Chapter 38
Roxy
After visiting the office and checking on Yuri, who insists he's ready to return to work despite his hand still being in a cast, I head home.
I had to explain to my team about the two guys in black suits—guns visible—posted outside the elevator on my floor. Everyone got it once I said it was just a security measure.
Then came the full interrogation about the ring on my finger and a whole round of excuses about why I didn't invite them to the wedding.
I don't mention how the whole celebration ended with my dress soaked in my husband's blood. A shiver races down my spine at the memory, cold and unrelenting.
By the time I finally drag myself home, night has fallen, and all I crave is a quick bite before collapsing into bed.
"Mrs. Kaminski, I'll leave your dinner on the table," Tirana tells me, and I give her a shy smile.
I'm still not used to having someone prepare my meals and wash my clothes, but I'm grateful I don't have to worry about it anymore.
"Is Damien home?" I ask though I already know the answer.
"No, they haven't returned since this morning."
The whole house feels empty without him. I've gotten used to his presence during the days he was recovering, and I'm annoyed with myself for feeling disappointment in my chest.
This isn't the first time you've eaten alone, Roxy.
It's not the first time you've gotten your hopes up that someone would remember you. Damien has an entire organization to run after a week in bed. If my father, who didn't have these kinds of responsibilities, couldn't find time for me, why the hell would Damien?
I head to the dining room, in the middle of which is a table that could seat ten people, not just one. Somehow its grandeur makes me swallow hard.
I think I'll eat in the kitchen.
But Tirana arranged the table so beautifully that I don't want to waste all her work. It's fine, Roxy. It's like eating at a restaurant. Alone.
I sit right next to the entrance of the sports complex, the only entrance, and wait for him.
The competition started ten minutes ago. I should be with my team, warming up, but I can't.
He promised. He promised he'd come today. At least today.
He's never been present at any of my dance competitions, and even though I know he thinks my whole fascination with street dancing is stupid, he guaranteed he'd be here.
I clutch the sequined drawstrings of my sweatpants, not taking my eyes off the access road for a single second.
He'll come. He's missed so many times, but now he'll come.
From inside the building, I hear the bass of the first song, and I know right now my coach is looking for me. I know if I run it'll take me two minutes and forty seconds to reach the hall, so I still have time.
To wait for him. Because he'll come.
He always has time to make it to Aria's recitals, but I shake my head at those thoughts and the jealousy stabbing into my chest. Because he's always loved Aria. From day one.
And I wonder if that's how he used to look at me when I was little. Before The Bloody Dahlia. Before Mom. But it's been eight years since then. You shouldn't hate your child for that long. You shouldn't forget they exist for that long.
One more minute, I whisper to myself, but I already feel the moisture gathering behind my eyelids.
He's not coming. And my hands tighten around those glittery strings on my pants.
What am I not doing right that everyone keeps forgetting about me? Why doesn't anyone remember me?
That was the first night I thought it would be easier for them to handle everything if I didn't exist anymore.
I didn't exist anyway, but at least I'd be doing them a favor.
I'd make my disappearance official. They'd probably put on a grieving face for the neighbors and friends.
The first month, they'd probably go every week to that gravestone marked with my name.
After that, they'd officially move on with their lives.
Free of me. Free of the stress I brought into their lives by simply breathing near them.
I don't know what stopped me then. Maybe Luna, who found me seconds before the entrance and told me we had to run so we could start our dance.
Maybe the way she looked at me and my eyes, how she took me in her arms and promised she'd always stay by my side. Or maybe the way she wiped my tears while assuring me we'd win, that we'd go to high school, to college, and that we'd find boyfriends who looked like Damon Salvatore.
What's certain is that Dad didn't make it to that competition. And when I got home late that night, I found a single note saying there was food in the fridge.
No excuse. No apology. He didn't even look at me. And I swallow the lump in my throat, hating that I still feel these emotions so strongly at those memories.
I barely settle into my chair when I hear the front door, and I freeze with a napkin in my hand.
Within moments, Damien enters the room, and I don't want to look at him. I refuse to look at him when I know why he came. I know why he's breathing hard.
"Sorry, s?onko. Two idiots crashed on the highway, and we had to detour."
I nod slightly as I place the napkin in my lap.
I sense him come up next to my chair, and that scent of leather and musk wraps around my reason and, with it, my soul.
Damien leans toward me and takes my face in his hands. I know he doesn't understand why I have tears in my eyes and my face is contorted trying not to cry.
"Give me a name and I promise my blade will cut through every layer of skin," he tells me with such certainty that I almost laugh.
Almost.
"You came," I whisper, and my voice breaks.
He frowns, and his hands tense.
"I promised you," he whispers back.
But I don't think he understands that he's the first man who's kept his promises to me.
He's the first person who truly saw me. The first person who, no matter how much I push him away, still comes close to me.
Because I learned one thing from Dad and from my entire relationship with him: you can't be rejected if you're the one who rejects.
You can't be the one abandoned if you abandon first. And this man is the first one I want to try for.
To try letting these feelings grow. To try accepting that someone wants me near him, without any hidden motive.
I put my hands around his neck, pushing away that annoying voice telling me he'll break my heart, and I kiss him.
At first he's too shocked by my gesture and it takes him a few moments to recover, but when his mouth opens for me, I put all the frustration, all the stress from the past week, all the fear that I might lose him, into this kiss.
All the insecurity that he might abandon me too. That he might forget about me, just like the most important man in a girl's life did.
It doesn't take him long to take control, and I feel him exploring every inch, kissing my upper and lower lips in turn, then leaving a trail of kisses on my cheek.
"Not that I'm complaining, but why?" he murmurs.
I still have that lump in my throat that won't let me verbalize everything I want to tell him, so I take his face in my hands and kiss him again.
And I hope he understands through this kiss everything I can't verbalize now.
My hands slide down to his back and I pull him closer to me, earning a growl from him. Then he pulls away.
"I can't," he tells me, his breathing ragged.
"What?" I ask with wide eyes and cheeks burning with embarrassment.
"If I don't stop, Roxanne, in the next few seconds you'll find yourself in my arms, going up the stairs to that damn bed.
I can't control myself anymore when you're this close.
When every day I have to burn every instinct that begs me to lean closer to you.
Because that's what I want to do. Consume you.
For there not to be a single pore of you that doesn't know how to speak to every pore of me.
For you not to know where you begin and where I end, and it's killing me.
It's killing me that I have to keep my distance so I don't force your hand.
I know what I said when I proposed this arrangement, but I'll be damned if I'm not tempted to take back my promise not to cross any line.
For you I'd cross them all, and I know I wouldn't regret it. "
I watch him pant, looking at me with so much torment, and my chest contracts.
"Don't even think about carrying me up those stairs to bed," I tell him, and he freezes for a second.
"I, unlike you, remember that you have a wound in your abdomen, and I swear, Damien, if I see one more drop of blood on that bandage, I'll be a widow by my own hand because I'll strangle you myself. "
His eyes narrow at me, so I have no choice but to continue.
"I'll walk up those stairs myself, and you'll follow me.
Because you promised me a wedding night and you still owe it to me.
Do you think it's easy for me to get up next to you every morning?
Your body is practically four hundred degrees, and all I want to do is melt into it.
Not to mention you always smell like musk and leather, something my brain apparently craves every second by the obsessive way I can't stop smelling you.
Ask me what body wash I used this morning.
Actually, don't. I'll tell you. Yours. Because I knew you'd leave this morning and I wanted to carry you with me, at least for a few hours.
I don't know how to do this—trust, put my heart on a platter, leave myself exposed like this—but I want to try.
..for you," and I release the breath that had been trapped in my chest.
"For me," he says back to me softly, and his eyes sparkle with something new, something intense, something that burns.
"For you," I whisper.
That's all I manage to say before my ex-husband, because I'm going to kill him, picks me up and carries me up the stairs.
"DAMIEN! YOUR WOUND BARELY CLOSED!" I scream, and I'm sure the whole house hears us.
His response: he laughs.