Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
M y heart pounded along with my feet as I ran, a tearing sound the only interruption to my racing heart thumping in my ears.
The damp, cool grass tickled my bare feet, and I realized somewhere along the way, I’d lost my shoes.
A blur of green greeted me as I turned into the maze my father had so lovingly tended for so many decades.
A vision of Duke with his arms around that woman ran through my head on repeat. She looked so beautiful, so perfect. She belonged in his world and in his arms.
It could be nothing. I kept repeating that to myself, hoping it would help stop the hurt that rushed through me like a stampeding bull. I had no real right to that hurt. We were just friends.
One month.
And that month was almost up.
A bench nestled in an alcove just up ahead, and I collapsed on it, more ripping sounds echoing through the quiet night as my ridiculous dress caught on yet another branch.
The moon sat high above, not quite full, but the bloated light taunted me, anyway. The night pressed in on me from all sides, sticky and warm. I closed my eyes and tried not to break under the weight of it.
The crickets chirped in the night air, reminding me I sat here utterly alone.
This was all so absurd. I made this deal with Duke and ignored every warning along the way. Yet here I sat, dressed up in a dress that likely cost more than my monthly salary, missing my shoes, crying over a man that everyone warned me about.
The Devil.
The cards were right. He was a devil, and I fell so hard for that temptation that I’d lost sight of what this was about. This was never more than him helping me, giving me one month of a fantasy before I had to go back to a long, lonely life where I ached to belong, and books were my only relief.
I’m not sure how long I sat there, wallowing in self-pity, but when I opened my eyes, I realized I had no idea where I was. I stood and tried to walk back the way I came.
Except no, that couldn’t be right. It ended in a dead end. The hedges rose around me, blocking out the light of the moon and trapping me in here.
I reached into my pockets. Phone. I had a phone, and I could call someone for help. Except they were empty.
Shit.
I must have dropped it when I ran.
I turned and tried to find my way back to the bench. Did I turn left or right? My chest tightened in panic. I was well and truly lost. I had no way out.
Another bench, or maybe the same one, sat tucked into a little corner of the maze and I collapsed onto it, tucking my head between my legs, trying to breathe.
The corset top pressed on my chest, seeming to tighten further with every breath.
Why did I pick this dress again? Because I wanted Duke to see me as beautiful, but that didn’t stop him from holding someone else.
I tried to grab the ties at my back to undo them and give my lungs room to work, but I couldn’t grasp them.
Just like Duke, always just out of reach.
Oh god. I was going to die here in Duke’s maze, strangled by a dress I had no business wearing at a party I had no business attending. I wasn’t made for this world. My world or his.
My already constricted chest heaved at the thought, trying to work itself into full on sobs. The pain of knowing I didn’t belong, of how much I had to lose, how nothing would ever be the same pierced my body and mind.
I had to go back to that life, the dark and lonely one before cherry martinis and wild ideas. The one where I hung on every scrap of attention Duke gave me, trying not to think of all the women that got more. I couldn’t— oh god . Please. No.
Breathe. Just breathe.
The crickets came back as my heart slowed, and distantly, I heard soft footfalls heading my way.
Rescue.
Oh, thank god.
I brought my head up so fast the world spun, and the edges went black.
When my vision cleared, a figure of a man emerged from one of the turns.
He stood tall and broad, an adonis in Armani.
Something so beautiful that he couldn’t be real, like worshipful hands carved him from stone in precise, delicate lines.
I thought of the Greefs brothers’ statues of Lucifer—tempting, alluring, entirely too much and not enough all at once.
“There you are,” Duke said. I was so focused on his visage and the relief I felt at being found that I almost didn’t catch the hard edge to his voice. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
The second he reached me, he pulled me into his arms without another word. He hunched over me, his arms shaking where they held me, and buried his nose in my neck.
I wrapped my arms around him, too relieved at the sight of him to even think of the other woman he held tonight. Or maybe I would go to him no matter what, no matter who he had in his arms before.
He held a dangerous power over me, like lightning striking in the distance, coming closer with every bolt, warning me that the next might be our last.
“I was so worried when I couldn’t find you. Then one of the staff said they saw you running—” He pulled away, his hand shaking as he brought it up to my face. I probably looked terrible, my hair falling out of its braid, my make-up had smeared and running from my tears. “What happened?”
I didn’t want to answer. I didn’t want to ruin the precious time we had left. I buried my head back in his chest, ruining the pristine white of his shirt with my tears.
“You’re ok. I’ve got you.” He ran his hand up and down my back and I timed my breaths to each pass. He didn’t have me. I held him tighter, wishing that simply pulling us together would meld us into one and this would never need to end .
“We didn’t dance,” I said to break the silence. I didn’t want to talk about her, the woman in his arms, the same one from his office. I knew the look she gave him that day she interrupted us. There was something more there, maybe something they wanted to get back to, and I stood in the way of that.
I couldn’t think about how she looked at him tonight, like he was her entire world—her savior, like I looked at him now.
No, I couldn’t think about any of that right now. This may be all I got before it was over.
If this was all we would ever have, I wanted a dance.
He adjusted his grip on me and brought my hand up to his chest and held it there.
The position seemed so familiar, with the moon overhead and the way he looked at me.
Crickets and our heartbeats were the only sounds, but he swayed with me, anyway.
Dancing under the light of the moon as it crawled across the sky, erasing whatever little time we had left.
“My mistake,” he said, as if I wasn’t the one that ran away before we could.
“Do you remember when we were seventeen?” His voice slipped through the dark between us, low and smooth. He looked a little lost.
“I remember everything.” I shrugged because he knew this already. He knew I didn’t forget, at least not the long-ago things, and how much those memories could weigh on me.
“We were at a party, and you hated it.” I still didn’t know where he was going with this, but I went along with him, anyway.
“Yeah, I remember.” I shuddered just thinking about how overwhelming it was .
He rubbed his thumb along my fingers where he still held my hand as we swayed.
“I brought you to that party because I thought of it as a date, though I never actually said that and just dragged you somewhere you would be miserable.” His sigh brushed along my face.
“Sort of like I did tonight. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought you here, and I definitely shouldn’t have left you to fend for yourself when I did. ”
“I wanted to come. I was so excited. Don’t you dare apologize.” What was he saying? Why was he bringing this up now? My heart ached thinking he didn’t want to be here with me.
I laid my head on his shoulder.
“That party changed everything for me, and yet here I am making the same mistakes.” We stopped swaying and just stood there listening to the crickets.
“Kiss me.” I looked up at him, asking for more. Asking for this not to be over, not yet.
When he did, it was soft and sweet, deeper than all the others that came before.