16. Helen #2
I shook my head as if it might shake that thought out of my ears.
A grateful sigh vented free when a tentative knock on the door interrupted my spiraling mind. I crossed half the suite before realizing they hadn’t entered yet. Brooke would have barged in, and my parents would have entered after the knock. Perhaps it was the estate staff.
“Come in,” I called out.
The door cracked open. My heart seized when it stayed slightly ajar and a hand with a coffee cup poked through. A male hand I was intimately familiar with.
“Helen?” Drake’s unsure rasp shattered the fragile silence.
“Don’t come in!” I shouted.
The hand and cup froze, hovering in the air.
“You can’t… you can’t see me in my dress,” I said.
Drake cleared his throat. “Right. Bad luck, and all that rot.”
The painful rate of my heart almost sent me to my knees. Bees droned in my ears and my blood vibrated against my bones. A heady concoction of rival thoughts and feelings tore me apart.
“What are you doing here?”
He gently wiggled the cup in his hand. “Overheard Brooke heading to the kitchen for your coffee. Thought I’d grab it myself.”
“Why?” Still, I crossed the rest of the distance and accepted the cup. Warmth spread from the glass to my fingers and the scent of hazelnut wafted into my nose from wisps of steam. My heart skipped a beat when I took the first sip and it tasted perfectly made.
His arm vanished, but the door remained ajar, and I could feel him on the other side.
“We’re about to get married,” he said after a beat.
“You still can’t see me right now.”
“No, but we can talk.” I heard his sigh and the soft thump of him setting his head on the door. “I’ve been trying to find the right time for us to have this conversation for weeks. You’re very good at avoiding me when you really want to.”
Annoyance flushed through me. “And you’re good at leaving.”
Drake sighed again, a drawn out, tired sound that almost made me bite my tongue. “I was an idiot all those years ago. I shouldn’t have?—”
“Drake, please. Can we not do this?” The raw scrape of my voice and the tugging at my emotional strings unsettled my nerves. I wanted to turn on the spot and vanish or slam the door on him.
“Monty—Helen—please, let me get this out. I can’t leave here unless you let me get this out.” I remained silent after an audible breath, clutching that hot coffee to my chest like a lifeline. He took that as permission to continue. “I’m sorry, alright? For all of it. I’m sorry.”
One hand covered my mouth to stifle the sobbing gasp strangling me. The backs of my eyes prickled and a crawling tension cascaded over me. The raw sore in my chest ceased burning, soothed by the balm of his words—an apology I’d needed to hear.
My lips opened and closed, mirroring a fish out of water. Dual feelings barreled through me: appreciation for his words, and an anger that made me want to argue because he took so long to speak them. Thank you tasted like how dare you on the back of my tongue.
“I’ll be out there waiting for you. I’ll wait as long as it takes.”
I summoned a response that never came. His footsteps thumped, then faded out of existence down the hall.
Once again, I was drifting endlessly in a hungry sea, ready to consume every fiber of who I was and who I used to be.
Each wave surged higher and higher, forcing me toward a light in the dark that was devastatingly familiar.
My next sip of that coffee tasted like heaven.
The proceedings were a blinding flurry of color, smiles, commanding voices, and flashes of camera light.
There was my mother’s delicate kiss on my cheek, Brooke’s laughter, my brother’s awkward half-hug, then my father’s thick, warm arm looped in mine, leading me outside to the tune of the violin drifting up from the garden.
One part funeral procession, one part wedding march.
Yet, I went with my head held high and an odd fluttering thing caged within my constricting ribs.
Floral scents from the garden breached the shroud of uncertainty clinging to me.
I blinked through the apprehension weighing me down to admire the vibrant arrangement of flowers; the colorful arches, the petals along the aisle, all glowing in the fairy lights strung overhead.
One minute my stomach threatened to drop out beneath me and the next I walked through a living fairytale picture.
I barely noticed the guests on either side as Father walked me down a never ending path.
A small affair given the current dangerous circumstances, but it hardly mattered to me.
Heads of crime families and leaders of important organizations looked on, while members of our families smiled from both sides.
There might have been a frown, or scowl or two, given the rivalry of our ancestors, but fuck—I couldn’t have cared less.
All my focus went to the man at the end of the aisle and the impossibly enormous smile on his face.
It startled me to see him beaming, grinning from ear to ear, and his fathomless chestnut eyes gleaming wet.
His throat bobbed, almost choked up as his unwavering gaze feasted on my slow approach.
He nearly vibrated, like an excited beast at the end of a short leash that wanted to break free and rush forward to grab me.
His black suit hugged his broad shoulders and strained against the tensing of his muscles.
The midnight blue accents stressed the red around his rich brown eyes.
He appeared larger than life, blocking out everything else until he stood, tall, firm, unmoving, as the center of my world.
And at that moment I had no question about taking the next steps, about meeting him at the end, about taking his hand when my father gave me away.
History undoubtedly repeated itself. There I stood, hand in hand with a man I had no business being connected to.
We were spiraling in one another’s orbit, sucked in by gravity with no hope of escape.
It wasn’t a game of forbidden teenage feelings or a tangled web of opposing families.
His hand held mine tight, unyielding, and the caress of his thumb massaging my knuckles anchored me to a sturdy shore where no sea would ever threaten to drown me again.
I didn’t hear a single word of the ceremony until, “Do you, Drake, take Helen Montgomery to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
“I do,” he promised without breaking contact, fingers gripping mine as if afraid I might still bolt at the last second and he couldn’t bear to part with me.
The way he looked at me under the golden light of midday, I understood the meaning behind the phrase eyes don’t lie. I saw things in his gaze that only roused more questions. And in the minutes measured by the voice of the officiant binding us together, he was the moth flying to my flame.
“And do you, Helen, take Drake Graham to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
An eternity of questions and uncertainties laid bare before me.
Aside from family, duty, honor, I had a split second to make my choice.
Images flooded my mind, brief glimpses of happier moments our last year tangled together, hidden in the halls of a prestigious school.
And newer, fresh memories of hours spent in my office reconnecting despite my stubborn, willful aversion.
Because he was there; he showed up. Coming back day after day. Proving something to both of us.
Drake Graham. My enemy. My rival. My first love. My enemy again.
“I do.”
And now, my husband.