The Girl He Didn’t Save (Tales of Healing Hearts #1)

Chapter 1

RED IN EXCALIBUR

Hell is not a place; it’s just a memory you cannot overwrite

Della

I saw it yesterday in a boutique window — blazing red, too bold for the woman I’ve become, but perfect for the girl I used to be. I almost walked away. But then... I didn’t. I wanted to give myself something. I told myself it was a reward for this hard year.

So, I bought it.

The red dress clings to me with every step onto the dance floor—short, shimmering, unapologetic. The fabric catches the lights like embers on skin, flickering with every sway of my hips.

It’s not just a dress. It’s a whisper from another life. An armor. Against the past, the numbing pain and everything he made me feel.

I tried to stay away, but here I am. Back in Chicago, at the very place where it had all started—Excalibur. I never thought I’d return to this place. Not this lifetime anyway.

Five years ago, this city was my second home, and I loved every minute I spent here. For almost a year, it gave me freedom and self-confidence, real friends and amazing experiences. And above all that… love. My first love.

But then I left, I had to. And I lost everything in one single night.

“Just a week, Della” I keep telling myself.

That’s all I have to survive this city that gave me and took me all. One week till the biggest marketing conference of my career is over and I can return home, to this shadow of a life that I live.

After a long day of meaningless smiles and empty applause at the conference, I felt like I was choking. My colleague, Adriana, insisted we go out—to show her the city by night.

“Come on, Della, you’re the only one of us who’s been to Chicago before! Let’s taste the American nightlife and forget about content calendars and conversion funnels!”

Someone at the conference had suggested Excalibur during the lunch break.

“I googled it,” they said, “and it’s the best-rated club in town. It’s been refurbished recently and it’s the place to be on a Friday night.”

But for me, this club was a forbidden refuge.

Here, I had met him.

I tried to suggest a different club and then I thought I was overreacting. He’d surely forgotten about this place, and I was certain there was no chance I’d see him tonight. So, I agreed.

If I think again… I came here to bleed out what was left of a memory and bury him in noise and bodies pressed too close.

I let my eyes sweep across the crowd, heart tight in my chest.

Maybe it’s foolish and maybe it makes no sense, but I chose red on purpose.

Not for nostalgia but for the ghost of a moment, I still can’t shake.

I walk through the crowd at Excalibur with my head high and my chin defiant and feel like a flame encased in glass: fragile but untouchable.

I make my way to the bar.

“Something strong?” the bartender asks, eyes dragging over me, his grin careless.

“Something light,” I answer, looking him straight in the eyes. “But heavy on the ice.”

Alcohol was never my way out. To forget, to not feel, I use something else. Sex.

So, when the green-eyed stranger with caramel skin touches my waist and asks if I want to dance, I don’t say no.

Not because I want to dance. But because I simply do not care.

I leave my colleagues at the bar and slip into the chaos of the dance floor. Latin rhythms pulse beneath my skin as the top floor of the club throbs with movement, sweat, and heat.

A few minutes later, my back hits the wall behind a dark, curtain-draped corner of the club—my dress hiked up, my thoughts long gone.

His hand slides up my thigh—hot and claiming. His mouth crushes mine, rough and hungry. His hands are greedy, fast.

And I?

All I feel is the cold glass in my hand.

Sometimes, the only way to silence a memory is to let someone else’s hands overwrite it. Not with tenderness or love. Just pressure and noise.

Just enough to drown him out.

From where I stand, I can still see the crowd pulsing on the dance floor—light, sound, life. But here, in this shadowed corner, the darkness folds around me like a second skin. It hides me in plain sight. Out there, the world moves. In here, I disappear.

His hand grabs my thigh, lifts it high against his hip, and forces himself inside me.

My back arches against the wall—not from pleasure, but from impact. His grip tightens at my waist while his mouth brushes my neck.

Still—nothing.

My fingers dig into the velvet-covered wall, my eyes drifting past him—unfocused, unseeing. Over his shoulder, I watch the flashing lights. The distant blur of bodies.

I’m not here. Not really.

I’m floating above myself—watching from a place where nothing can reach me.

My body moves automatically. It’s all just mechanics.

No connection, no pleasure. Just anaesthesia.

The music swallows everything: the grunts, the friction.

Good. Let it end. Soon.

But then, I feel it. A single shift in the air and a strong sense of presence.

The curtain splits apart and the darkest eyes I’ve ever known pierce through the dimness, locking onto mine. Unforgiving.

Dorian.

He is here.

For a second, the world stops and there is nothing else. I freeze under his burning gaze and my chest tightens painfully.

He doesn’t blink. He doesn’t move. He just watches, like a man standing at the edge of a cliff, staring into the fall.

His jaw is locked and his shoulders are rigid. Fists clenched at his sides like he’s holding himself together by force.

The stranger keeps moving inside me, unaware. And suddenly—I want it to end. I want him out. But I don’t move. I can’t.

I lift my chin. I hold Dorian’s stare — not from defiance, but because if I look away, the collapse might start.

Let him see… what he left behind, what’s become of me because of him.

Not in words or pleas.

This is my silence, my silent scream.

Let him feel what it means to be forgotten. Replaced. Abandoned.

But he doesn’t look angry. He looks lethal. Like he could kill the man possessing my body without blinking. And maybe, in another life, he would have.

But something stops him. His fists stay clenched and his jaw locked. Fury simmers just beneath the surface—barely restrained. Yet beneath the rage, there's hollow, raw devastation. Like he's watching a nightmare unfold and still doesn’t believe it’s real.

His eyes search mine—not for answers, but for a sign that I’m still in there.

“Della.” His voice is low. Shattered. A whisper that’s not even audible through the pounding bass, but I hear it in my bones.

“Dorian,” screams every broken part of me. Mind. Flesh. Heart.

But I don’t say his name. If I do, I’ll fall. And I’ve spent years learning how to stand.

The stranger lets out a guttural moan as he finishes, collapsing against me. I stand still. Hollow.

“Get off her!” Dorian growls.

The man jerks back, still panting. “Que carajo!? What the hell, man?”

But Dorian doesn’t flinch. His voice drops, low and dangerous.

“Leave. Now.”

A beat later, two bodyguards appear behind him, silent as ghosts. That’s all it takes.

The stranger mutters under his breath, yanks his pants up, tugs off the condom and vanishes into the crowd like smoke.

In the silence that follows, I fix my dress with slow, deliberate moves. The sequins shimmer under the shifting lights, like tiny flames crawling over my skin. I smooth it down my thighs, adjust the neckline, lift my chin. And, only then, do I meet his eyes again.

Then Dorian steps forward. He doesn’t touch me—his body is still, but his stare devouring. His eyes crawl over my skin, drinking in every detail: the mess, the truth, the red dress.

“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” he says finally. His voice is low, strained, wrecked by time and distance, and all the things we never said.

I don’t answer. I can’t. My heart is still racing.

I take this second to look at him.

He seems different, taller than I remember. Or maybe I just forgot how the world disappears when he’s near me. Six foot three of presence, power, and control barely leashed. A man carved from regret and rage.

Broad shoulders in a black tailored suit. A black shirt opened just enough to show the bronze line of his collarbone — and just beneath it, the quiet strength of defined muscle, the kind shaped not in gyms, but through years of work and grit, poured into concrete and steel.

His long, black hair now brushes just above his shoulders, the waves falling naturally.

He doesn’t wear the earrings anymore. He used to wear one in each ear — small stones that caught just enough light to suggest rebellion, not wealth. Back then, it was never about status. It was defiance. A challenge.

But it’s his eyes that hit me hardest.

Still black as coal, but now... cold. Quiet. Once, they burned when you got too close. Now they hold shadows I don’t recognize.

“Five years and this is how you come back, Della?”

He says my name like it still belongs to him. And it lands somewhere deep, where I’ve kept it buried.

“I didn’t know I owed you an explanation.” I say, voice sharp like glass fracturing.

His jaw tightens. “You owed me more than silence.”

“And you owed me a promise, Dorian.”

He says nothing but something flickers behind his eyes—a shadow I can’t name. He takes one step. That’s all.

And suddenly, he’s so close, I feel the heat of his body bleeding into mine.

I inhale his skin, his cologne—dark, musky, infuriatingly familiar. I forgot how easily he could hijack my senses.

A shiver snakes through me and I try to take a step back. But he pulls me in.

His left hand closes around my waist—firm, irrevocable. With his right, he brushes along my wrist, tracing the inside of my palm like he’s trying to read a story that’s long since faded.

I blink and feel the air thickening with memory, with fury and longing.

Then he leans in and his lips find mine.

I should stop him. I want to stop him. But I don’t.

And I hate myself for leaning into it.

The kiss is desperate. Not just lust and memory. It’s loss and ache. It’s a scream trapped between two mouths.

One hand tangles in my hair, pulling me closer. The other anchors me at the waist, like if he lets go, we’ll both disappear.

His mouth is demanding. Unrelenting. His tongue slides between my lips, stealing my breath. He kisses me like he’s been starving for years.

“Mine. You are mine,” he murmurs.

And just like that—the spell breaks.

No.

He has no right to say that. Not that promise—I thought was forever.

I place my hands on his wide and strong chest, feeling way too familiar, and I push him with everything I have.

His hands fall away and his gaze stumbles.

“Not anymore,” I say with a cold voice and harsh look.

He doesn’t understand and I will not explain.

I turn and walk away as fast as I can.

“Della, wait!” he calls, stunned.

But I don’t turn. I need to be away from him.

So, I start running.

Tears blur my vision and my legs barely hold. Each step down the stairs echoes like a drumbeat in my skull.

* * *

I barely make it to the hotel.

The door shuts behind me like a final line drawn between what was and what now is.

In the bathroom, I strip off my clothes and step into the shower before the water even has time to warm. The icy spray hits me like truth.

I crouch on the cold tile; arms wrapped around my knees. The water flows over my back. I scrub my skin, as if I can wash away his touch.

But it’s not just the touch. It’s the feeling. The damn feeling.

He made me feel again.

The memory crashes over me, shattering, like a wave that hits with full weight.

* * *

It was that early spring night when we met, and talked, and danced—bodies pressed close, Latin beats pulsing between us, sweat, laughter, and something that felt like forever.

That night, we made love for the first time. That night, I gave myself to him fully, without hesitation.

I was twenty-one and still a virgin. Not because I was saving myself for some promise or ideal. But because no one had ever truly seen me.

Until him.

And when Dorian looked at me, I just knew.

He wasn’t a stranger. He was the man who would save me, protect me, love me. My man.

There was no fear, no doubt. Only the sure, quiet knowing that he was mine—and I was his.

The room was dim, lit only by the soft amber glow of the city skyline and the flicker of candlelight dancing on the walls. My red shirt slid off one shoulder. His hands caught it mid-fall—with reverence, with care—his fingertips brushing my skin like worship.

Then his mouth. Everywhere. My throat, my collarbone, the soft underside of my breast.

He learned me. Slowly.

His tongue left heat in its wake, tracing the outline of a body I barely recognized as mine.

When he cupped my breast and kissed it, I arched toward him, breath caught. And when his fingers slipped between my thighs, finding the ache, the want—

I gasped.

His touch was gentle but sure. His pace unhurried.

I opened for him.

And when he finally slid inside me, inch by inch—a soft, aching stretch—filled with pressure and wonder, I moaned his name like it was the only word I’d ever known.

Tears blurred my vision—not from pain, but from the overwhelming knowing.

That this was it. That he was the one.

His body—hot, strong, impossibly real—pressed against mine, and I wrapped around him like I’d waited a lifetime to be held.

I still remember the scent of him—dark, male, entirely Dorian. The heat of his skin. The solid weight of him above me.

And his dark, intense, consuming eyes… They locked onto mine as he moved inside me—eyes that didn’t just look at me, but into me. As if he could see every breath, every tremble, every truth I tried to hide.

He made love to me like a man discovering a temple—equal parts reverence and hunger. Every thrust deeper, slower, then faster—never rushed, always knowing.

After, when our fingers intertwined above my head, he leaned in close and whispered, cracked and breathless:

“Mine. You are mine.”

Not a claim or possession. But a vow. To love me and protect me. Always.

There was no altar, no witnesses.

Yet it was a sacred union—two hearts surrendering in the dark.

* * *

I close my eyes under the pounding shower and rest my head on my knees.

The cruelest part?

Some distant, defiant part of me still wants to believe he meant every word.