28. Chapter 28 #2
“I’ll think about it,” I murmur before nestling close to his firm chest once again.
For minutes—hours—we sit like that, just holding onto each other.
Until all the rest of the world—all the hurtful words and misunderstandings that lie between us—fade to silence. And for the first time in a long, long time, I give myself over to being held. Being truly cared for and simply... loved .
I jolt awake from what I think was a nightmare, panting like I can barely catch my breath. The strong arms that held me until I fell asleep are no longer solidly wrapped around me. I’m tucked into my bed, covered by my sunflower comforter.
Dane must’ve carried me to bed after I fell asleep.
Slight mortification tickles my consciousness when I consider how I must’ve looked while dead asleep.
The sound of glass breaking startles me, and I leap out of bed. Tossing my wild hair in a bun, I fly through my bedroom door but stop short at what I see.
A woman with shoulder-length hair stands with her back to me, facing a very panicked-looking Dane. His hands are up in pose of surrender as he stares her down from across the apartment. My foot hits just right—or wrong, rather—making the hardwood floorboards creak beneath my feet.
The woman whirls around, and that’s when I see it—the knife. And not like a small pocket-knife; we’re talking kitchen-cleaver sized cutlery.
Seriously, this is not the time to alliterate your thoughts! I briefly scold my brain.
“You,” the woman seethes. “You’re the reason we aren’t together.”
I blink and shift my gaze to Dane, who gives a slow, deliberate shake of his head. Don’t test her, the motion seems to say.
Laura . It takes my sleepy brain a minute to remember her name, but I’m almost positive that’s who this is. How did she get in here? Didn’t I— Ah, crap . I forgot to key in the security code that locks the building. I’ll never hear the end of it from Dane once he finds out.
“This isn’t about her.” Dane’s tone is hard, cold, and so very unlike him. “We aren’t together because—” For a second, he falters. Don’t say it’s because she’s crazy, please don’t say she’s crazy. “Because we aren’t meant to be.”
A breath I didn’t realize I’d been clinging to ebbs from my chest.
“But we are meant to be!” Laura cries. “You just refuse to see it. You keep wasting your time on girls like her—” Laura jerks the knife, pointing it in my direction. “And for what? To make me jealous?”
My eyes widen at the alternate reality this woman has clearly fabricated.
“We were never together, Laura,” Dane ventures calmly. “We only went on one date.”
The woman tries for a smile and takes a step toward him. “That’s all it took for me to know that you were the one, Dane. Can’t you see that?”
Slowly, carefully, I take a backward step. I need to grab my phone before this escalates and someone gets hurt. Clearly, this woman is unstable since she’s wielding a knife at my roommate—er, boyfriend?
Yeah, that sounds better.
That dang floorboard creaks again, though, halting my path.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Laura asks with a sneer that makes the hair on my arms stand at attention. For a second, no one moves. I doubt I’m even breathing.
Then, like a panther on the prowl, Laura charges toward me, knife raised. I fly back into my room and slam the door, locking it as quickly as I can. Grabbing my phone, I hit the emergency button.
Laura pounds on my door with what sounds like all her might for a total of three seconds before she screams. There’s a scuffle in the hall that makes me let out a scared cry.
“Hello, what’s your emergency?”
I tell the dispatcher my roommate's being attacked by an intruder and fire off the address. “Please hurry!” I say into the phone before ending the call and clutching it to my chest.
Laura’s wails and growls mix with muffled thuds. Dane grunts, then yells, “Stop!” at the top of his lungs. I press my hands to my mouth and let out a sob, afraid of what I’ll find when that door finally opens. Or gets broken open by the crazy stalker with the knife.
“Daria!” Dane yells. “Call 911!”
“I already did,” I cry, terror leaking into my voice.
“Good,” he pants, voice still muffled by the door. “Now do me a favor and stay in your room until they arrive.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m—” He pauses. “I’ll be okay.”
Ohmygosh. Ohmygosh . Dane’s hurt. Dane’s HURT.
If ever I pictured myself in a situation like this, I wasn’t the weeping damsel in the corner afraid to open the door. I was the take-charge girl who kicked butt. Yet as reality sets in, I can’t seem to move. My body has chosen to freeze.
A female’s cries pierce the air. “Why, Dane? Why!”
I can’t hear Dane’s reply, but at this point, this chick has to know that he’s never been interested in her.
“Is she...subdued?” I venture, creeping closer to the door.
“Yes.” Dane sounds out of breath, as if he just ran a marathon.
God, please let him be okay.
Sirens wail in the distance, and it finally feels like I can breathe again. In seconds, the police are outside my bedroom door. I hear Dane give one of the officers a brief rundown of the situation before a hard knock sounds on my bedroom door.
“D?” Dane .
I’ve barely unlocked the door when Dane whips it open and yanks me against his chest. “Are you okay?”
“I’m f-fine.” Minus the shaking. It’s just the adrenalin e, I tell myself while Dane clutches me like he’s afraid I’ll vanish into thin air. “Just worried about you.”
Laura’s nonsensical raging echoes through the apartment as—I assume—they cart her off to a cruiser.
“Mr. Kent, we need to get you to the paramedics,” an officer says from the doorway. I step back and notice the pain in Dane’s expression. He holds out his arm, which only now do I realize is dripping with blood.
“Dane,” I gasp.
“I’m okay,” he says, though his wince tells me otherwise. “I tried to wrestle the knife away from her but was a second too late.”
“Miss, we’d like to ask you some questions,” a female officer says as she joins the first.
I nod before meeting Dane’s eyes. “See you in a bit?”
“Don’t go anywhere.” He winks like he didn’t just get stabbed by his stalker.
A half-hysterical laugh bursts from my throat as I press both hands to my face. The officer who suggested Dane see an EMT ushers him out of the room while I drop onto my bed. My hands don’t quit shaking until I’ve told the officer everything, starting with being woken up in the night.
“Thank you for your cooperation. We’ll get things wrapped up so you can get some rest.”
Dane stays in the living room with the police for long minutes until at last they leave. By the time he pads back to my bedroom, my eyes are heavy again. “Are you okay?”
“Just a surface wound,” he says with a completely uncalled for smirk. “Probably have a gnarly scar from it, though.”
“That isn’t something to joke about, Dane.” It’s impossible to add even a hint of levity to my voice. “You were stabbed .”
“You were stabbed ?!”
Both of us startle at the dark-haired woman gaping at us from the doorway. “My baby!” Alex cries, rushing to Dane and yanking him down to her chest.
“Mom.” He attempts to resist, but Alexandra Kent must have arms of steel. “I’m okay, really. But how did you know to come here?”
“The neighbors called me when the police came banging down your door!”
Then chaos erupts. Dane’s dad and Logan bustle into the room with a hundred questions, followed by Parker and Jamie. Parker’s signing is frantic as he tries to figure out what happened and who was hurt.
“Laura broke in,” Dane explains loudly enough to quiet the small crowd congregating in my bedroom. “But this time, she had a weapon.”
Alex gasps. “A weapon !”
All at once, everyone starts talking over each other and signing back and forth, and all I want to do is crawl back into bed and pretend this night never happened. I’ve never had a family who cared before, but this is overwhelming in a way I’m not emotionally prepared to handle.
Even though it’s pure and utter anarchy, their concern feels...nice. Like I’m a part of something meaningful, or like I should be a part of something this meaningful.
When the voices grow too loud, too intense for me to handle after the exhausting day and night I’ve had, my own irrational longing and lack of sleep pushes me over a ledge without a way to save myself.
I very suddenly and very haphazardly blurt, “Dane and I are dating!” The room goes silent as every single person’s head swivels like it’s on a wheel to face me. I take a breath and note the concern and shock on everyone’s faces. “There. I said it.”
Dane’s face pales and his mouth drops open in shock. Only then does regret slam into me.
What have I done?
“ Daria Delaney Dantez .” Jamie’s stern reprimand comes just before she crosses the room. “You’ve been lying to me .”
“It’s my fault,” Dane interjects, earning the swiveling heads’ attention. “I told her we should keep it a secret so my parents wouldn’t find out.”
That makes us all turn toward the tiny tornado known as Alexandra Kent. Her chest rises and falls with a deep breath before she raises her chin like a soldier about to go to battle.
“I see,” she says with a deadly sort of calm.
“Mom,” Dane heaves out a sigh. “It’s not what you think.”
“I see that my opinion matters so little to you.”
“We haven’t been messing around,” I hurry to say, immediately regretting it. The room falls quiet once again, but I can feel everyone’s attention on me.
No one in this room needed to know that. In fact, none of them even deserve an explanation because Dane and I are totally innocent. The details of our relationship are—should be—private.
And yet...
I really want his family to like and accept me after all is said and done. Which is a new and completely foreign desire for me. Who even am I anymore?
“I believe you.” Jamie’s soft voice is full of conviction. “And I’m happy for you guys. Even if you did choose to hide it from me.” Parker wraps an arm around Jamie and pulls her into his side.