23. Delilah #2
She’s got an emotional scalpel and she’s carving me into bloody ribbons. Every word is another shiv under the ribs.
It hurts so much more than it should.
Because it emphasizes all the things she is that I’m not.
I am not tall enough to look elegant in a column dress.
I am not poised enough to touch a mob boss’s chest so confidently and sexily.
I am not the one who knows where he keeps his good vodka.
Anna’s borrowed shawl suddenly feels like a blanket someone put around a sad, lost child.
Of course Alisa has history with him.
Look at her.
Look at him.
They make visual sense. A match made in heaven.
Then look at me.
The curvy baker. The odd one out.
Then Kane moves.
He slides his arm out from under her hand, leaving her clutching at nothing. Then he reaches up and takes her other hand off his chest by the wrist and returns it to her.
“Your vodka is downstairs,” he says, “with everyone else’s.”
He looks down at me. Suddenly, she’s the odd one out. His broad body blocks most of her from me.
“Lilah, would you like to find somewhere to sit?”
I open my mouth. “Um. Yeah. Yes. My feet are— Yes.”
Alisa laughs from just behind Kane’s shoulder. “Oh, this is sweet,” she says in a voice that’s suddenly gone venomous. “Watching you play house.”
Kane speaks to her without looking in her direction. “You should go, Alisa. As always, it’s been a pleasure.”
Alisa’s smile remains frozen for a beat after the dismissal. “Kane—”
“Don’t make me tell you twice.”
A long pause follows, and I start to wonder if she’s about to grab the champagne glass I set down, crack it on the table, then stab either me or Kane or both with the jagged edges.
In the end, though, she doesn’t.
Nothing happens at all.
She just walks away without rushing, spine straight, as glamorous on the outside as ever.
But I know better. I know how much that must have stung for a woman like her.
The crowd absorbs her within seconds. I watch the back of her sleek head disappear.
“That was rude,” I say once I’ve lost sight of her.
“That’s Alisa for you.”
“I meant you,” I clarify. “You could have been nicer.”
“Believe me: I could have been much worse.”
Kane puts a hand around my waist and starts to steer me toward a cluster of chairs arranged in the corner. “Did you want me to go with her?”
“No!” His eyes flare at how fast I answer. I gulp and add, “I mean, it’s your party. You can do whatever you want. And we’re not—” I gesture between us. “You know.”
“With every passing second,” he remarks, “I know less and less what we are and are not.”
The band has shifted gears. The lively brass dissolves into something quivering and anticipatory.
People have begun turning toward the clock mounted above the stage, its gold hands creeping toward midnight.
I can feel the room tightening around the last minute of the year.
My pulse does the same.
Maybe it’s the champagne.
Maybe it’s the gorgeous woman getting banished to the timeout corner.
Or maybe it’s him. Kane Makov and all the things he does to me.
He makes me feel bold. Not safe, exactly. But when I’m near him, I feel like I could take up space and nobody would dare ask me to move.
I turn back to him.
He’s still watching me. Always watching.
That silly hope lifts its head again.
Kill it! Kill it now! screams my inner critic. Before it gets out of control!
But instead…
“Kane…” I look up to meet his eyes. “What am I to you?”
My voice is barely audible among the band and the cheering crowd, but judging by how Kane reacts, I might as well have screamed them in his face through a megaphone.
It’s like he goes dark. That shimmering aura of confidence and luxury that surrounds him at all times loses its source of power.
His jaw sets.
His eyes go unfocused.
The hand holding his champagne glass tightens and tightens and tightens some more.
He looks… tortured.
And that’s all I need.
There it is. The old life motto, confirmed.
If I have something she wants, she takes it.
If someone needs me, I’m kept.
But wanted?
Never.
Never, ever, ever.
Thank God for it, actually. I have been walking around all night with a crack in my psychological foundation and no idea what was underneath it.
Turns out, nothing was. Things are the same as they’ve always been.
Same old world.
Same old me.
“It’s okay,” I croak. “No need to elaborate. I understand the situation perfectly.”
The band cuts off mid-phrase. There’s a squeal of feedback and a cheer, and the bandleader is shouting something, and out in the middle of the ballroom two hundred people are lifting their glasses, preparing to greet a new year that will surely bring them love and riches and happiness.
I’m happy for them. Really. I am.
I just know I’m not one of them.
“Lilah—”
“Happy New Year, Kane.”
And I walk away.
I go out through the archway with the shawl clutched at my throat.
Past the pyramid of oranges.
Past the ice eagle, which by now is dripping into its silver tray.
Nobody stops me. Everybody’s facing the other way. I’m invisible to them now.
Out in the lobby, the noise drops to a hum. The black-and-white marble is so shiny that I can see the whole two stories of the ceiling in it.
The brass staircase sweeps up to the second floor, up toward that little room with the couch and the bulbs around the mirror. A place where I once dared to call myself pretty.
The girl behind the coat check counter glances up at me.
“Hi,” I say. “I don’t have my ticket, actually, but I’m just looking for a black cardigan. It’ll be near the front. I came in early.”
She looks past my shoulder at the ballroom doors. Then back at me.
“You’re leaving?” she says, confused. “Now? Before the countdown?”
Behind her, muffled through two closed doors, two hundred voices start to roar together.
“Ten. Nine. Eight…”
“Yeah,” I tell the girl. “I’m not in such a partying mood after all.”