Chapter 38
Dig Graves
He had fucked her in his head so many times that the image of her stained into the smallest thought.
After Dig Graves had tried to connect to her, and it had failed, he had wondered if he had been incorrect.
Why did her heart not lead her to him?
Why did their insignia not sink over the skin of their hearts?
Was she really his?
It wasn’t difficult to follow her. His heart knew where she was every second that it beat.
Dig went to sleep in his bed, knowing that she was in hers.
In the mornings, he woke up and walked to his refrigerator, knowing that she had left her front gate to jog around her estate.
When he walked down the street to go to the mart, he knew her driver had taken her to her favourite café on Laybank.
When he sketched in the park, he knew she was in the yoga studio three streets away.
If Dig wanted to see her—which he did, before and during and after each breath that he took—all he had to do was follow his heart and there she was: his Soulmate.
He learnt all that he could about her. He kept her in his journal and logbook, marking her daily and then weekly activities.
On Mondays and Wednesdays, she went to class, and so did he.
Dropping into a seat outside of her class windows, he peered in and watched her fiddle with strands of her hair, type into her laptop, lick her fingers to flip pages in her textbooks, giggle with a friend.
On Tuesdays she worked with a charity for children, and he hung out by the front entrance, flipping his pencil between his fingers, catching glimpses of her in her matching skirt and blazer.
The top pearl buttons on her loose blouse spilled open on occasion when she bent to the table, exposing the bare flesh over her heart where she waited for him to mark her.
On Thursdays she worked with her brother, heading to conferences, to speech rallies, to his office.
On Fridays, she ate sushi for lunch and so he ate sushi for lunch.
When she went out to dinner with a friend, wafting by him in a perfume he hunted down after, he watched her order a hundred-dollar steak and so he ordered a hundred-dollar steak.
He could not directly approach her. Not with her personal guards.
But, that did not stop him.
Whatever café she sat in, he sat in too.
Whatever path she walked, he walked too.
Whatever store she went into, he followed right after.
He jotted down her shopping tastes: face masks and lotions and a pen with a penguin on top, eight-hundred-dollar high heels.
She only bought A-line dresses, never halter neck.
She once said that coriander tasted like soap.
She couldn’t cry.
He did not know why, and it seemed neither did she. He watched her trying to cry, scrunching up her face when she passed a window or a mirror, looking on with envy when a child dribbled with tears, or an elderly woman padded under her eyes with a handkerchief.
Delphine De Astor couldn’t cry.
He learnt what she liked and so he liked it too, getting his apartment ready for her by renovating it to suit her preference and reading the same books so that their conversations would never be dull, and experimenting with recipes of all the food that she ate.
He built this nest of Dig Graves and Delphine De Astor.
The more his heart twisted his feet to follow in her direction, the more he realised she was most unquestionably his Soulmate and the more he realised she was so much more than just his Soulmate.
She was kind. She was sweet. She was fun.
She was the colour yellow, the shade of sunlight and warmth and smiley faces and daffodils.
She was the perfect swirl of a conch shell.
She was the corner piece of a birthday cake with the most amount of frosting.
She was a blanket during winter, a breeze in summer, she bloomed like spring and her hair fell like autumn leaves along her back when she walked.
She was his.
She was his.
She was his.
Why didn’t she look for him?
He wrote her a letter.
Searching through volumes of poetry and romance ballads, he composed his first letter to her, telling her of their connection.
Dear Delphine.
You have a Soulmate and it’s me, you dumbass. Come and fucking find me.
I love you, Dig.
There was no reply.
One day as he followed her home, his motorbike blaring through the streets, weaving through traffic, he halted outside her estate gates as her car drove through.
Magnus De Astor stood out the front, eyes narrowed on Dig Graves.
“I’ll give you half a million,” Magnus said to him with a car salesman smile.
Standing next to his bike, Dig pulled off his helmet, wondering if he had heard Magnus correctly. “Half a million?”
“Dollars.” Magnus laughed. “Half a million, for you to leave her alone.”
Dig’s brow furrowed. “To leave her alone?”
“Never,” Magnus De Astor packed away his sweet smile as something fierce and ugly sunk through his eyes like talons, “never come near my sister. Stay away from her, move to a new city—hell, a new country. I’ll pay for it all, I’ll arrange it all.”
Dig leaned his head, a cocky grin peeled over his lips. “She is my Soulmate, isn’t she?”
Magnus clenched his jaw. “She’s not your Soulmate.”
Dig flipped up his middle finger to Magnus before punching on his motorbike helmet in victory.
He went the police.
He told them of his Soulmate, and how he had been restricted in seeing her and that legally he had every right to march up to that estate and present himself to her and claim her in his arms and crush their chests together.
They laughed at him.
He frowned.
“Do you know how many people have tried telling us they were sure some rich or famous person was their Soulmate?” An officer sighed through his hilarity. “If she’s not coming to you, she’s not your Soulmate.”
Dig punched his fist down on the counter. “She’s my Soulmate!”
The officer eyed Dig and his fist. “If you go near the De Astor girl, you’ll be arrested.”
Dig would have to do this himself.
Delphine was looking for the feeling of love, this much was obvious considering her routine merry-go-round of constant dates.
She regularly dated people with unlimited credit cards and yachts that docked in Greece.
He watched with faint hilarity and intrigue from the windows of white-table-clothed restaurants as she looked across at these people, dully rapping her fingers along the tabletop.
It looked as if she were at the dentist.
She fucked a lot of them.
Dig had to restrain himself from pulling out his pocketknife.
All until a man in a tuxedo had accessorised her on his arm for the opera. There, under the lamp light before hopping into a shiny SUV they had pressed their lips together while the stars winked above them.
Nuisance kicked Dig to growl, he dreamt of turning the man inside out and then—
Delphine had made a sour face, wiping her lips as if the man had tasted like the underside of a couch and promptly left.
A consequence of the connection. Once you had a Soulmate, everyone else was lacklustre; pieces of garish white bread, empty air or that feeling of vomit that rose in the back of your throat.
The only person that could satisfy you was your Soulmate.
Why wasn’t she looking for him?
Delphine took herself to a nightclub with her pack of girlfriends seemingly in search for someone to satisfy her needs.
She wore a tight red dress, her hair waterfalled down her back, her crushed glitter eyelids fluttered as she danced.
Dig huddled in the corner, hands in his jean pockets, watching her under the strobe lights as she tossed herself from person to person, sampling, tasting, never finding the one that could fulfill her cravings.
Her guards weren’t there.
Dig cut across the wave of bouncing bodies, shoving people aside and snatched her by the waist before she landed into the hands of another. He pushed away the woman she had been reaching for and placed himself in her grasp.
Here I am, he thought, take me.
The music was near barbaric. The heat touched all the corners of his skin. She smelled like beautiful. His heart thrashed furiously.
He looked down at her, at the splendour of her face.
She looked up at him, smiling stupidly.
“Delphine,” he said her name, but it was drowned out under the blaring bass. “I’m—”
She kissed him.
His world came to a colliding halt until all that mattered was her, there, in his arms, her lips on his, her tongue dipping into his mouth, her hands scaling up his chest and then back down, tugging on his belt.
His heart nearly shattered from its beating, his cock turned instantly hard, and that primal urge took over.
He kissed her back.
Rough. Hard. Snatching her face, he tethered her to him, and she reached up and anchored her arms around his neck. They devoured each other, hungry, ravenous.
He picked her up, and she did not resist, wrapping her legs around him. Outside in the alleyway, he crushed her up against the wall, pressing his hard cock behind his zipper into her panties. She moaned. He groaned.
“Oh freckles.” Her voice was his favourite song. “You feel so good.”
“You’re so beautiful.” He pressed his forehead against hers. “You can feel it, can’t you?” He felt his own heart, pounding and shuddering to break free of his chest and then felt hers… it was still. “What the fuck?”
She grabbed his hips and locked them below. “I’m going to climb you like a mountain.”
“Delphine, I think you’re my Soulmate, can’t you feel it?”
Cupping his erection, she grinned. “I can feel something!”
“Delphine.” He looked into her shiny eyes, eyes that he could not wait to investigate for the rest of his life. “I’m going to be good to you, I promise I’ll always treat you with proper respect—”
“Choke me!”
“Huh?”
“Slap me!”
“What?”
“Fuck me!” She grabbed his collar. “Right now.”
He winced. “You want me to fuck you in an alleyway behind a night club?”
“I want you to thrust into me so hard you start my period early.”
“Geez, okay.”
She grinded up against him, desperate.
He forced her hips to stop. “You have to be mine.”
“Fuck me!”
“Relax, I will, God damn it.”
Cupping her cheek, he positioned her to look at him. Stars danced in her pretty eyes, her lips were raw and bitten from their kiss.
He smiled down at her. She threw up on him.
Once he realised she had more vodka in her belly than sense in her head, he placed her in a taxi and took her home.
Magnus De Astor found his little sister passed out on Dig Graves lap. Guards carried Delphine inside and upstairs while Dig watched her leave, the taste of her still on his lips, the feel of her still damp on his skin.
Magnus stood in front of him, his eyes trained on Dig like a hawk.
“She’s my Soulmate,” Dig said to him, relief filling the aches in his thumping chest. “You can’t stop it. She wants me. Soon, she’s going to come and find me.”
Magnus shook his head sharply. “You shouldn’t be with her.”
Dig gritted his teeth. “We were made for each other.”
“She’s a princess, you’re a…’ Magnus twitched his nose as if he had smelled something foul. Delphine’s vomit, probably. “You’re nobody. No, you are worse than a nobody. You’re the son of a Soulless maniac.”
Dig’s throat bobbed. There was nothing Magnus had said that had been unfitting. “But I am not a criminal, I haven’t hurt anyone. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I promise I’ll treat her properly.”
“Do you love her?” Magnus asked. There was sincerity in Magnus’s gaze. “Do you truly love her?”
“Yes.” Dig did not have to think on it. He touched his heart, his beating organ that moved for only her, the piece of himself that he would cut out and wrap in ribbon and lay at her feet. “I’ve never loved anyone before, only her. Only her.”
“If you love her,” Magnus said, a small smile spreading over his lips. “Then you won't stain her existence with yourself.”
Something inside of Dig’s heart fissured.
Magnus was correct.
Dig offered nothing to her but a painful past.
“What do you think she’ll do?” Magnus asked, his voice slipping into all the cracks of Dig’s mind. “If Delphine finds out her true love has the heritage of a monster? I’m sure you experience deep rejection, deep hate—do you want her to experience that too?”
“No. No, I don’t.”
“And what about her? What do you think it will be like for her to have to look at your eyes, your father’s eyes?
The very eyes that have frightened our nation.
Do you know how terrified she was when she saw your father?
She had nightmares for months. Do you want her trembling and quivering and living in a constant haunted relationship?
Every time she looks at your eyes she’s going to be soiled with fear and hate herself for not blooming with love. ”
Dig choked on his own saliva.
“Do you want her to live like Shay?”
Dig lifted his head.
While Dig had been doing his homework on Delphine, it seemed Magnus had been doing his own homework on Dig.
Shay. The Soulmate of his older brother.
A sweet, kind girl who had lost the lottery of love, and ended up connecting to Slash Artery, a maniac and killer.
Shay was now poisoned by their family, carrying the burden of their shame, coasting by on medication just to help her manage the pain of the Soulmate connection.
Dig’s throat bobbed.
No, he didn’t want Delphine’s life ruined.
“You can’t tell her,” Magnus said. “Please, Dig, if you love her, you won’t tell her and ruin her life.”
Dig squeezed his eyes closed, each word Magnus spoke was powerful and true, hammering nails into his heart and head.
He knew now that Delphine could not love him… not when she saw the malicious eyes that sunk into his skull. Eyes that were not his. Damned eyes.
“Then I won’t tell her,” Dig said, rousing some sense. “I won’t tell her who I am… she’ll fall in love with me. Let her get to know me. She’ll fall in love with me first and then I’ll show her, and she won’t care.”
Magnus shook his head. “She’s not going to love you, Dig. You need to leave her alone.”
“But I’m her Soulmate. If she doesn’t connect, she will be considered Soulless.”
Magnus patted Dig’s shoulder with a smile. “Then do the right thing and let someone else be her Soulmate.”
“But that’s impossible—”
“Oh no, it’s very possible,” Magnus said through his smile. “All you have to do, my friend, is kill yourself.’”
Nah, fuck that.
A month later, he broke into her bedroom at 2am instead.