Chapter 24 Ellie
Ellie
No. No, no, no.
There is no way that Dylan is here, at the Opal room–in the Velvet Lounge! I see him having a conversation with Damien at the bar like it’s nothing but a casual interaction between work colleagues. I didn’t know they knew one another. This is bad. This is so bad.
I stand in the mirror of the bathroom, praying no one comes in. I can’t seem to catch my breath. I run cold water over my hands long enough to make my fingers numb and then press my palms to my cheeks. I can’t exactly splash water on my face and risk fucking up my makeup, so this will have to do.
The worst part is he saw me. While Damien’s guards tugged his ass towards the exit, he looked straight at me purposefully.
It was no accidental look. His head turned slowly, and he stared at me with the same shitty grin he wore on his face years ago when he peacocked his new girlfriend in front of me.
He has seen me in the back of a gentleman’s club, which means he can only be thinking one thing.
I’m a slut.
He’s currently out there opening hotels and running hotels; he’d never been able to do that if it weren’t for me.
I am the entire reason he got as far as he did years ago when we were working side by side.
Yet here we are, him the owner of a Las Vegas Strip hotel and me, the personal assistant of his competitor.
My phone vibrates in my purse, and at first, I ignore it. I can’t deal with anyone right now. But it starts to blow up, and I know it’s Damien. I have no choice but to answer.
“Yes?” I ask, forcing my voice to be steady.
“Where did you go?” he demands.
“I am in the bathroom. If I’m not mistaken, I am allowed to leave your side to use the bathroom.”
“Well, you’re taking too long,” he says.
“Taking too long?” I reply. “I am following all the rules. You are the one who left me.”
“To get us drinks,” he snaps back. “You’ve been in an off mood all day, and I was trying to ease your nerves.”
I just saw my ex at a glorified sex club. Pretty sure nothing is going to ease my nerves at this point.
Of course, I don’t actually say that. Instead, I’m silent. Long enough that two seconds later he comes barging into the bathroom.
“What are you doing?” I shriek. I am a little jumpy right now.
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” he says. “Why are you hiding in here?”
I dodge the question and turn it around on him. “You can’t come in here.”
“Oh, really?” he chortles without actually smiling. “Name one person who is going to stop me.”
I answer him with a glare. As hard as I try, being angry at him isn’t actually working right now.
What I want to do is run into his arms. What I want to do is tell him all about Dylan, and how seeing him just now has completely derailed me in a way I absolutely hate to admit.
But of course I can’t do that. If Damien knew that Dylan was my ex, so much hell would break loose.
I can’t deal with that right now, so I say nothing.
Unfortunately, while I sit here telling my brain to shut up, my face is doing a lot of talking. Apparently, I am crying. What’s even wilder is Damien doesn’t look angry. He looks concerned.
“Did something happen?” he asks. His voice is softer than I have ever heard it before.
“I…” I try to think of what I can say, but I come up short. I can’t tell him the truth, and I can’t think up a good enough lie. So I accept my fate that I’m just going to have to cry instead of talking about it.
Damien walks over to me and puts his arms around me, which only makes things a thousand times worse.
“Something must have happened to upset you this much,” he says, his voice low.
He tilts his head down towards mine in an attempt to see my face, but I don’t like him seeing me like this.
We are dangerously close to crossing a boundary here, a line that is more than just off limits; it’s forbidden.
All the same, I can’t stop holding on to him.
I can’t pull away, and the tears just keep falling.
“I want to go home,” I finally say
Damien studies me for a moment, his dark brow furrowed together as he tries in vain to see around my mask.
Unfortunately for him, I am very good at keeping truths hidden.
I expect him to say no. and remind me that coming here and performing is part of my job.
It’s in the contract; it’s nonnegotiable.
He doesn’t. Instead, he uses his thumbs to wipe away my tears before saying, “Okay.”
I tilt my blotchy face up to him and look him in the eyes. His eyes are the color of the earth after it rains, rich and complex, brimmed with a softer tone that reminds me of aged whiskey.
“Okay?” I ask just to be sure.
Damien nods softly, only one time. “Yes,” he repeats. “I’m not really in the mood to be here anymore either.”
As we make our way out of the club, people watch but only until they see the look on Damien’s face, which is silently telling everyone to mind their own damn business or else.
It must be nice having that kind of RBF, not to mention the stature.
Even on the ride back to my car at the Redwood Hotel, things are quiet.
The driver never speaks or asks anything he doesn’t absolutely need to know.
He parks the car, and he waits. Meanwhile, I wait for Damien to open my door for me.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him as we stand facing each other on the sidewalk in front of the VIP parking. “I guess I’m just not feeling myself tonight.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t drive,” Damien says. His kindness nearly knocks the wind out of me. It’s so foreign that I almost don’t understand it.
“Oh, I’m okay. Really. I just–”
“Come with me,” he says, and before I can say anything else, he is ushering me into the lobby. We go inside the elevator, and he closes the door. Then he types in a code on the emergency pad.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“The thirteenth floor,” he says. My eyes flutter in confusion down to the plate of numbers on the wall.
There is no thirteen. I’ve heard a lot of hotels skip it out of superstition, even though if you think about it, there is technically always a thirteenth floor; it’s just not labeled that.
Usually it’s for maintenance or hotel staff, but I doubt he is taking me there.
“What’s on the thirteenth floor?” I ask after another beat of silence.
“Executive suites,” he answers easily.
“You’re taking me to a room?” I ask just as the door opens, and my mouth drops.
“Suites,” he corrects me, guiding me out of the elevator. I don’t know that my feet would have worked on their own otherwise.
Don’t get me wrong. The Redwood is a very fancy hotel.
The floors are marble and perfectly polished tile, and the walls are lined with gorgeous art.
There is even a fountain and real trees in the lobby.
But this is different. The floors are oak.
The walls are covered in a beautiful vintage wallpaper and topped with crown molding.
There’s a fountain, but it’s subtle, giving the room a calming feeling.
There are stairs leading up to other rooms, which leads me to believe that the fourteenth floor is also off limits to regular guests.
I make a mental note to check when we get back in the elevator.
It looks like we are inside the Titanic, and I’m half expecting Jack and Rose to meet us at the clock.
“Wow,” I say as Damien guides me towards the stairs. “How is this–”
“Very complex engineering and architecture,” he tells me.
“I’ll try to explain. The majority of the rooms between the thirteenth and the fifteenth floors are on the perimeter of the hotel, lining this room.
But up the stairs there are three executive suites, two of which I offer to only my most prestigious guests and one that is for personal use. ”
Damien looks at me, waiting for his stare to draw my eyes away from the grandeur of it all and back to him again. Once he has my full attention, he finishes his sentence.
“I am taking you to that room.”
“Okay,” I say, my voice feathered because I’m still struggling to take it all in. I’m struggling to wrap my brain around the idea that this has been here the entire time, hidden in plain sight every day that I have been working for Damien, and I had no idea.
“You seem like you’re under a lot of stress, Ellie, and I don’t think you should be driving.”
“What?” I ask as he opens the door to his personal suite.
“I don’t think you should be driving, Mariposa.
You seem unwell.” The way he says the word–mariposa–is enough to send warm tingles cascading down my spine.
Damien doesn’t typically have an accent unless he is speaking in Spanish, in which case his words are like hot honey.
That isn’t the word that has caught me off guard right now.
“You called me Ellie…” I say, and Damien blinks slowly.
“Isn’t that what you want to be called? What you asked me to call you?”
“Well, yes, but,” I push a lock of my hair behind my ear. “You never have. You refused, actually.”
“I’ve been selfish,” he says, and my brain literally explodes in my head.
Okay, so not literally. You know where I’m coming from here…
None of this is Damien. At least not the Damien I know.
Between the hidden floors, the luxurious suite I am standing in, that looks more like a penthouse than a hotel room, and the soft, dare I say sweet expression on Damien’s face right now, I am starting to believe I never knew him at all.
“I want you to stay here tonight,” he goes on. “I don’t like the idea of you driving, and I get the impression you need a getaway. From what, I don’t know, but I can tell you are stressed, Ellie. And I want you to feel…taken care of.”