, but they shut the doors on me and?—
“Excuse me,” I murmur, enraged, turning to look through the sea of people. I lift my head to the crowd around us, my gaze snapping everywhere, looking for the bloody dead man. I swear I was going to kill him once I got my hands on him finally. She was rambling, and I hated him even more for making her anxious. Tricking her like this and making her scared in front of people when it was the complete opposite of her personality made me want to commit murder; damn the consequences. He was pushing the wrong fucking buttons here. Leaving her an invite after I’d already warned him what I would do was him officially signing his death certificate. I was going to make him pay for every move he’d cast against me by using her.
Instead, I feel her tug on my arm, pulling me back into place and wrapping her arms tighter around me. “No. You’re not going anywhere,” she says sternly. I look down at her as she scowls at me, and I can’t help but be enraptured by her. Staring into her eyes could make me forget who I was altogether. In fact, it already has.
“What is it you want from me?” I ask, taking her into my arms again as another song starts. “You make no sense, showing up here like this and making me want to fall to my knees at your feet.”
She lets out a small sigh and looks away from me now. “I think part of me needed to know if you’d moved on already.”
I tilt my head in confusion. “Moved on?”
“With the woman you came with. Yesterday, she was at the house, trying on dresses, and you were looking at her, and then …you went upstairs. Did she follow you up there? Because if you slept with her, then?—”
“I love you,” I murmur, interrupting her. Her eyes widen in shock to the point where the blues are almost all I can see behind her mask. “I can’t move on. I never will move on because I love you, Cecilia. I am in love with you. Frighteningly so. You haunt my thoughts and possess my heart. You could destroy me and everything I am, and I’d still love you as the world falls. So no, Cecilia. I have not moved on.”
She swallows hard, and I can feel her hands shaking as they rest on the back of my neck. “But these last couple of days, you’ve been so…angry with me.”
“In an attempt to not love you but fuck, I can’t not be. Look at you,” I say, gesturing to her ensemble tonight. “You dance like magic. You look like magic. How could I not worship you?” She laughs softly, and it sounds watery. I notice then that her eyes are filled with unshed tears. I cup her face, the diamond tassels on her mask hanging over my hands. “Let me love you, my Cecilia,” I whisper to her.
She nods, barely, but she does, and it’s like my chest explodes. It feels hot and anxious, and I can’t do anything but drop my mouth to hers and taste her again like I’ve been dreaming about since the last time I did. Her mouth meets mine with the same urgency, and it's like the night sky around us starts spinning. It was too good. This had to be a dream.
Our masks clash against each other, so I pull away, ripping mine from my face and tossing it to the floor. She does the same before pulling me back to her. She kisses me again and again. I didn’t care who could see us or that our identities were exposed. She was mine, and I wanted them all to see it.
“Go home with me,” I groan into her.
“To your room?”
“To my room. In my bed. In my arms.”
“Okay,” she whispers. I grin, taking her chin between my thumb and index finger and kissing her once more. I open my eyes a second before pulling away from her, and my gaze lands on Tobias over her shoulder. His head tilts nearly ninety degrees as he spots us.
“Shit,” I mumble. Cecilia looks over her shoulder, following my gaze. I can see the anger wash over him, darkening his gaze as he recognizes her and comes barreling toward us. I wasn’t scared of him, but I didn’t want to upset him, and I knew this was one outcome that he didn’t want for his sister. But he’d just have to accept the fact that if I didn’t have her, I’d probably just go crazy and kill everyone around me for existing in my agony.
He reaches us, his arm wrapping around hers and pulling her back from me. “What the hell?—”
He doesn’t get a chance to finish his sentence because gunshots ring out around us. One shot. Two shots.
Then chaos ensues.
I look back toward them as everyone begins stampeding around us, making their way to the exit. Tobias tugs Cecilia behind him, blocking her with his body as he looks around us, trying to spot the shooter.
“Get her out of here,” I yell to him. My heart is racing, and all I can think about is that she needs to be outside this building in one piece in less than thirty seconds, or I will lose my mind.
He begins moving with everyone, pulling her with him as we force our way through. “James,” she shouts, reaching for me.
“Keep moving. Get yourself out of here,” I yell to her.
Two men stop us in our tracks, holding their guns out to face us. They wore masks resembling ugly brown goblin faces with long, pointed horns on each side. Everything is moving so fast that I don’t get a second to think as one of them backhands me with the barrel of the gun. I fall to my knees just as I hear Cecilia scream in horror. I look over my shoulder, seeing her lunge from behind her brother. I look forward again, seeing the other man hold his gun up toward her, and I leap to my feet. The first guy in front of me comes at me again, but Tobias overtakes him, knocking him out cold.
I reach the other man just as he pulls his trigger, knocking his arm up to the ceiling and firing the bullet into the air. He brings his other elbow down on me in the process and then presses the gun into my right shoulder, firing a shot through it. I groan in pain as it feels like fire rips through my body, but I don’t let it stop me. All I can see is red. All I can think is what I would have done if that first bullet hit her. All I can do is rage.
I grab hold of his arm, twisting it so violently hard, a move he didn’t anticipate, considering I’d just been shot. Thankfully adrenaline is a thing because he cripples down on his knees in pain, and the gun falls from his hand. I pick it up, firing a shot right into his skull.
A third man wearing a triple-faced mask lunges toward me with a gun in his hand. I raise mine, and he freezes and backtracks. I shoot, catching his left arm as he races back into the crowds of people, disappearing into them.
I stagger on my knees, falling forward. I balance myself on my left hand, keeping myself upright as much as possible. Blood pours into the grass around me, and all I can do is breathe in relief at the two men lying still across from me. One of them was for sure dead, and the other would be very soon if I got my way.
“Oh my god. James,” I hear Cecilia shout behind me. I feel her close now as she drops to her knees and pulls me against her. I weakly fall into her waiting arms. It was thankfully just my shoulder, but it hurt like a mother fucker, and I was losing a little more blood than I’d like. “Tobias, he’s been shot,” she screeches.
She’s rambling in a panic, and I can feel her heart thumping madly in her chest. I reach my hand down, tangling my fingers into hers. “It’s okay, babe. Calm down. It’s just a scratch.”
She looks down at me with glassy eyes, pulling me closer to her chest. “You have a fucking hole in your shoulder, James. Don’t tell me to calm down.”
I think I was becoming delirious, either from the pain or blood loss. Maybe I was coming down from my adrenaline rush because I could only smile at her. “But you’re okay, right?”
Tears stream down her cheeks as she nods at me. “I’m okay.”
“Okay, big guy,” I hear Tobias’s voice now. “Let’s get you out of here before someone sees what the hell you’ve done.”
“What he’s done?” Cecilia shouts incredulously.
“No, he’s right. This isn’t good,” I mumble.
“You were defending yourself,” she yelps as Tobias lifts me from the ground, throwing my good arm over his shoulder and wrapping an arm around my back to keep me upright.
“It doesn’t matter,” Tobias grunts back. “We need to get out of here.”
“Let’s take him to the hospital,” Cecilia suggests.
“No,” we respond collectively.
“What the fuck is happening right now,” she mumbles in a daze, following us through the garden and out of the building. I look over my shoulder at her as I slump against her brother. I reach my fingers out toward her, and she stumbles forward, entangling hers in mine again. I didn’t like her being alone behind us. I needed to touch her.
Tobias looks down at our hands before turning away. “Fuck me,” he grumbles.
My limousine is waiting a few feet down the block, and Tobias practically drags my sorry ass to it and tosses me inside after letting his sister in first, per my request. I think he was being a little rough on purpose because he has an idea about me and Cecilia now. He was lucky he was at full advantage at the moment.
“We should really take him to the hospital,” Cecilia says again, to which we both respond no again.
Tobias opens a compartment, pulls out a first aid kit, and wraps my shoulder in gauze and bandage. “Lia, come put pressure on his shoulder,” he tells her.
She slides down the seat, placing her shaky hands on my shoulder and applying pressure. I hiss in pain, and she shoots me an apologetic smile. Tobias then pulls out a bottle of morphine and a needle from inside the kit, and Cecilia’s eyes manage to widen even further.
“Uh, how do you have that?”
“We always keep medications like this on hand in case of emergencies,” Tobias says plainly as he fills the syringe.
“Emergencies like this, I’m guessing?” she remarks sadly.
“Yup,” Tobias answers as he pulls my arm toward him.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” she asks, leaning over him.
He looks up at her with an irritated expression. “I know my way around needles and veins.”
“Oh…right,” she mutters, slumping back beside me.
I look over at her, squeezing her hand. “I also had him trained to do this.”
She nods. “Right, that makes sense.”
Tobias administers the morphine, and I’m feeling tons better by the time we make it to my city apartment. They help me inside, and I fall onto the couch as Tobias calls for my private doctor to meet us there. Cecilia sits down next to me, brushing my hair off my face.
“How are you feeling?”
“I’ve been better,” I tell her before retaking her hand. “But I’ve also been worse.”
“I’m so sorry this happened. If I hadn’t run out, you wouldn’t have gotten shot.”
“It’s not your fault. I would have done the same thing in your position.”
She nods, and to my surprise, she leans in and kisses me softly. Even in my state, I can’t help but moan into her and beg for more. She giggles, gently pushing me back into my spot.
“No. Nope. We aren’t doing this,” I hear Tobias snap out. We both look up at him as he angrily stands before us. “You two aren’t doing this together. Lia, get up away from him.”
She stays completely still, one of her brows cocking at him. “You don’t tell me what to do.”
“I do now.”
“Oh, cut it out. He could have died, Tobias. Have some compassion.”
“There’s still a chance he will if you don’t get away from him.”
“There’s a chance I’m going to sew your mouth shut if you don’t quit bossing me around,” she snaps back to him.
They go at it like that for a while, and I sit quietly, my gaze bouncing between them as they continue arguing. Thankfully, my doorbell rings, and the discussion finally ends. I didn’t care to make any commentary about Cecilia and me because, for one, I was shot, and for two, I didn’t really give a shit what he said. Cecilia was so fucking mine. He’d just have to get over it.
The doctor comes in, hooks me up to an I.V., and begins cleaning out my wound and sewing me back up. Thankfully, the wound was through and through without any pieces left behind, so it was a simpler fix. I glance over at Cecilia, who is pacing behind the doctor. Her eyes land on me, and then she looks away quickly like she can’t handle it, repeating the process over and over.
“You all right, babe?” I call out to her. I hear Tobias scoff from my kitchen island nearby, but I ignore him like I’ve been choosing to do all night.
“You got shot, and you’re being treated and put back together on your couch. This is…insanity,” she rambles. I’ve noticed she talks very fast and redundantly when feeling emotional about something.
“It’s all right. I’m sure I’ll be able to get the blood stains out,” I joke.
She stops, glaring at me. “That’s not funny. You know what I mean.”
“I know. I’m sorry. Please sit and calm down.”
She finally does, and thankfully, the doctor is done with me soon after. He tells all three of us my aftercare instructions and then leaves, promising to return tomorrow to check on the wound.
It’s just the three of us again, and things become increasingly awkward as we all sit in silence. It was strange, the kinds of feelings I’d never felt before that I suddenly do now after meeting them. I was thankful for it, though, as uncomfortable as they might be sometimes.
Tobias and Cecilia keep looking at each other, their glares becoming more evident and profound as they stare. Cecilia starts narrowing her eyes, and Tobias tilts his head, narrowing his eyes. It was like they were conversing telepathically.
“Well, I’m wiped, so I’ll just leave you two to… talk.” I stand from my couch and head down the hall before looking back at Cecilia. “I’ll be in my room whenever you’re ready to come to bed.”
“You fucker,” Tobias growls, lunging for me as Cecilia leaps off the couch and restrains him. I chuckle as I continue walking down the hall and into the bedroom, knowing that as soon as I am one hundred percent again, he will make me pay for it.