Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Dove
The key turns, but the engine doesn’t catch. It makes a sick, grinding noise—metal on dying metal—before choking into silence.
“No,” I whisper, the word scraping out of my throat. “No, no, no.”
I try again. The starter clicks, a pathetic sound that mocks me. Outside, the sky has turned as dark as my mood, the earlier sunshine swallowed by a sudden, violent spring storm. Rain drums against the windshield, blurring the sprawling estate into a gray, watery smear.
The cabin of my car feels like a coffin. It smells of damp upholstery and stale air, a humiliating contrast to the lavender-scented perfection I just ran from. I grip the steering wheel, my knuckles turning white.
I am trapped. I am sitting in a rusting tin can at the bottom of the Archers’ driveway, wearing a pastel dress that now feels like a mockery of my feelings.
I catch my reflection in the rear view mirror. My eyes are red-rimmed, wild. Mascara is smudged beneath my lashes like charcoal bruises. I look exactly like what Shane called me: a child. A silly girl who thought she could sit at the adults’ table.
“Start,” I beg, my voice trembling. “Please, just start.” I twist the key again. The engine wheezes, shudders, and dies.
A scream builds in my chest, hot and acidic. I slam my palms against the steering wheel, the impact stinging my skin.
“Start, damn it!” I shout, the sound tearing through the small space.
I slump forward, pressing my forehead against the cold plastic of the wheel. The tears finally spill over, hot and fast. I sob into my hands, the sound ugly and raw.
I am crying for the humiliation.
I am crying for the years I spent pining after a man who sees me as a piece of furniture.
I am crying because my car is broken, and I am broken, and I just want to go home.
She means nothing to me.
The memory of his voice is a physical pain, a shard of glass in my chest. It cuts deeper than Emily’s insults ever could.
Suddenly, headlights sweep across my back window, blindingly bright in the rear view mirror. A sleek black car creeps down the driveway. Emily’s car.
I shrink down in my seat, praying she doesn’t see me. Praying she drives past.
The car slows as it passes my stalled vehicle. Then, it stops. The window rolls down.
I shouldn’t look. I should stare straight ahead. But some masochistic part of me turns my head.
Emily is staring at me through the rain. Her perfect facade is cracked; her lipstick is smudged at the corner, and her eyes are red, wild with humiliation. She doesn’t look like a queen anymore. She looks like a woman who just lost everything and wants to make someone else pay for it.
“He doesn’t want you either, you know,” she calls out, her voice shrill over the sound of the storm.
I flinch, her words finding the exact crack Shane left in my heart.
“He’s just feeling guilty,” she sneers, leaning closer to the open window, heedless of the rain hitting her expensive blowout. “He’ll come running after you, play the hero. But once the drama fades? You’ll just be the charity case he feels stuck with.”
She laughs, a sharp, brittle sound. “Good luck with that broken car, Dove. It suits you.”
The window rolls up, cutting off my reply—not that I had one.
I watch her taillights fade into the storm, taking the last of my dignity with her.
Charity case.
The words echo in the small, damp cabin, louder than the rain.
They shouldn’t hurt—they come from a woman lashing out in pain—but they hook into my insecurities and hold fast. Because they sound terrifyingly like the truth.
Shane has always been the hero. I have always been the one needing saving.
The one with the broken car, the small bank account, the drunk stranger harassing her. Is that all this is? Guilt? Obligation?
If he comes for me, will it be because he wants me, or because he feels responsible for his sisters’ friend. I can’t bear the thought of him looking at me with pity. I can’t be his burden. I need to leave before he can prove her right.
I take a ragged breath, inhaling the smell of dust and rain. I wipe my face with the back of my hand, smearing the makeup further. I won’t let them see me like this. I won’t let Shane look out the window and see the pathetic girl crying in her broken car.
So I sit up.
“One more time,” I whisper. “Work. Please.”
I turn the key. The engine coughs, sputters violently—and then roars to life.
Relief washes over me, so intense it makes me dizzy.
The car vibrates around me, a rough, uneven idle, but it’s running.
I jam the gearshift into drive, desperate to put miles between me and the humiliation waiting back at the house.
Needing to turn around, I drive back up the driveway to the Archer’s house, with the intention of completing a three point turn. But as I venture closer, I slam on the brakes, because a figure is sprinting down the driveway, cutting through the rain like a dark blur.
Shane.
My heart drops into my stomach. He is running flat out, his expensive suit soaked instantly by the downpour. Mud splatters up his tailored trousers. His hair is plastered to his forehead, wild and unkempt. He’s holding something white against his face—a napkin? It’s stained red.
“Go,” I tell myself. “Drive around him.” But I can’t move. My foot is frozen on the brake.
He reaches the car in seconds. He doesn’t go to the passenger side. He throws himself at my window, his palms slamming against the glass.
“Dove!” he shouts. His voice is muffled by the rain and the glass, but the desperation in it vibrates through the door frame. “Dove, stop!”
Water streams down his face, dripping from his jaw, mingling with the mud on his collar and the blood smudged on his upper lip. He looks wrecked. He looks terrifyingly beautiful.
“Open the door!” he demands, pounding on the glass again.
“No,” I whisper, shaking my head. I stare straight ahead, refusing to look at him, refusing to let the gray steel of his eyes hook into me again. “I can’t. I can’t do this.”
“Dove, look at me!” He isn’t leaving. He grips the door handle, yanking on it, but the lock holds. He leans his forehead against the wet glass, his chest heaving as he breathes, his eyes seeking mine through the barrier.
“Don’t leave,” he mouths. The rain washes the blood from his nose down his chin, making him look like a war hero returning from a lost battle.
And for the first time in my life, I don’t know if I’m running away from him, or running away from the part of me that wants to open the door.
The rain is relentless now, hammering against the roof of the car, drowning out the world.
But it can’t drown out Shane. He is still there.
He is pounding on the glass, shouting my name, his face twisted in a way I’ve never seen.
“Dove!” he yells, his voice cracking. “Please! Just... let me talk!”
I sit frozen, my hands gripping the wheel so hard my fingers ache.
I should drive. I should hit the gas and leave him in the mud.
But I can’t. My foot feels heavy, leaden on the brake.
My heart is beating in time with his fists on the glass.
Then, he moves to the front, standing at the hood so I can not leave.
“Move, you asshole!” I scream, my voice shaking.
“No!” He slams his hands onto the hood of the car, leaning over it, staring straight through the glass at me. Water streams down his face, soaking his collar, ruining his suit. He doesn’t care. “I am not moving until you open that door!”
With a cry of frustration, I unlock the door and shove it open. The storm rushes in instantly—cold, wet, and loud. I step out into the rain, not caring that my dress is soaked in seconds, not caring that my hair is plastered to my skull.
“What?” I scream over the wind, standing in the mud in my heels. “What could you possibly have to say to me?”
“Dove—”
“I loved you!” The confession rips out of me, a jagged, bloody thing I’ve been hiding for years. “Do you understand that? I have loved you for as long as I can remember! And you looked at me tonight and called me a child! You broke my heart, Shane!”
Shane recoils as if I’ve struck him. He stands there in the rain, breathless, staring at me with wide, shattered eyes. He reaches out, as if to touch me, but drops his hand, afraid.
“Why can’t you just see how much this hurts?” I demand, my voice breaking into a sob. “Why do you have to be so cruel?”
Shane doesn’t answer. Instead, he drops to his knees. He sinks right into the gravel and mud, staining his trousers, destroying the image of the perfect Archer heir.
He looks up at me, rain dripping from his lashes, his expression stripped bare.
“I lied.” His voice is raw, rougher than the storm. “I called you a child because I was terrified of how much power you have over me. You aren’t a child, Dove.”
I freeze, my arms wrapped around myself, shivering violently. “What?”
“I lied,” he repeats. “I lied because I’m a coward. I started dating Emily because I was terrified of what I felt for you. I thought I was too old, too dark, too damaged. I thought I would ruin you.”
He takes a breath, shaking his head. “I never slept with her, Dove. It was a sham relationship, at least on my end. To keep you at arm’s length. I thought if I had a girlfriend, I wouldn’t stare at you. I wouldn’t want you. But it didn’t work. It never worked.”
My heart hammers against my ribs, loud and erratic. “You...”
“But hearing you say you were leaving?” He looks at me, his eyes burning with an intensity that stops my breath. “That ruined me. The moment you walked out that door, I ended it. I kicked her out.”
I stare down at him, stunned. The rain mingles with the tears on my face.
“You ended it?”
“I don’t deserve another chance,” Shane says, his voice thick with emotion. “I know that. But I’m begging for one anyway. Please, Dove. Don’t leave.” He reaches a hand out, palm up, rain pooling in it. A silent plea. His hand is shaking.
I look at his hand. I look at his face—the man I’ve loved in secret, the man who just knelt in the mud for me.
The anger drains out of me, leaving only the ache of longing that has been there for years.
He isn’t perfect. He isn’t a god. He’s just a man who made a mistake because he was scared.
I take a step forward. Then another. I reach down, my fingers trembling as I touch his wet cheek.
His skin is cold from the rain, but beneath it, he is burning.
“You idiot,” I whisper. “You aren’t dark,” I whisper, my hand cupping his jaw. “You’re just lonely. And I’m not afraid of the dark, Shane.”
Shane lets out a sound that is half-laugh, half-sob.
He surges up from his knees, wrapping his arms around my waist, pulling me flush against him.
His mouth crashes onto mine. It isn’t gentle.
It’s desperate. It’s a collision of years of silence and secrets, wet and messy and frantic.
He tastes like rain and desperation and copper.
My hands tangle in his soaked hair, pulling him closer, needing to verify that this is real, that he is real.
He breaks the kiss, gasping for air, his forehead resting against mine. “I love you,” he breathes against my lips. “I love you, Dove. I’m so sorry.”
“I love you, too,” I sob. He doesn’t let go. In one fluid motion, he sweeps me off my feet, lifting me into his arms. I wrap my legs around his waist, burying my face in the crook of his neck, clinging to him as the rain continues to pour.
“I’ve got you,” he promises, turning back toward the house. “I’ve got you and I am never letting you go again.”
He carries me up the driveway, his steps steady despite the mud. I close my eyes, listening to the beat of his heart against his chest, louder than the thunder. The storm is still raging, but for the first time all night, I am not afraid. I am coming home.