Chapter 14
DOVE
Something Evie said last night flickers through my mind first thing next morning.
Well, no. That’s not actually true. The first thing that flickers through my mind is the delicious soreness between my legs.
The ache in my ankles and wrists.
The realization that my hair is still slightly damp, because I took a shower at two-thirty in the morning to wash the arousal from between my thighs and Bane’s cum from my skin.
Part of me wants to pretend the whole thing was a viciously dark fantasy, straddling that dark gray area between dream and nightmare.
But that gray area is where I thrive.
Maybe someone whose head was less fucked up and whose libido was less black and broken might view what happened last night as a violation.
Assault, even.
But even when I lie to myself and try to cast him as the villain, I can’t.
Because…if a villain ties you up and makes you moan and writhe and come while he uses you exactly like in your darkest fantasies…is he still the villain?
Mercifully, I’m almost positive Evie didn’t hear a thing last night. This morning, she told me she slept like a baby in my “adorable” carriage house, thanked me again for trusting her with my secrets, and gave me a big hug.
Not a single hint of “also I heard you getting face-fucked by your venomously dark and villainous fiancé last night until you came like a hurricane”.
I mean, this is Evie we’re talking about.
If she’d heard anything, it’d be all over her face in lurid, living color.
After that, her brother’s men, who I think might actually have spent the night in their SUV parked across the street from my dad’s house, drove her home.
And now I’m alone with my thoughts.
Rehearsal whooshes by in a blur. It actually bothers me when I realize it’s over, because ballet is my therapy. It’s been the one constant in my life, through pain, torture, loss, the downward spiral into the darkness of addiction, and the clawing, nail-splitting climb back out of it.
The one saving grace of the rehearsal I’m barely mentally present for is that at the end, Madame Kuzmina, our ice-cold sadist of an artistic director, announces in front of the whole company that she’s chosen me to dance the role of Giselle in our upcoming gala performance of excerpts from Giselle, Carmen, and Don Quixote.
That feels good. Especially when Milena, who I know was angling for the part, gives me a huge hug and earnestly tells me she’s happy Kuzmina picked me.
But as I shower off in the changing rooms later, something that Evelina said last night is still percolating in my head: “There’s more to it than that? What do you remember about them dating?”
Honestly, I don’t remember anything about them dating. I know from pictures and what I’ve been told that they were together for almost three years. Bane was a junior when Lark and I arrived at Thornfield Prep as freshmen, and I guess they hit it off pretty quickly.
I’ve seen the photos of Scott and me before heading out to junior prom—me looking absolutely fucking ridiculous in my shimmery pop-star dress and Sex and the City blue Manolos. In one picture, you can see Lark and Bane, both all in black, lurking in the background.
Obviously they weren’t going to prom, because they were Mr. and Mrs. Anti-establishment.
I know—again, from what I’ve been told—that Bane proposed to Lark, two months before I got her killed.
But everything else is a blank.
No memories. No anecdotes. Just…nothing.
I'm still mulling that over when I decide to go to the garden behind the main house later that evening when I get home.
“Good evening, Dove.”
Melinda, my father’s housekeeper, is, predictably, her usual quiet, even-tempered self.
It’s almost a zen-like thing, except she’s not at all a yoga type.
It’s almost more like she’s constantly playing a background part on Downton Abbey as one of the staff.
I mean, she tried calling me “Ms. Marchetti” when she first started, and it was endlessly amusing to Lark and me that she pointedly would not call her “Ms. Peltier”, since Lark was also “the help” in Melinda’s eyes.
Agatha, Lark's grandmother and our previous housekeeper, started showing signs of her emerging Alzheimer’s pretty early.
It’s not like my dad kept her on out of the goodness of his heart: I think it was more a form of laziness, keeping her employed while Melinda slowly learned the position she wouldn’t assume for another six years.
When Agatha died in her sleep a week after Lark was buried, Melinda took over full-time as the Marchetti family housekeeper.
She’s great at her job. She’s just…not Agatha.
Lark’s grandmother is what you’d see if you were to imagine a stereotypical housekeeper: in her later years, round, cheerful and sharply witty. She was basically Betty White from Golden Girls.
Melinda, on the other hand, is maybe forty, but has also had a ton of "work" done: lip fillers, Botox, I’m pretty sure a minor face lift, and definitely a boob job. She also prides herself on being very fashionable, even if she’s dusting the library or cooking Dad some extravagant meal.
“Good evening, Melinda,” I say with a smile.
Her brows pinch slightly as she stands backlit in the door to her quarters. Her eyes slide up to my pink hair for a minute, which I know she hates, before she refocuses on my face. “What can I do for you?”
“I, uh…have a bit of an odd question for you.”
She frowns. “Yes?”
The garden apartment where Melinda lives is also where Lark and Agatha lived while they were still alive.
It’s a huge apartment by New York City standards, with three bedrooms, three full baths, a kitchen, a dining area, and a living room.
The three of them were able to comfortably share it, put it that way.
I have vague flashbacks from that somber, nightmarish time after I was brought home, of men I didn’t recognize just…
clearing the space of most of Lark's and Agatha's things.
The couch that Lark and I used to sit on while watching horror movies we were way too young for.
The framed Basquiat print that hung in the dining room.
Weeks later, I was able to bring myself to go into Lark’s room and pack up whatever was left. But it wasn’t much. Just a few books, some vinyl records, and Boo, the little purple stuffed elephant she’d had on her bed since she was two.
But I’m not here tonight looking for mementos or memories. I’m looking for answers that back then I maybe didn’t even know to look for.
I clear my throat and smile at Melinda. “I was wondering if you knew if any of the Peltiers' things were still stored here. Like, anything that the movers may have missed, or you packed up—”
“There are a few boxes in Agatha’s old room,” Melinda says crisply. “I…” Her usually calm demeanor breaks for a second as she glances down at the floor. “I wasn’t sure if they had any distant family who might come looking for…well…anything.”
She smiles a very tight, Botox smile and places a manicured hand on my arm.
“Come, I’ll show you.”
My heart stills.
The first three boxes I opened didn’t have anything by way of clues in them. Some old knitting supplies, a few cookbooks, clothes, trinkets. But when I get to the fourth box, I freeze.
“Heartbreak” is written in messy, jangled sharpie on the top of it. The B is backwards. I poke my head out of the room and catch Melinda’s eye as she sips a cup of tea in the kitchen.
“Find what you were looking for?” she asks politely.
“Do you know about this heartbreak box?”
Her face clouds. “Agatha,” she says quietly. “The poor thing packed it in a moment of lucidity a few days before she passed. I believe it’s some things from Lark’s room.” She winces. “I… I know how close you two were. I’m sorry, Dove.”
I bite back the bitterness in my mouth and smile tightly. “Thanks, Melinda.”
There’s not much in the box—some more records, Lark’s old bronze and green desk lamp that I remember so well, and a few photos of her and me that I remember being tacked to her wall. Those hit me hard.
But then I see it, and my breath catches.
Holy shit.
I remember the little blue book vividly, if for no other reason than it was the one part of herself that she kept hidden even from me.
Her diary.
A twinge ripples through me as I reach into the box for it, barely touching it, as if doing so would dishonor her even in death.
But I also want answers. I need answers when it comes to her and Bane. I have to know what I’m getting into with him.
Why he’s so fixated on me, and why I both flinch from and ache for his rough, villainous touch.
The seconds tick by, my fingertips a hair's breadth away from the book, which she didn’t share with anyone.
Fuck it.
I pluck the diary up, my heart racing as I walk over to the little built-in bench by the window that looks over the garden. Sitting, I open to a random entry, my pulse jangling as my eyes drop to the forbidden page.
Dear Boo,
I can’t help but grin to myself. It’s so Lark that she addressed her diary entries not to “Dear Diary” but to the stuffed elephant that lived on her bed.
Dear Boo,
Well, it happened (!!). You know I’ve been going around in circles about it for months, wondering if I was ready, or if I wanted to. But I decided I was, and I’m so fucking glad I did.
Bane and I HAD SEX. I, Lark Peltier, am no longer a virgin!!!
My heart plummets as I read the words. A horrible, gnawing, cancerous guilt snakes through me, twisting my insides.
Of all the fucking entries, this is the one I had to read, after what happened last night?
I’m a beyond horrible friend and I’m going to hell.
The lump in my throat just sits there, leaden, as I return my eyes to the page.
It was SO GOOD! I mean, it hurt, but just at first. And there wasn’t really any blood THANK GOD. Bane was so cool about it all, too. I mean he was amazing before, and never once pushed for it, or begged, or anything. But when IT finally happened…holy FUCK.
He’s so hot (and big lol). And he made it sooooo good.