Chapter 19
PORTIA
I couldn’t breathe in my dress.
It wasn’t just the trim waistline—though that certainly didn’t help. It was everything. The weight of the fabric. The sharp prickle of the tags still tucked into the seam.
It was the way it made me feel seen.
Not admired. Not beautiful. Seen.
And I hated that.
I closed the door to my suite at The Palmetto Rose and leaned back against the wall, chest heaving. My reflection stared at me from the mirror across the room—still flawless, still composed. But it was a lie. A perfect fucking lie.
The dress clung like it had been tailored to my ache, every seam stitched from pressure and performance. My hair was in a sleek twist, sprayed into place hours ago. My lipstick was barely smudged from fake smiles and polite laughter. I looked exactly how I was supposed to.
And I’d never felt more like a fraud.
I stumbled out of my heels. My arches screamed, grateful and resentful all at once. I dropped to the floor beside the fainting sofa, the cool hardwood kissing my knees. I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I just breathed. Shallow, ragged breaths that echoed too loud in the quiet.
I didn’t hear the knock. I didn’t hear the door open.
I only felt the warmth of him—Monte—slipping inside the room without a sound, then easing down to sit beside me like he’d done it a thousand times. Maybe he had.
He didn’t touch me. Didn’t speak. He just sat.
I stared at the hem of my dress pooling like a spilled secret.
“I can’t do this,” I whispered.
His voice came low. Even. “You already are.”
“No,” I said, louder now. “You don’t understand. I’m unraveling. And no one can see it because I’m too good at hiding it. I’m the one they trust. The one who fixes everything. But I can’t—” My voice cracked. “I can’t even fix myself.”
He didn’t flinch. Didn’t interrupt. Monte, always the still center in every storm.
I laughed, bitter. “You want to know the worst part?”
He turned his head slightly.
“I don’t even know what I want. Not really. Not anymore. I think I used to. But now it’s just noise. Silas. The weddings. My name is all over every detail, and none of it feels like mine.”
Still, he said nothing. He waited.
I pushed myself to my feet, the dress swishing around me. I crossed the room, half-blind, and stopped in front of the full-length mirror.
She looked back at me, this curated goddess. Perfect posture, perfect skin. The kind of woman who made other women feel inadequate.
“I built her,” I whispered. “I made her from nothing. From ashes.”
Monte rose, slow and careful, but kept his distance. “She’s not nothing.”
“She’s a mask.”
“She’s you.” His voice had edge now. The kind I rarely heard.
I turned, sharply. “No. She’s who I have to be. To survive. To win. To be trusted. You think I don’t know how this looks? A Black woman planning six billionaire weddings? I have to be perfect. I have to be above reproach. Every second of every day.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t,” I snapped. “You don’t know what it’s like to be measured in a room just for showing up. To walk on eggshells in heels. To have to smile wider, stand straighter, never need help. Because help makes you look weak. And weakness gets punished.”
Monte stepped forward then. One step. Just one.
“I see you,” he said.
“No, you see the mask.”
He didn’t blink. “No. I see you. Right now. Here. Falling apart in an expensive dress and trying to apologize for it.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know how to be soft. Not really.”
He closed the distance.
“You don’t have to be.”
My eyes filled. Finally. Finally.
I looked back at the mirror. My shoulders sagged. My hands trembled. The image stared back—beautiful, yes. But tired. Fractured.
“I don’t know who I am if I’m not the one holding everything together,” I whispered.
Monte’s voice came rough this time. Thick. “You’re the woman I trust more than anyone else on this earth. The woman I’d follow without a question.”
He paused. “It’s okay to fall apart.”
That did it. That split something open.
I sagged forward, my face burying in his chest, and he caught me—arms around my back, holding me like I might break and knowing he wouldn’t let me.
“I’m so tired,” I breathed.
“I know.”
“I keep loving the wrong things. The wrong people.”
Monte exhaled hard, like that cost him something.
“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe you’re just waiting for the right person to stay.”
I pulled back, just enough to see him. His eyes were dark and kind and full. Not pity. Not judgment. Just presence.
“Thank you,” I said.
His jaw worked. “Don’t thank me. I’m the one who should’ve said more sooner.”
I frowned. “Said what?”
He held my gaze. “That I see you. Not the planner. Not the fixer. You. The girl who built herself from nothing. The woman who makes chaos look like art. The one who doesn’t know she’s already more than enough.”
I swallowed hard.
Then I turned back to the mirror.
And before I could stop myself, I said it.
“I thought you would leave. After what happened with Silas—I thought maybe he scared you off.”
Monte was quiet. Too quiet.
I glanced at him, really looked, and the shadows caught just enough of his face to show me what I’d been pretending not to see. The bruising was faint now, just yellow-green along the ridge of his nose, but it was there. And I knew the break had been worse before. Had to have been.
My throat tightened. “He hurt you.”
Monte’s mouth twitched. “It wasn’t about me,” he said. “It was about you.”
My stomach twisted. “God.”
I turned away, my arms folding over my stomach. Shame twisted through me like barbed wire. I hadn’t even talked to Monte about his face. Had I really been that callous? That deep in Silas’s orbit I couldn’t admit who was bleeding for me in silence?
“I didn’t ask,” I whispered. “I didn’t even—Jesus, Monte, I didn’t ask.”
He stepped behind me, close but not touching. “You didn’t have to.”
“I was so wrapped up in him. In … whatever this is.”
Monte’s voice dropped. “You’re still wrapped up in it.”
I didn’t respond. Couldn’t. Because it was true.
“I see how you sneak looks when he walks in a room. How you pretend to be checking the flower arrangements when you’re actually waiting to see if he’ll follow you into a closet.”
Heat crawled up my neck.
Monte didn’t sound angry. Just tired. Just heartbroken.
“I know what it looks like,” I said quietly. “Us sneaking around.”
His voice sharpened. “It looks like you being reckless.”
I flinched. “I’m not?—”
“You are.” He didn’t raise his voice, but there was something steel-edged in it. “You’re playing with a man who doesn’t even know what side of the war he’s on. Who disappears when things get hard and punches people who care about you when they get too close.”
I turned then, because I couldn’t take hearing it while staring at my reflection. “You don’t know what it’s like with him.”
“No,” he said, jaw tight. “But I know what it looks like on you. And it’s not peace.”
That landed like a slap.
“You think I don’t see it?” he continued. “You’re brilliant, Portia. But you’re scared. You’re trying to pretend it’s just sex, just secrecy, just fun—but it’s not. You don’t sneak around with someone unless it means something. And you don’t look like someone who feels safe.”
“I don’t,” I said before I could stop myself. “I don’t feel safe. Not with what he’s involved in. Not with the things I don’t know.”
Monte’s expression didn’t change. But something in his eyes softened.
I swallowed, my hands curling into the fabric of my dress.
“There was something … at Magnolia Plantation tonight. A ribbon with a message.” I forced myself to meet his gaze.
“Red silk, tucked into Silas’s pocket. I thought it was a joke, something stupid one of his brothers left there. But then I looked closer.”
Monte stilled. “What did it say?”
“‘My Silas. Soon.’” I didn’t even recognize my own voice—how small it had become. “It was etched in, like a threat dressed up as sentiment.”
Monte’s jaw ticked. “Jesus.”
“He said it was probably a prank. That Marcus or Charlie planted it. But his face—” I exhaled shakily. “He was lying. Or maybe not lying, but hiding something. I don’t think he has a clue where it came from. And I don’t think it was meant for me to see.”
Monte stepped closer, his brows knitting. “What do you mean—what he’s involved in?”
I hesitated. Then exhaled slowly, letting the words surface like bruises.
“He told me once … not much. Just a hint. Back when we were still dancing around each other. Said his mother had something to do with it.” I paused. “He called her a ghost.”
Monte stilled. “His mother?”
“Yeah.” I wrapped my arms around myself. “It wasn’t just what he said—it was how he said it. Like he’d spent years trying to forget her, but never really could. Like whatever she was ... it left something in him. Something that still hurts.”
Monte looked unsettled now, his voice low. “I didn’t know. None of the Danes talk about her.”
“Silas doesn’t want to. And now the message with the ribbon. It was tucked in his pocket. Like a message meant to remind him that he doesn’t get to outrun whatever it is he’s running from.”
Monte’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “You think it was her?”
“I don’t know. But someone out there wants him afraid. What if they want me afraid?” I met his eyes, throat tight. “What does that mean for me?”
Monte didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.
Because we both knew the answer.
Silas Dane wasn’t just dangerous because of what he might do. He was dangerous because of what was coming for him. And I was standing too close.
“It scares me,” I said, barely above a whisper. “He scares me.”
Silence stretched.
Finally, Monte spoke. “Then why are you still there?”
Because he makes me feel alive. Because I want to be undone. Because when I’m with him, I forget how lonely it feels to always be the strong one.
But I didn’t say any of that.
“I don’t know,” I said instead.
Monte nodded once. “Then figure it out before it costs you more than your pride.”
And just like that, he turned and walked out, closing the door with the kind of quiet grace only someone deeply wounded could muster.
I stood in the hush that followed, breath catching.
Monte was right.
Silas didn’t just take my breath.
He took my peace.
And I wasn’t sure I knew how to take it back.
Because maybe he didn’t know how to love without chaos.
Maybe he’d never been taught that love wasn’t supposed to feel like drowning—like a war fought in whispers and wildfire.
He touched me like he’d never been allowed to want anything. Kissed me like he expected the world to end mid-sentence.
And God help me, I wanted him, anyway.
But what if that wasn’t enough?
What if all he could offer was heat and ruin, and the moment I needed more—stability, softness, safety—he’d vanish again, leaving only the ash of us behind?
Because the truth was, I’d never wanted marriage.
Not really.
Not the white dress or the vows or the glassy-eyed promises about forever. I’d built my life on control, on independence, on not needing anyone to save me.
But lately, I’d started to wonder—was this the alternative?
Loving a man who made me feel like a live wire, like I was one wrong touch away from destruction?
I didn’t need a ring.
But I did want safety.
Not the dull kind. Not a caged, predictable life.
But the kind that let me breathe. That let me exhale without scanning the horizon for the next storm.
And Silas …
Silas was the storm.
What if love, for Silas Dane, would always come with blood on the edges?
I should’ve walked away.
Should’ve canceled the contract and run back to Atlanta.
But I didn’t.
Because when Silas looked at me, I didn’t feel safe.
I felt alive.