Chapter 11 Dandelion
ELEVEN
DANDELION
LUCY
Shit.
Okay. So he knows I was running, but from the hint of a curl to his lips—and the anger simmering in his deep green eyes—he has no idea why I had to go.
“I wasn’t running,” I say automatically.
The lie sounds pathetic, even to me.
He narrows his gaze at me. “Do you know how many people I almost mowed down as I raced after you? Here’s a tip, Luce. We didn’t meet until we were in our mid-twenties because we went to separate schools, but you told me once you did track in high school. Seeing you go? Yeah. I believe it.”
I tuck that little nugget away. It’s easier to blame my urge to run on a childhood affinity for the sport than admit that I was scared—or focus on any poor people on the street who accidentally got between Dallas and me.
Me and Dallas…
I swallow roughly. Then, instead of answering his question, I ask one of my own. “How did you know I left?”
“I was on my way in to the Fortress. Imagine my surprise when my wife… who gave me her word that she wouldn’t leave the penthouse, especially not without me…
she was dashing out the door, in such a rush to leave she didn’t even see me about to get on the elevator.
Of course I turned and followed. What else would I do? ”
Keep your cool, Lucy. Dallas has all of the advantage here. If he is lying to you, you can’t expect him to be honest now, and yet—
“I don’t know. Maybe you can have a little rendezvous with your pretty fiancé?
” When Dallas stiffens, I can’t help but turn the screws a little more, though I don’t know who it hurts more.
“Her name was Heather, I believe? At least, that’s what she told me when I answered the door and she told me that she was there for you…
and that you’re supposed to be getting married in two weeks. ”
If I had been thinking, I would’ve confronted Dallas with the truth somewhere dry and warm and not when he has his arms caging me in. Because the second I snap, he closes his pose so that, despite my renewed urge to bolt, there’s no escaping him.
I mean, I try. I give it a good effort, squirming against his wet body, trying not to remember how good his skin feels against mine when we’re in bed, but Dallas… yeah. He’s not letting me go anywhere.
Finally, I stop, and I glare up at him. “Move.”
“No.”
“Dallas, I… I can’t do this right now.”
“If I move, you’ll disappear, and I won’t be able to explain… look. What you think is going on? It’s not what it seems.”
“Oh? You’re not engaged to marry some pretty little thing when I’m wearing your ring?”
I lift up my hand, making sure he can see it.
Dallas relaxes his stance just enough to take my hand, pressed his warm lips to the metal, then interlace his fingers with mine.
“I’m not,” he says simply. “How can I be? You are my wife, Lucy. My Dandelion.” He uses our hands to tap his newly healed tattoo. “Remember?”
“No,” I spit out. “I don’t.”
His expression softens. The anger from before—the anger that I left him—simmers, then banks, while his eyes rove over my face.
“I know. And if you did, you’d remember that Harmony Heights…
it’s fucking ridiculous, but it’s a… high society town is the best way to describe it.
Mothers pick out eligible bachelors, sic their single daughters on them.
Arranged marriages… they happen. Yeah,” he says when my forehead wrinkles.
“I know. What we had… that was real. But after you left… fuck, Luce. The second my old man bit it and I inherited everything he had, I became a goddamn prize. They don’t want to marry Dallas Collins. They want to marry the—”
He cuts himself short, shaking his head.
“In the last year, Heather is the fifth girl who decided to plan a wedding, hoping that I’d show up, take one look at them, and decide I couldn’t live without them.
It’s delusion, baby. That’s all. She might think we’re getting married.
I know better.” He squeezes my fingers. “I’m already married to the woman that I want. ”
God, I want to believe that. I want to believe that more than I want to believe anything about my new life.
It would be so easy to do so. Nod and hug Dallas and go up to the penthouse with him as though today didn’t happen at all.
But what if he’s lying?
“How do I…”
“Know that I’m telling the truth?” he offers.
“Know that I’m not just making up some hard-to-believe story because your amnesia makes you vulnerable to believing anything you’re told?
I’m not lying to you, Lucy. Yeah, I know who Heather is, but I am not marrying her. Not in two weeks. Not in two months.”
Dallas takes my chin, lifting my head up so that our eyes meet.
He opens his mouth. Thinks about what he’s going to say. Glances over his shoulder where he sees that the storm has begun to move out, the rain slowing substantially.
He looks back. “Will you take a drive with me?”
What?
“Dallas—”
“Please.” The way he rasps the single word… “It’s not far. And maybe… maybe it’s time we see if we can try to bring some of your memories back. Maybe then you’ll understand just how much I love you, and how there will never be anyone else for me.”
Put like that, how can I refuse?
When I ask Dallas if we’re going to go upstairs and change, he shakes his head.
He seems determined to show me… something…
and since he has his keys with him constantly, and he keeps his car in the nearby parking deck designated for the Fortress, he thinks it’s a better idea if we shake off our soaked clothes, dry off a little in front of the car’s heater, and go wherever he wants to take me.
A better idea? More like he’s terrified I’ll return to the penthouse, lock myself in my room, and refuse to hear him out.
I mean, where else could I go? I know I was living in California before this, but that’s a huge ass state. I’m sure I could find the address, but what then? I’ve been gone for weeks, and it seems as though I was coming back to Harmony Heights for a reason. I’m here now. I don’t think I can leave.
Not yet, at least. And if I can trust Dallas… there’s no reason for me to go.
He led me to a truck, watching me out of the corner of my eye as though he expected me to recognize it. A hint of disappointment when I didn’t, and then we were off..
It’s still raining. Not as bad as before, but when it becomes a steady spray, it makes sense for us not to have changed. Wherever we’re going, it’s outside, and we’re just getting wet again.
It’s growing dark out; whether that’s due to the lingering storm or the hour, I don’t know.
I’m surprised when he helps me out of his truck and leads me down a narrow sidewalk that cuts through a copse of trees.
The sky gets even darker as we go, and I’m beginning to think that this has been a long con, Dallas is a serial killer, I outlived my usefulness when I called him out on having a fiancé, and now he was taking me deep in the woods so that he could kill me and dispose of the body.
And then, when I start furtively looking around for a stick or a rock or something to protect myself, the narrow sidewalk turns into a wider, somewhat muddy path, opening up on a cozy park complete with benches, a lampposts, and a fountain in the distance.
“Here we go,” he murmurs, breath warm on my chilly ear. “When we were together, you used to love this park. In fact, this is where we first met.”
A park. Not sudden death.
Thank you, anxiety. That was fun.
I glance over at him, knowing he must see the hope on my face. Hope that he’s being honest with me. Hope that this might work…
“Really?”
“Yup.” Dallas gestures toward a path curving its way around the fountain.
“I used to take that trail and run whenever I needed to get out, get some air, and be free.” Laying his hand on my shoulder, he shifts me until I’m looking at the fountain.
“You were sitting there when you first saw me. Now, I may or may not have been very hot that day so I took off my shirt before I passed the most beautiful blonde I’d ever seen before.
” He brushes my shoulder with his thumb.
“You may or may not have been so stunned by the sight of my sweaty chest that you took a tumble in the fountain and I had to fish you out.”
My cheeks heat up. “No. Tell me you’re kidding. Tell me that our grand love story didn’t begin with me falling in a fountain.”
Hearing the notes of embarrassment mingled with suppressed laughter in my voice, Dallas’s entire body language changes.
He leans into me, kissing the top of my damp head.
“Oh, it happened, Luce. And you know what? That’s not even in the top five of my memories when it comes to that fountain. Come on. Let me show you.”
Welp. In for a penny, in for a pound… I accept Dallas’s hand and let him pull me toward the fountain.
Even through the rain, it’s unmistakable. Between the stone basin at the bottom carved with dandelions, and the way the column rises up, the fountain spraying in a design that is reminiscent of the fluffy dandelion seed tattoo on Dallas’s neck, I know exactly what I’m looking at.
A dandelion fountain.
I look over at him. “Is this… is this why you call me Dandelion?”
His eyes light up, catching the glow from the nearby lamp. It’s enough to help us see each other—and to see that, in the middle of an evening storm, there is no one here except for me and my husband.
“Because we met here?”
Dallas doesn’t answer me with words. It’s like he thinks I remember that, that I remember this fountain, that I remember him because, instead of agreeing, he gives me his answer in the way he suddenly reaches for me.
His arms curl around my upper arms, pulling me up against him, pulling me to the tips of my toes so that he can bend his head over me and take my mouth in on hell of a heated kiss.
I’m gasping by the time he breaks it, my fingers clutching the wet material of his t-shirt.