24. RAFE #2
Diana releases a shaking whimper, and I snap. I circle his wrist in a tight grip, exactly as he’s doing to her, and squeeze hard, wishing I could break his hand right off. “I. Told. You. To. Let. Go.”
He splutters, his gaze darting left and right at the people passing by, throwing wary glances at us. His fingers loosen enough around Diana’s arm that she pulls free, and I release him. He stumbles back, shaking his hand.
“I knew you’d never make it on your own,” he spits at Diana. “You’ll always need a man to take care of you. Is this your attempt to forge your own path?” He glances disdainfully in my direction. “It’s pathetic.”
Diana looks like she’s about to break, but she pulls back her arm like she’s going to slap her father in the middle of the street.
Moving between them, I hold her back and say to her father, “Fuck off back to whatever sewer you crawled out of.”
He casts me a lingering, resentful look before sneering at Diana and walking away.
Around us, the crowd keeps moving, and the tinny version of Jingle Bells plays on repeat. Even the Christmas lights look less joyous now, as if her father’s appearance has cast a dull shadow over everything.
Beside me, Diana’s gaze is unfocused, staring at the ground. “You shouldn’t have done that,” she says, her voice hard.
Without looking at me, she starts walking towards the venue.
Adrenaline surges through me.
What the fuck was that?
“Diana, wait,” I call, striding after her, my heart thumping wildly. More wildly than it did when her father had his hand on her.
But she doesn’t stop. She reaches the venue and passes inside, the doormen staring after her as she passes.
I enter the building, and the lobby is full of people arriving for the party. Catching sight of Henry and Julian, I raise my hand in greeting. Julian nods my way, eagerly beckoning me towards him.
I wave him off, catching a glimpse of a surprised eyebrow raise and a shared glance with Henry, but I ignore them both and scan the place for Diana.
I catch sight of her pink dress as she disappears down a corridor to the left, probably to the cloakroom.
Controlling the urge to run, I pace after her as fast as is socially acceptable.
Henry and Julian are probably watching, and I don’t want to give them a reason to notice that I’m chasing my daughter’s best friend. Although I suspect they already have.
I turn the corner, and Diana’s there, just up ahead. I break into a jog. “Diana,” I call.
She spins to face me, cheeks flushed. “What?”
We stand, staring at one another, both breathing far too heavily. “I need my jacket. I can’t go in without it.”
“Oh.” Her shoulders fall, and she shrugs out of it, handing it over to me in a cloud of her perfume, which only grows more intense as I put the jacket on. I’m surrounded by the smell of her, enticing and heavy, like Oud and Amber.
Dark nights and sweaty sex.
Delirium.
What the fuck?
I can’t look at Diana as my brain makes connections that don’t make sense.
Why am I thinking about sex—about Delirium—at a moment like this?
I shouldn’t be, and I have no fucking clue why I am, or why there’s a low hum of arousal pulsing through me as I mentally pass through the sex club’s darkened corridors.
Diana’s not touching me, she’s not talking. She’s just standing there, waiting for me to say something.
But I don’t. I shove all my inappropriate thoughts away and offer her my arm instead. “Shall we go in?”
She shakes her head, crossing her arms over her chest, hands clinging tight to her elbows. “I didn’t need you to do that out there.” She jerks her chin in the direction we came. “I’m not your responsibility. He’s my father. I was handling it.”
“Respectfully, it didn’t seem like you were. You were going to slap him.” I gesture to her wrist. “Let me see.”
She offers me the arm he grabbed, and I take her wrist in my hands.
Her skin is red, but there’s no bruising.
I hold her gently, but the softness of my touch belies the unbearable fury writhing inside me.
How could he harm his daughter this way?
I say nothing, knowing she won’t want my anger right now.
I stroke her pulse point with my thumb, causing her breath to hitch, and she snatches her hand back.
“I’m fine. It’s fine,” she snaps, then shoots me a glare as she tucks her hair behind her ear. “You should have let me slap him. He deserves it.”
I don’t disagree.
Diana paces back and forth. “God,” she says, coming to a standstill and tipping her head back. “He’ll never see me as independent if I’m with you.”
“With me? You’re not with me.”
Her gaze turns skittish, refusing to settle on me, and she starts to pace again. “I had to fight for a life that he didn’t choose for me. I’ve already accepted so much from you. The clothes. The house. The books. The”—she flails her hand at me—“business mentoring.”
Business mentoring. It sounds so official; not nearly enough to encapsulate what we’ve become to one another. “Everything I’ve done for you, I did willingly. Freely. You owe me nothing.”
She lets out an exhale so loud it seems to thunder off the walls, but when she speaks, her voice is calmer.
“Thank you. I appreciate it. I do. You made it all so easy for me. So easy. And I’m grateful for every moment of your time that you've given me. But maybe I should have said no. To all of it. Maybe everything you’ve done undermines everything I’ve tried to do for myself.
” She blinks several times like she’s trying not to cry.
“Maybe I should have walked out of your place the moment I saw you.”
Something in my chest strains awkwardly, like she’s pulling on its reins. “Of course you shouldn’t have. You don’t have to do everything alone. I wouldn’t want you to either. I guarantee that no one you view as successful did it on their own. Where is this coming from?”
She presses two fingertips between her brows, taking a few laboured breaths before she lowers her hand. “I appreciate what you did out there, with my dad, but I wish you hadn’t. It didn’t feel appropriate.”
I sift through possible meanings for her words. I wasn’t violent, at least not much, considering her father deserves to have his skull smashed in.
She shakes out her hands, then clasps them tight. “I feel… I feel weird about it.”
“You’re going to have to give me more than that. I don’t know what you mean.”
“I don’t like how it makes me feel.”
“Which is?”