Chapter 8 - Elowyn #2
“I’m sorry, I can’t.” She pats my hand. “You’ll be okay, I promise.”
With that, she leaves us alone. Me and the man who holds my future in his hands.
My eyes scan the room as the tension keeps rising, high enough to split me in half.
“Hello?” I whisper, when what I really want to do is scream.
Time stretches, the silence growing unbearable the longer it lasts.
The tension is about to snap. I’m about to scream.
Then—
He’s coming.
At first, all I hear are dress shoes moving across the stone floor.
A tremor sweeps through me when he steps out of the shadows. Tall and lean. Broad-shouldered. He’s only a silhouette, but I know it’s him.
He’s the one who waited for me at the window. The one I saw when I was drugged.
He’s definitely not from town. Not one of Barclay’s bookies either. I feel foolish for not realizing it sooner. They aren’t built like this, none of them.
So if it isn’t them, who is he?
It’s impossible to tell when his face is hidden.
My knees go weak, and my palms are clammy with the murky memories his mask evokes.
Was he wearing it when he touched me in my bed? When he slid the clothes off my body?
Did he smirk behind it when he took my pictures?
The questions remain locked in my throat.
I can’t talk. This man sucks the air out of the room, out of my lungs.
Twenty feet separate us.
He’s dressed in black; I see that now that he’s close. A suit, a black shirt beneath it, no tie.
Ten feet. Six.
I’ve already forgotten about my perfect speech. The need to flee is suffocating. It’s all I can think of.
Damn him. He has no right to terrorize me. No right to my soul or my body, no matter how much money he shed on me.
I have to confront him. I have to say something before he comes within reach and maybe brushes his fingers over my cheek, my collarbone. Other places he shouldn’t touch.
Before he does worse.
He’s about a foot taller than me and seems to be twice as strong. He might not kill me like Mary promised, but he could still do serious damage.
All too easily, he could tear this dress off me and overpower me without breaking a sweat.
There’s only one man I want to handle me like that, and he’s not here.
Duncan isn’t the person standing too close to the platform, towering over me in a way meant to threaten.
Whose eyes glimmer as he watches me whimper and pale in silence.
Duncan would never.
I open my mouth to tell The Restorer to back off. To please, give me space. I need to breathe.
As if sensing my resilience rising, he tilts his head, inspecting me like I’m a bug under a magnifying glass.
The cruel, belittling gesture sends heat up my neck and anger rushing through my veins.
My fingers itch to slap him across the face so hard that he feels the sting through the mask.
I can’t. I won’t ruin it for Barclay and me.
Quietly, I hold firm as he begins to circle me like a shark in the water.
At first, the symbolism of it has my shoulders tensing. My head snaps left and right as I prepare myself for his attack, whenever it may come.
But in the fourth round, something shifts within him.
The way he walks, it isn’t the same. It’s less tense, more naturally confident.
Familiar.
I blink a few times, just to make sure I’m not imagining this.
I’m not.
Holy. Crap.
His dark eyes. His gait.
His hair too. Duncan had the same thick hair, worn exactly like this. A little messy on top, shorter on the sides.
It’s too much to be a coincidence.
The Restorer is Duncan.
He’s filled out since we were kids, but there’s no doubt in my mind. This is him.
I school my expression while I figure out my next move.
Inside, everything is chaos. My heart races, adrenaline humming so loud it drowns out reason.
Longing and grief tear through me, betrayal following close behind and cutting me deep enough to wound.
I love him, but he’s been unfair. Never gave me a chance to apologize. Never tried to work things out, didn’t even want us to stay friends.
He just disappeared. For over a decade.
And now that he’s finally back, he’s choosing to do all these awful things to me?
At that, a full-body ache slams into me, crushing me under its weight.
Why would he do that?
What if you’re wrong? What if it’s not him?
The rational question silences the rapid-fire thoughts. It splashes ice water over the fire lit by my intense memories.
Be it Duncan or a man who enjoys touching me in my sleep, I have to stay sharp. At the very least, hold on to my consciousness.
I clear my throat. “Hello?”
He gives me nothing until he’s back to facing me.
His glare is practically a declaration of war. Like he’s letting it sink in that he’s taller, bigger, and fully clothed, while I’m a woman half his size and basically naked.
Why?
“Hello?” I repeat, my mouth the only part of me that’s working.
If I could move, I’d rip the mask off him and be done with it. If the air in the room were any less suffocating, I would’ve screamed.
“Please,” I whisper.
He shakes his head.
“Say something.”
This time, he lifts his hand in a stop gesture, warning me to be quiet.
He’s close enough that I can tell his fingertips are textured, a little calloused. They remind me of mine.
Not that our similarities do anything to calm the erratic beating of my heart.
The air is still charged with the kind of energy that makes my head throb.
I have to speak up again. Have to do something, or I’ll shrivel at his feet.
My train of thought stops cold when he moves his hand, gesturing toward my chest.
“What?”
What he wants becomes abundantly clear a second later, when his fingertips ghost one of the lapels of my dress.
I recoil as if I’ve been bitten.
“No.” My arms hug me tighter. “No. We’re going to talk first.”
I don’t miss the implication as soon as I say it.
We’ll talk first. I’ll take the dress off later.
The heat pooling between my thighs is the nail in my proverbial coffin. The humiliating dampness gathers where it shouldn’t, probably because I can just feel this man is Duncan.
Refusing to lose it completely, I take a deep breath, repeating my “no.”
“Strip,” he growls, voice ripping through the dark. Through me.
It eviscerates the last of my doubts at once.
The Restorer is Duncan.
Shock so intense barrels into me, and I’m choked. Frozen.
“I said, strip.”
His words hardly register when the pain of betrayal is worse than ever before.
He’s known who I was all along.
Meaning, he’s wounding and humiliating me on purpose.
All because of our kiss?
I don’t understand any of it.
Tears roll down my cheeks, rivers of them.
My heart is being shredded. Torn. Stomped on.
“I said—”
“Stop it.” I tip my chin up to stare him dead in the eye.
“Excuse me?”
“Stop it,” I demand, louder and more sure of myself. “Duncan, whatever it is you’re doing, stop it. Just stop.”