Chapter 36
Quill
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“Onera!” yelled the man who had just failed to maintain his composed lawyer’s facade before his protégé and now feared that Davian would go to the press. “If you don’t open that damn door, you’ll wish you’d never left that room upstairs!”
The wood creaked with a loud rumble as something heavy crashed against it.
“Joseph, please!” I heard Lorette cry, but her perfect husband kicked the door of the small chess salon once more.
Rescue My Heart
Liz Longley
I frantically snapped out of my paralysis and looked around the room, but there was nowhere to hide. Just a chess table, white dressers with Chinese gold-rimmed tableware that made me wonder how it had survived the last four months, and large flower pots with southern European plants.
Until now, I hadn't realized that I had stepped into quicksand, but now I was sinking.
He would come in. And whatever that meant, paper castles would go up in flames. He would burn me to ashes.
I would let it happen, let him destroy me for good. And then... I would end it.
Another kick against the door.
“Disrespectful, naive, infinitely stupid child!”
“Father!”
“Out of the way, Anthony!” Something rumbled. “Now!”
The next kick against the door followed.
My tear ducts took on a life of their own.
Something hammered against the window behind me.
The windows.
In a panic, I turned my head, looked through the transparent curtains of the huge floor-to-ceiling windows, but despite the darkness of the room and the strong moonlight that literally flooded the room from outside, I couldn't see anything.
Yet I didn't hesitate and rushed to the nearest window, yanked away the curtain, and froze.
Davian.
I couldn't help but stare at him as he gestured wildly at something in the room with an agitated expression. Or was it the window?
“Onera!”
Wood cracked, and when I turned my head toward the door, I saw the splintered spot that must have given way under his foot.
“You can't hide!” my father laughed, as if he were going insane. “Not after you ruined me like this!”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, and the knot in my stomach tightened violently.
There was another hammering against the glass. Faster, louder.
Again, I stared at Davian, who looked at me so pleadingly that my heartbeat accelerated beyond measure and finally moved me to tear open the floor-to-ceiling window.
“Quill,” he whispered hoarsely.
He immediately stepped toward me, took my face in both of his warm hands, looked at me with a searching intensity, his eyes filled with panic, as if looking for some clue in me.
My hands also ended up where they weren’t supposed to be. On his chest. But my thoughts were spinning too fast for me to think about what I was doing.
Never before had I wanted to drown so deeply in his cornflower blue eyes that, if I did, I would forget the chaos around us.
He had come back. For me.
Tears escaped both my eyes, causing Davian's eyes to turn glassy and a look of anguish to distort his expression.
“Fuck... Quill.”
He was so quiet, sounded so desperate, and in the next moment he pulled me to his chest, wrapped his arms around me, and pressed my head against him, his hand in my hair.
Powerless against the flood of tears, I suppressed an overwhelmed sob, tremblingly inhaled his scent, clinging to his warmth...
The sound of wood splintering made us both flinch and turn toward the door.
Davian immediately grabbed my hand and pulled me outside onto the terrace, where cold air crept into my dress and blew my hair around my ears.
I paused. Davian did too, but without letting go of my hand.
Wherever he wanted to go, I couldn't just leave. My books were in the attic. Anthony was there...
“Come on.” He squeezed my hand, pulled on it, looked at me imploringly. “Let me get you out of here.”
“Where to?”
The lanterns on the terraces reflected in his glassy eyes.
A silent promise lay in them.
“Home.”