Chapter 27
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
Sage
My eyes open of their own accord, commanded from somewhere else in my brain. The room around me is unfamiliar and the pillow is hard as a fucking rock. Oh. Not a pillow. I sigh as I sit up against Nic's hard chest, quickly wiping away the drool that rested there.
He's out like a light. Snoring gently while I'm wide awake again.
With his sheets pressed against my naked front I turn to look at the clock on his bedside. Only two-twenty-seven in the morning. I scrub a hand over my face and tiptoe out of the bed on silent feet, slipping on his shirt as I go to the door and leave his room.
His door closes with a small click and I breathe a sigh of relief in the hall as I whip out my phone, dial and press it to my ear.
I glance nervously back at the bedroom door, extra jumpy about rousing Nicholas right now. "Pick up, pick up, pick up," I chant, bouncing on my feet as I wait for the phone to connect.
"Miss DeMarco," Angie answers. "Again so soon?"
"Angie, thank God," I sigh.
I hear light chatter on the other end of the phone. "An emergency?"
"No, nothing like that," I say, blowing out a breath. "I just wanted to check with you..."
I check over my shoulder again, unable to voice the request.
"Spit it out, Miss DeMarco. We both know you've got more money than sense. You can afford me."
I roll my eyes. "The marriage contract, Angie. The one between me and Victor-"
"Yes, that is the only marriage contract I'm aware of."
"You're interrupting!"
I swear I can hear her smile on the other end. "Go on."
"The marriage contract, is there any way, you know... out of it?" I nibble on my nails.
Angie chuckles. "You having second thoughts about marrying Victor Rushkoff, girl?"
"That's putting it lightly," I admit, checking over at the door again.
"You've been so ambitious," she says. "You want to give up now?"
"Maybe."
"Because Prince is making moves on you?"
"Is that really any of your fucking business, Angie?" I say, raising my voice a little and then nervously looking around to make sure no one has overheard.
"It's not," she admits. "I'm sorry, Miss DeMarco. There's no way out of the contract. As it says, there's only war."
"Really? Nothing? Nothing you can think of?" I beg.
"Come on, Sage," she says, addressing me by my first name for once, which throws me off as I suspect she intended. "You've got your trump card sitting in a hospital bed-"
"I won't use that," I growl.
She sighs. "Then the contract is air tight. You should know. You wr-"
"I know, I know," I say, waving my hand and whispering as if that will quieten down the noise on the phone and shut her up. "So there's nothing?"
"I don't know what you want me to say," Angie says. "Get Victor to agree to get out of it without war. That's your only option."
The phone goes silent for a moment.
"Or start one," Angie suggests. "Start a war for all I care."
I groan.
"Make sure your payments are on time from now on, Miss DeMarco."
"Yeah, yeah," I say, hanging up the phone and clutching my gut as nausea builds in my stomach. I can't use Dad. And I won't start a war.
As much as I wanted there to be another way, it seems my luck has run out. I have to finish what I started. I blow out a breath and chew nervously on my fingernail.
I frown as a muttering voice drifts to me from somewhere else. Not from behind Nicholas's door. Farther away.
The voice gets closer, and I spot a figure rounding the hall corridor, pacing as he mutters like he's trying to talk himself off a ledge. He doesn't seem to even know that I'm here. But he still comes closer to where I stand. Instant panic is my reaction. Until I see who it is.
"Alexei?"
He startles, frowning as he looks from me to Nicholas's door and then finally takes in my attire with a pursed lip.
"What are you doing here in the middle of the night?" I ask.
His recovery is swift, trademark sneer branding on his face. "I could ask the same of you. You've been missing since the fucking party. I thought you were taken." Alexei grumbles before clenching his jaw. "And you weren't in your room."
It suddenly dawns on me that he's here to check on me. It should be weird, but it isn't, and that may be the strangest thing of all. "How did you know I was here?"
"Please," Alexei says, his lips curling in distaste. "It's blindingly obvious that you've been spreading your legs for the bodyguard. It was not a leap to check here, princess."
I roll my eyes. "You are foul."
"You skip out on your own engagement party to bang someone else? That's tasteless. Even for you."
"Who I fuck is none of your business."
"You're marrying my fucking brother!"
"And you don't want that to happen. So once again, I repeat, what does it matter to you who I fuck?"
Alexei glares at me, but in his eyes I see indecision. His gaze drifts endlessly between me and the closed door and his mouth opens several times as if he is debating against himself somehow.
"It... doesn't," he says, eyes hardening. Whatever indecision had been running through his head trickles out at the last moment.
"What do you want?" I say. "As you've noticed, I'm kind of preoccupied." I gesture at the door behind me with my thumb, folding my arms underneath my breasts.
Alexei's eyes drift away from my face and take in my attire, resting on my chest for a few seconds before skimming my bare legs. I uncross my arms and look down, displeased to see that my nipples are pointing straight through the shirt.
When I meet Alexei's eyes, he smirks.
"You're done," I say, moving to turn away.
He growls, peeling back his lips to reveal his teeth, seeming to remember the original reason for his visit. "Someone planted a fucking cloning program on my brother's phone."
Oh fuck.
I feel my face go white as a sheet but I try not to react.
"And who do you think could've done that, princess?"
I glare at him. "This is a middle of the night problem?" I ask, throwing my hands out. "This is a middle of the night, follow me to another mans bed kind of problem?"
"Don't pretend to be innocent."
I gulp but keep my composure as he stares into my eyes for answers.
"You just have to keep reminding everyone why you're the enemy, don't you?" I scoff.
"We are enemies. It's in our fucking blood to be enemies." Alexei looks at the door, his eyes growing hard and painful. "Given that it seems my brother has no chance at winning your heart, I don't see that changing anytime soon."
I bite my lip, looking back at the door to Nicholas's room.
"Does he, Sage?" Alexei asks, head turned down from me as he softens. "Does my... brother have any chance of winning your heart?"
The question, though simple, feels complicated. Like if I answer it, I'm actually answering something else.
In the end, once again, the easiest thing is to do nothing.
"We're done here," I whisper, trying to brush him off. I turn to open the door but he pins me with a glare, staring at the door like it's the real enemy here.
"Do not go back into that fucking room, Sage."
"You can't stop-"
"We're so not done. Do not-"
I raise my chin. "I will do-"
He thrusts his hands against the wall beside my head, caging me in. "Don't. Go back. Into that. Fucking. Room." He stares down at me with black eyes, intense and telling. Yet he renders me speechless.
His chest is heaving.
Mine is too. And with each brush of air my breasts press against his chest. But we don't dare blink. Don't dare break eye contact.
Please, no. Not again. I don't want this. I don't want him.
I do. Fuck, he smells good.
His eyes dart down to my lips. He presses forward further as my tongue darts out to wet them.
"Sage?"
Alexei's gaze snaps away from my lips back to my eyes. That wasn't his voice. That one was farther away. In another room?
"Sage?"
Nicholas's voice.
Alexei pulls away from the wall and straightens his shirt. I look toward the door and he follows my eyes, gulping in understanding.
"I... gave my heart away a long time ago," I say, even though I'm not sure why I do. It doesn't even scratch the surface of the answer I should be giving him.
I watch as all the air leaves his lungs.
He closes his eyes, and when he opens them, they're rough and stormy once again.
"Understood." He walks away, and I have the stupid, uncontrollable urge to stop him.
I don't have to, though. He turns around anyway, looking over his shoulder as he whispers to me. "Sweet dreams, princess."
Alexei disappears just as the door to Nicholas's room swings open.
"Sage?" he says.
I turn to him with the best smile I can muster. Which is crazy, because smiling should be easy. But it feels like Alexei just walked away with a piece of something that should belong to me. That I should get to decide what to do with.
"What're you doing out here?" Nic's voice is gentle and trusting.
"Sorry. I thought I heard a noise," I say. I just lied. Why did I do that? "It was nothing."
He smiles and pulls me into his arms. "Come back to bed."
He leads me inside and closes the door behind us. I settle into bed with his form pressed up behind me, my hands under my head on the silk pillows. Trying desperately not to cry.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
I have everything that I've wanted for so long. Nic loves me. I've begged for that for as long as I can remember. That he'd finally see me, look at me, the way he has tonight.
So why is it that when I try to close my eyes, I only see stormy gray ones staring back at me?
I did give my heart away a long time ago. I gave my heart to Nic, even as he stomped on it repeatedly. He's the one who has it now... But...
A sinking feeling settles into my gut.
Over the past few months, someone else might have stolen it.
Piece by piece.
Inch by inch.
So slowly that I didn't even realize it was happening. That I didn't even realize my heart was no longer mine to give away. I never even considered that maybe, in the process, I stole a heart that didn't belong to me too.