Chapter 60
Quill
Unobserved Observers
Breaking Point
Ahmet Kenan Bilgic, Turgut Mavuk
“Excuse me, dear,” Monica said as I tried to process her words. “I have to defuse a bomb.”
With that, she also disappeared down the stairs.
Lily Chester?
Wasn't that... Lara's mother? The woman who had run off eighteen years ago, leaving Davian behind with a baby?
In a daze, I watched as the blonde bombshell made her way to the dance floor, straight toward Lara, which Davian must have noticed because he immediately left Brittany standing there and headed in the same direction.
Tony and Lara spotted her too, and my brother seemed to know Lily Chester. At least, all lightness suddenly disappeared from his face and he pulled Lara toward him.
Monica reached him...
It all became too much for me.
My mind wanted to work, but it was unable to. At the same time, more and more information reached my senses, including stimuli that I did not need at that moment. The smell of fresh food, perfume, alcohol, music, a woman laughing shrilly, a man coughing next to me, voices getting louder...
Breathing heavily, I turned around and disappeared up the stairs, then took another flight of stairs. And another. Until there were no more stairs in this building that I could take, and I had to come to a halt in front of an old wooden door at the end of a hallway.
Where had I ended up?
I should go back, but a creak of the floorboards in the hallway behind me made me panic and grab the door handle, so that a few seconds later I found myself in an empty attic room.
Les Secrets de la Soirée
Tom Kristiaan
A loose ladder stood in the middle. And it led upwards to a roof hatch.
Many houses in Maplecrest had flat walkable roof areas.
And when I climbed up this ladder and pushed open the dusty glass hatch, I actually landed on a flat roof with an unused terrace, which was fitted with a huge glass window overlooking the illuminated ballroom.
Soft orchestral music and muffled voices drifted up to me from below.
Darkness was already eating away at the sky, and the wind tugged at my dress, but this was all I needed right now to let a successful breath of air into my lungs.
Taking a deep breath, I walked over to one of the chimneys and sat down on the stone that was part of the ledge around the glass roof – even though Mama had always said that in months with R, you shouldn't sit on stones if you didn't want to catch a bladder infection.
Maybe she had been right. But what was a sore bladder compared to the things that would rot inside me forever because there was no medicine for them?
Leaning against the cool chimney behind me, I looked up at the clear starry sky.
I know you're not a star, Mama. That you're not up there. But I like to imagine it.
There was a creaking sound and I automatically stiffened, pressed myself against the cold chimney and prayed it was just the wind.
But the hatch rattled.
Someone was there. Someone had followed me.
I doubted that old Fitzek would climb onto his roof via an old ladder in the middle of his gala, or that Troy would come to this place, but the remaining options weren't any better.
Someone walked steadily across the roof, paused at the ledge of the huge skylight, shoved his hands into the pockets of his suit pants, and stared down.
Holding my breath, I stared at the sparks of light from the ballroom reflecting in Davian's eyes.
My body relaxed and I exhaled quietly. Apparently not quietly enough, because Davian turned his head toward me, and when he spotted me, he seemed to hold his breath for a moment.
I couldn't help but curl the corners of my mouth.
Davian was still staring. And I enjoyed how unpolished and unfiltered his face reflected his innermost self.
He didn't have to put on a mask around me. Not when we were alone.
His face relaxed and a gentle smile played around his lips.
Sweden
C418
“It seems you're also looking for a place where you can observe people without being observed yourself.”
I revealed to him with a smirk that this had been one of my ulterior motives when I had sat down here.
“You've found my secret hideaway.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“More like you've found mine.”
I squinted at him challengingly, but then slid aside to the edge of the stone ledge and tapped on the stone connected to the chimney wall.
“I'm willing to share my spot.”
Both his eyebrows shot up.
“How generous of you, Miss Veritas.”
Moths awakened in my stomach and I gripped my clutch tighter when Davian stepped toward me and settled down beside me.
It was cramped on the stone and I was grateful that he didn't seem to mind as he leaned his shoulder against the chimney wall, next to me, our shoulders and legs touching.
I immediately felt the masculine warmth emanating from his body, longing for it, but I disguised it by gazing over the roof into the distance.
“Since I've been living in Maplecrest, high places in the shadows, where you can pretend you're not lost among all those people, have become a good refuge.” He snorted softly, as if the statement amused him.
“It's hard to describe. I've often done it at my father's house.
Looking down at the world and watching people makes me feel like I'm part of the game without having to be a pawn.”
I felt Davian's gaze on me.
“It's less overwhelming.”
Nodding slowly, I suppressed the urge to run my hands over my shoulders.
November was definitely the wrong month to lean against stones on rooftops at night with my back exposed.
A shiver overtook me and I trembled for a split second.
Davian immediately leaned forward, slipped out of his suit jacket, and the memory of our first encounter instantly flooded my mind.
“Please.” He held out his jacket to me. This time a black one. His gaze, intent. “Put this on.”
He didn't even wait, turned to me so he could lift it over my head and wrap it around me, and his masculine scent, along with the note of cedarwood and pine, flooded my nose.
His suit jacket was so warm that it robbed the moths in my stomach of their senses.
I wanted to sleep in it.
“Thank you.”
Heat penetrated my cheeks.
“Not for that.”
I pulled the jacket tighter around me, looked down into the ballroom at the crowd of hundreds of people, trying to find Lara or her mother, but only spotted Anthony looking around everywhere before disappearing through a side door.
I spotted my father, who was also looking around as if he were searching for someone. Me? Hardly... He was probably glad I wasn't showing my face anymore.
Monica looked around like a vulture on the hunt, sipping a new Cosmopolitan, and finally I spotted Lara, who was also searching for someone before joining Monica.
“No one's looking for someone like me down there,” I said amused. “But it seems like they're already missing you.”
“You can't imagine how much satisfaction it gives me to sit up here.”
Grinning down, I continued to look for people I knew, trying to guess what was being said among the guests, what the changes in their facial expressions and body language might mean.
“Together with the woman they all treat as if she needs to be hidden away.”
I turned my head toward Davian, grateful that the light from below shone on him as long as my head wasn't casting a shadow on his face.
He looked at me intently, studying me with emotions in his eyes better left uninterpreted.
Why did he say things like that when the next moment he was pushing me to the edge of a cliff?
There was something heavy hanging between us, and every word I didn't say only made the closeness between us all the more apparent.
His scent was everywhere, penetrating me, and I couldn't get enough of it, wanted to lean against him, breathe new life into my memory of what it felt like to feel Davian Rydell's lips on mine.
I swallowed, looked away hastily.
“You came up here to hide from your ex-wife.”
Davian sighed, and that did me in, awakening my longing to hold his hand. He sounded exhausted.
“She shows up whenever she wants, tries to get close to Lara, and wants to talk to me about things I buried long ago. And I'm definitely not going to dig up skeletons from my past.”
“She seems interested in having contact with Lara.”
Even though I had immediately disliked Lily, I wouldn't tell him that his daughter and his ex were secretly meeting. That was Lara's job. And something I had to keep to myself if I wanted to prove to Lara how important our friendship was to me. Despite everything.
Maybe she had already decided to kick me out of her father's house today. I would understand...
“It's eighteen years too late for that. She gave up on Lara just like she gave up on me. And Lara will never forgive her for that.”
Oh man. I should warn Lara.
“How did you meet her?”
I scanned the hall for the blonde beauty and quickly spotted her, as not many people down there were wearing gold dresses.
Davian sighed.
“At a college party. She was the host’s sister, but she preferred to hide in her room to study for her economics degree.
I happened to lock myself in that room to get some peace and quiet from my drunk friends from back then.
” He laughed quietly and shook his head.
“I was drunk myself and threw up in her trash can.”
“Oh no...”
“Oh yes. She allowed me to rest on her bed if I didn’t throw up again, and I slept there. The next morning, I helped clean up the house and we got closer, eventually met once, then more and more often to study in the library. At some point, she became my first girlfriend.”
Of course he had had a high-achieving girlfriend.
“You really were a nerd,” I remarked with a grin.
“Look where it got me.”
It sounded as if he regretted all his life choices.
“On your boss's roof?”
Now he looked at me perplexed, then raised his eyebrows and grinned, and, with my own grin, looked back down at the woman who I was sure must have made him smile often as well.
She was stunning, apparently his age, the mother of his daughter, and seemed to be successful and intelligent...