Chapter 23
I hate bow ties.Even when I wear a custom tuxedo, they still strangle, making me tug at my starched collar.
But this black-tie event was my idea, well, sort of, and it’s for a good cause, so I put my full power behind it.
“May I have this dance, Mr. Chairmen of the Board?”
The voice over my shoulder is not one I can easily refuse. Maren is quite persuasive. Thankfully, she’s been putting it to good use lately.
“Sure.” I turn and offer her my hand.
Years of ballroom dancing classes come back in an instant. Resting my hand on Maren’s back, I take her other and lead us in a casual foxtrot.
“This was a great idea, Luca.” She keeps her voice low. “We’ve raised seven hundred thousand so far. Just three hundred more to meet our goal.”
It was Maren who nominated me to join her on the Board of Directors for our kids’ school. It was my idea to accept only if the board agreed to create a full scholarship fund for at least fifty percent of future students. So they appointed me as the Chair. Then, it was Maren’s idea to have a black-tie dinner and dance to raise the money.
So here I am.
I’m raising thousands for a worthy cause while my fucking feet are killing me. But Maren’s a good dancer, so it’s not that bad. We twirl across the dance floor, other couples stepping out of the way.
Of course, I offered to host the event in The Mercier ballroom, and of course, Maren and her friends took over the details. I didn’t care. I give two shits about chair covers and centerpieces. I just know good taste, and Maren knows Charleston’s style, so it worked.
The event is a huge success.
“I should be offended.” Maren jokes. “You’re the belle of the ball, but I’m the one who organized it.”
“You did a great job.” I smile at her, and I mean it.
Maybe divorce made Maren bitter for a time, and I understand. I have no room to judge. But these past few months, she’s mellowed. It’s actually been easy working with her. We’ve had dozens of meetings and playdates. I swear something comes up every day, and Maren needs my opinion.
“And to think?” She rolls her eyes, laughing. “The Brenners wanted this to be a dry event. I mean, really? Josh Brenner has deep pockets but short arms. He just didn’t wanna chip in for the open bar.”
I laugh, too, because she’s not wrong. The drama on our Board makes a soap opera seem sedate.
“Do you have plans for Gia’s birthday this month?” Maren grips my bicep tighter. It’s part of the dance, but it makes me lower my hand on her back.
“Yes.” I lead us to an open space. “We’re taking her to Disney World. It’s a surprise.”
“We?”
“Yes. Me, Abbey, Harper, Celine, Zar, and?—”
“And Scarlett,” Maren mutters. “Luca, I’m sorry, but she’s not right for you.”
“Ms. Jones and I are professionals.”
“No, you’re not. And you have a right to move on. I want you to be happy. Darby would want you to be happy. But Scarlett doesn’t fit in, and the poor thing knows it. She’s proud, and I don’t blame her, so don’t make her suffer when you know how others treat her.”
“How you treated her.”
But I don’t disagree with Maren. When I took Scarlett to Paris, then Mykonos, we got stares. Maybe they were for me. Maybe they were for her beauty. But they made Scarlett uncomfortable, almost insecure, which isn’t like her.
“You’re right,” Maren answers. “I got caught up in the petty gossip of some of the moms, and I should know better. I haven’t been my best self this past year, and I apologize.”
“Thank you.” I aim for another spot where we can move. I can’t believe this crowd. I can’t see the edge of the dance floor.
“But Luca, you should hear how they talk about her. All her tattoos and just the way she stares—it’s rather creepy. If she ever hears it, it’s going to break her poor heart. Women around here can be so cruel. Don’t put her through it.”
“Maren.” I’m annoyed. And fucked. I never should’ve said anything. “Scarlett and I are not together. I’m not with anyone. Not since Darby died, and it’ll stay that way. I still wear my wedding band for her.”
More like…I was so lonely until I finally found the happiness with Scarlett that I don’t deserve. I get so lost in her. I take my ring off for her, for our time together, but then I have to put it back on. It keeps me tethered to my family, to my grave vow.
I don’t know how to move forward, so I dance with Scarlett in circles of pleasure and pain. I used to love my punishment, but now I’m punishing Scarlett, too. It killed me when I made her cry on her birthday.
No matter what I do, I seem destined to hurt the women I love.
“If you and Scarlett aren’t together,” Maren mutters, “then why is she looking at us like that?”
Like what?
I scan the room. Of course, Scarlett is here somewhere. I invited her. She’s here with Gia and everyone except Zar.
Zar’s been gone a lot lately, and I know why.
Months ago, I hurt him, excluding him from Silas and Eily’s party at the club. Zar said he understood why, and I sure got an earful from Scarlett about it. But I thought I made it up to her. I thought I made it up to him.
Every Saturday night since, I’ve been pushing my limits. I’ve changed our rituals for them. Zar gets to pick the toy I fuck him with; Scarlett does, too. Our aftercare is more intimate. I stay longer. We hold each other. We take baths together, too. I don’t sneak away until dawn, and that’s only for Gia’s sake.
But I’m not a dumbass.
I can only give Zar so much, so I suppose he goes elsewhere for the rest, and I can live with it.
But not Scarlett.
I can’t lose her. She knows I love her. To say it would be breaking my vow. My words could curse us, too, so I try to show her every day. I try to keep my past promise and have a future with her, too.
I saw Scarlett an hour ago but got yanked to the dance floor. I’ve been here ever since, and it’s packed. I’m not dumb enough to ask Maren where she spotted her. That would be a dead giveaway, so I dance around searching for her.
I need to find her as the song changes. It’s a slow song, a love song. The piano softly plays, and the lyrics hauntingly sing from the grave…
“Hello. It’s me.”
My feet stop.
My heart, too.
The strangle on my throat is instant. The room falls away, and suddenly, I can’t see. Memories drop like velvet curtains over my vision.
“Hello” by Adele plays, and Maren mourns. I can barely hear her ask, “Remember? This was Darby’s favorite song. I asked them to play it for us.”
“I remember.” It’s all I can say, all I can see, because air can’t fill my lungs, and movement can’t find my feet.
Music does that to you. It drags your beaten soul right back to your past and buries you there.
So Maren urges, her feet making mine slowly move. Her hands land on my pounding chest, her body and the music taking me. The lyrics, too.
They don’t mean the same anymore.
Not when Darby used to belt “Hello” in our kitchen, looking so cute, using a wooden spoon for a microphone and making me laugh. Not when she’d sing it in the car going over her favorite bridge, rolling down the window for the world to hear, making me proud as I drove. Not when she used to play it on our piano, and I’d sit on the bench beside her, holding Gia in my arms. No one sings like Adele, but Darby sounded like the angel she is now.
Her voice always stopped Gia from crying.
And now?
I am.
I’m hearing Darby’s voice singing again from her grave. Lamenting. Praying. Haunting. Can you hear me? About who we used to be? When we were young? And free?
Her wails from the other side. My wails of I’m sorry. Over and over.
For everything that I’ve done.
For breaking your heart.
The guilt suffocates. The burning flood behind my eyes is sudden and it kills me, too. It embarrasses me. Like Gia, like our beautiful daughter, I stare at the ceiling, searching for her mother there, begging my tears not to fall. Begging my lips to stop trembling. My hands, too.
I’m a grown man. I can’t fall apart in the middle of this ballroom where I met Darby. “You’re beautiful when you’re miserable.” It’s the first thing I said to her. “You’re cute when you lie.” She took my heart with those words; it was love, perfect and flawed until she was gone.
And I can’t stop hearing my shouts that night. They’re like this song haunting my soul. It plays, and I hear Darby wailing in the rain. Then it was instant—the collision. Darby was on the other side; she was gone. I reached over to brush the long brown curls off her face, and I can’t stop seeing her blood on my hands. I can’t stop hearing our daughter’s cries from the backseat. I can’t stop worrying about Zar’s groans of pain.
It was all my fault.
And I’m so fucking sorry. A thousand times and from the other side. I’m so sorry I broke your heart.
“Luca?” Lights blur. I can’t hear anyone but Darby. The room spins, and I sway. Dizzy. “Luca?” Maren holds me tighter, so I hold her back so I won’t collapse. “Luca, are you okay?”
“Give me a minute.”
It’s all my pride can growl to save me. To keep my feet moving. To maintain my dignity. I will not fall apart in front of everyone. Not in front of our daughter.
She’s here somewhere.
Maren didn’t know. I didn’t either.
I didn’t know my beautiful ghost was waiting to sing to me again.
“Luca? Talk to me.” For all of Maren’s flaws, she’s not horrible. She cared about Darby.
“Just give me a minute.” I need for this song to end. I need for this all to end. The pain. The guilt. The memories. But they won’t. They never will. That’s not how life works for the living. Only the dead are free.
Until finally…the song fades.
A joyful Stevie Wonder song plays next, lifting the mood, and I swallow the razors in my throat. My focus slowly returns. My voice, too. But not my composure. I keep dancing with Maren until I can catch my breath.
“Luca, I didn’t mean to upset you.” Maren sounds sincere. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” It’s not, but it’s not her fault. “Just…”
I finally see her.
Scarlett.
She’s all alone. No one’s standing with her in the shadows against the dark wall. She looks breathtaking in her strapless white dress, our clip in her auburn hair in an elegant twist, and our necklace sparkling around her throat.
Gia and Harper dance feet in front of her, but they laugh, ignoring her, while Scarlett’s stare is frozen and focused on me.
On my hands clinging to Maren.
I haven’t danced with Scarlett tonight. I won’t. I can’t. No one can know about us. But I know the crushing anguish breaking across her beautiful face. I know the tears welling in her lonely eyes.
Because I love her, and I can’t.
Because I’m promised to another woman, not her.
Because I can never give her all she needs.
“Maren.” Politely, I kiss her cheek. “Excuse me, please.”
My steps leave Maren on the dance floor, trying to close the distance between me and Scarlett, but guests stop me, blocking my way. Well-wishers and congratulations. Admiration and praise. I don’t want it. I don’t deserve it. But I get stuck. I get grabbed, palms shoved into my hand, shaking it. Pats on my shoulder. Kisses to my cheeks. It takes me too long, and by the time I turn to find her again, Scarlett’s gone.
“Baba!” Gia comes running. “Dance with me!”
I scoop her up and spin her around. She giggles while I ask, “Where’s Scarlett?”
“Her tummy hurts.”
“What?” I’m grilling an almost six year-old for intel.
“She said her tummy hurt, and she went home.”
Oh fuck.I hold my daughter while my heart drops, but for her sake, I hide it. I swing Gia around the dance floor. She makes me dance with her for two songs, and I make her laugh until I find Abbey. She’s standing with Celine and other parents.
When she sees us approach, Celine’s face lights up. She loves dancing, so she whisks Gia from my arms while Abbey angrily scowls at me. I lean down and let her whisper, “Scarlett just left.”
“I know. Gia told me.”
“Luca…” Abbey scolds. “She was crying.”
One.Three. Five.
That’s Scarlett’s code to get into her building. She told me it was her featherweight when she won her last title, so I punch it in, praying she’s here.
It took me two hours to leave the party.
Yes, I wanted to run after Scarlett immediately. But no, that’s not my life.
There were hands to shake—thousands of dollars in donations for kids to secure. And there was my daughter, who wanted two more dances until she finally fell asleep in my arms, so I took her upstairs and tucked her into her bed, and then I raced here in my Lotus.
The elevator to the tenth floor of Scarlett’s building takes forever.
Do I knock on her door? Or just use the same code to open it?
I’m not sure. I’m not good at begging.
I’m used to demands. To power. To control.
But when I stand on the other side of the door to 10D, I hear voices. Her muffled voice and another. It’s not her sister. No, I know that deep baritone, and he better fucking not.
“Scarlett!” I pound her door. Fuck, her neighbors. She has five seconds to open it, or I’m kicking this fucking thing down.
Shadows fall under the threshold. “Open it!” I demand. “Now! I know he’s in there!”
The door flings open…
And it’s him.
“Keep making an ass of yourself, and the cops are coming,” Zar snarls.
But I brush past him, my glare aimed at Scarlett. She’s sitting on her sofa, in the same dress, with her eyes puffy from crying, but now she looks pissed.
“So you go to him and not me?” I demand to know, but that stoic stare drops over her eyes. The one when she can’t show emotions, but I sure reveal my rage. “Answer me!” I shout.
“Don’t yell at her!” Zar shouts back.
So I whip around. “I can’t fucking believe it,” I seethe. “You’re doing it again, and you fucking know it.”
Zar glares back. “Fuck you,” he growls. “That’s not what this is.”
“Sure looks familiar,” I yell. “The one night when I got caught in a shitshow and hurt her feelings, and I didn’t mean to, yet again, here you are. The knight in shining armor to save her from me, right?”
“But you won’t stop hurting her, will you?” Zar sounds too calm, too right. “Because YOU won’t stop hurting. That’s what you do, Luca, right? You hurt, so we hurt? You make damn sure of it. Hell, you get off on it.”
Fuck, that punched my soul. “Go to hell.”
“We’re going together,” Zar snarls. “Remember?”
“Stop it.” Scarlett barely speaks. “Both of you. Just. Fucking. Stop.”
I turn back to her. “Belle, I’m sorry. It’s not what it looked like. I had to dance with Maren, and then that song played, and it’s my wife’s favorite song and?—”
I catch myself.
I did it again.
I make tears suddenly spill over Scarlett’s lashes. She stares at me with disbelief, with pain. “Luca, she’s dead.”
I swallow hard. “I know.”
“No, you don’t. Because you still wear your ring. You’re married to a ghost. You’re faithful to a lie.”
“It’s not a lie. It was my fault.”
“How?” Scarlett pries, “How was an accident your fault?”
I clench the truth between my teeth, keeping it in because Scarlett lifts her chin and won’t back down. “Tell me,” she demands. “Because I know you lied to Gia. You said Darby was laughing and driving too fast. But she wasn’t, was she? She was what? Yelling like you? Crying like me?”
“Stop.” I seethe; my past and present are about to crash again.
“Tell her,” Zar urges. “Just tell her.”
“No! She’ll hate me, too.”
“I won’t hate you,” Scarlett pleads.
“Yes, you will.”
“It was just words,” Zar implores.
Blood pounds through my veins. Love chokes my heart. Anger clenches my fists. Guilt crushes my skull and my chest, too, holding it back because I can’t admit it.
Words matter. Words scream. Words bleed.
“What did you say to her, Luca?” Scarlett stands. She reaches for my hand, but I pull it away. “Luca, tell me.” She’s so beautiful, and I’m about to lose her. Scarlett begs, tears streaming down her cheeks, “Please, I deserve to know why I’m not good enough for you. Why you’ll never love me, too.”
That’s not true.
“Tell her!” Zar shouts, impatient with Scarlett’s pain.
I am, too.
I can’t take it anymore.
I hate myself. I hate that it wasn’t me. I deserved to die for what I said to my wife. To the mother of our beautiful child who will find out one day what I called her mother, and she’ll hate me, too.
They’re the last words Darby heard…
“Whore!” I shout in Scarlett’s face. “She told me what she did, that Gia may not be mine, and I called my wife a fucking whore. I told her I never wanted to touch her again, to kiss her again, or fuck her again. That I didn’t love her anymore, and I made her cry so hard she wailed. She sobbed and closed her eyes and lost control of the car, and I killed her.”
“But…” Scarlett stammers. I watch the collision I feared crash across her face. The damage, instant. “But that’s what you call me. You call me a whore.”
I’m not worth defending.
If I explain it to her. How when I say it to Scarlett, it’s not an insult; it’s an exaltation. How it’s praise, not pejorative. How I love it about her; I need it from her. How she was made for me. How I’m free with Scarlett; she’s my true match. It only damns me more.
But Zar tries. “It was my fault. I slept with Darby. One time. One night, she was lonely, and I was weak, and the guilt ate us alive. Until that night, July Fourth, Darby told me she wanted to tell him, but I told her, ‘No.’ I got mad at her that day about it. I warned her that he was under a lot of stress and?—”
“Don’t defend me,” I growl. “I was wrong and drunk and angry. You were drunk and being a dick to her, too. And I didn’t understand why, and we fought about it on the beach until Darby got upset and started to leave, so we went after her. We climbed in my fucking car and…”
It breaks my voice.
It breaks my heart.
“With our daughter, too…” It chokes my throat. “And she sobbed, going over the bridge, confessing to me, saying she was so sorry, but I shouted at her. I broke her heart. I killed her with my words, and we all could’ve died because of me.”
“But we didn’t.” Zar reaches for me, too, but I pull away. “It was an accident.”
God, how I’ve made him suffer ever since, just like I suffer. I hurt him for it, and we both love it. We need it.
And every time I look at Gia, I see her mother. I see what I took from her, forever, and I deserve a fate worse than death.
I deserve to live with this agony.
“That’s why,” I answer, turning to confront Scarlett. She looks so hurt, so I finish the fatal damage I started. “That’s why I promised to Darby’s grave that I would never kiss, or touch, or be with another woman. That I would never love again. Because I can’t take back what I said. I can’t bring Gia’s mother back, but at least I can suffer with her. I can suffer the last words I swore to her that night for the rest of my life.”