What You left in Me (Dark Desires #2)

Prologue – Ariane

I twirl in front of the mirror, and the skirt blooms around my legs like pale green water.

For a moment, I don’t look like a girl who still has algebra homework and chipped nail polish. I look older. Like I belong in this world of champagne and glitter.

The window is cracked open and summer drifts in a cocktail of lake air, freshly mowed grass, and a hint of mildew.

Below, the lawn is already transformed into a scene straight out of a fairytale.

White folding chairs line up like soldiers in neat rows.

Silken ribbons flutter against the backs of identical chairs.

A floral arch blots some of the gorgeous sunlight with shade.

Beyond the scene, the surface of the lake shimmers in lazy ripples, calm and glassy.

It’s a beautiful shade of blue and, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think it wasn’t real.

I tuck a loose curl behind my ear and lean closer to the mirror.

“Ugh!” I groan at my reflection.

No matter the occasion, my hair never listens—not to heated tools or a fistful of pins. It falls in dark waves anyway, the few rogue strands keep slipping free, hanging in rebellious little commas around my face.

I irately dab at my lip gloss again, even though Mom is going to tell me it’s too much, and then I do the thing I promised myself I wouldn’t do because it only proves that I’m nervous.

I practice my smile. Not the big one with the dimple, because that looks like I’m trying too hard.

I practice the smaller one. The polite one. The one fit for photographs.

Today will have a lot of photographs.

Across the hall, I hear footsteps, then the whoosh of a door opening.

Right now, the house is like heartbeat: voices rise and fall; laughter skips down the staircase; someone calls for the florist because a ribbon went crooked; someone else whispers, “Five minutes to the processional,” like it’s a warning.

I tuck my hands together, so I don’t pick at the hem, and—after one last look at myself—I finally leave the room.

Mom’s door is open.

The light inside is softer than sunlight, like the lamps understand that this is a sacred hour and they should respect that.

She is standing in front of her mirror, but she isn’t looking at herself.

Instead, she’s looking past herself, out the window at the same view I’d been transfixed at.

The lake, the white arch, and the aisle that will carry her into a new name.

“Don’t you look like summer,” she says, turning around the second she hears me enter. Her voice has that high, breathless edge to it. The one that appears when she’s anxious but trying to make me believe that she’s calm.

“You look…” I stop, because the word ‘perfect’ is so small for what she is.

The white gown is the color of sky washed with milk. It has a soft blue tint to it, which compliments her complexion perfectly. Pearls rest at her throat like clear bubbles that forgot to pop. Her hair is swept back into a chignon.

For a second, I see her the way the guests will: elegant, serene, and the kind of beautiful that makes you want to stand straighter.

But then she sighs, and I see her glassy eyes and there is my mother. Not a statue. Not a picture. Just Eleanor, trying to keep herself together.

Mom deserves this.

She finally looks happy.

She catches me staring and pretends to scold, “Stop memorizing me like a poem, Ari.”

“Can’t help it.” I grin and pick up her bouquet from the bed. White roses, pale pink hydrangeas, a twist of eucalyptus that smells fresh and green. I hold it out to her.

“Do I look like a bride?” she asks, and it’s only half-teasing.

“You look like someone who’s going to be late if we don’t go.”

We laugh. It’s a small sound, fragile and bright, but it’s ours. I press the bouquet into her hands, link my fingers with hers for exactly three seconds, squeeze, and then let go because there will be hell to pay if either of us ruin our makeup.

Downstairs, I pause at the threshold.

The setting sun is pushing at my eyelashes, and the world outside looks like the perfect shot for a postcard. The aisle is simple, yet beautiful. The chairs full of faces I barely know.

Somewhere to my left, someone whispers, “There she is,” and everybody turns.

I follow their eyes down the walk, past the urns with their climbing roses, past the mirror-lake, to where Richard stands beneath the arch.

He looks nervous, but it’s a different kind of nervous than Mom’s. His is unabashed, and he wears it with a softness. He keeps smoothing his lapels even though his suit is already immaculate.

I’ve never seen a person smile with their whole body before. His joy infects every part of his body. His shoulders may as well be grinning too.

When he catches sight of us, the corners of his eyes crinkle, and my insides do a small, careful flip. He is not handsome like the movie stars Mom used to fawn over. He is more precious than that. He is kind, and you can see it from across a lawn.

I take my seat in the front row on the aisle.

I smooth my dress one more time for bravery, and then the music swells into the kind of song that turns the day into a story.

Mom finally descends the aisle. The crowd lets out a soft noise, part sigh and part applause, as she glides toward the arch, stepping perfectly.

The white aisle cloth rustles under her, and the lake adds its own peacefully quiet wash of water against the stones.

“Hi,” Richard mouths when Mom reaches him, and it’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen. He takes her hand and lifts it and kisses her knuckles reverently. Suddenly, my throat feels tight and warm at the same time.

The officiant starts to speak, but I barely listen to the first line because my mind is busy. I look at Mom’s bouquet trembling just a little. I look at her profile, the way she is trying to be still and not cry. I look at Richard’s face, full of love and hope.

Maybe this time the story is about people who choose each other and then keep choosing, even when it’s hard. Family can be chosen. He said that last night, in the kitchen, when he thought I had headphones in. He told Mom, “What matters is that we choose this, every day.”

The words drift back to me while the real words, Mom’s vows, unfold in front of me. They’ve kept it simple, like they don’t want to trap their promises in too many lines. There are no grandiose speeches. Just the clear, steady sort. “I promise to try.” “I promise to listen.” “I will be your home.”

My eyes shift to the movement at the edge of the rows, a disturbance in the light.

It catches my eye from the periphery. I’ve almost turned away from it when a tall figure pauses near the last grouping of chairs, standing like he doesn’t belong to chairs or ceremonies.

He casts a shadow in his black suit, a stark contrast against the piercing white of his shirt.

His watch face catches the sun and throws it back.

He’s almost in the shade of the willow, where the leaves hang in green curtains.

Finn Wagner.

I only know him from pictures. He’s older than me by a decade and some change, mostly living in places featured in the Willowridge Gazette.

In photographs, he is never smiling. He isn’t today, either.

His face is carved without softness, but his gaze is wandering, discerning.

It comes to a rest when it lands on the arch beneath which the happy couple stands.

Yet, when it finds Mom’s hand in Richard’s, his tongue rolls around in his mouth, and he looks away.

A beautiful woman walks towards him and comes to stand beside him.

She’s wearing a scandalously short dress, covered in sparkles, that barely contains her huge breasts.

Without even bothering to look at her, he grabs her by the waist and yanks her toward him like a ragdoll.

She falls against him with a peal of laughter.

He is almost my brother, I think—and then correct myself: stepbrother.

I have a stepbrother now. Once I think the words, they feel so deeply strange to me.

He’s twenty-five years old. There’s so many years between us, and it’s only one of the ways he is distant from me.

Everything about him speaks of neon cities and boardrooms and red-eye flights.

We probably won’t have to talk much, if ever.

Our lives are parallel lines that won’t touch.

With a heavy sigh, I force myself to look away before he catches me staring.

Meanwhile, Richard’s voice is steady and confident, like he wants every person, even the ones in the last row, to hear the words and believe them.

He promises to keep our house filled with peace.

To be honest, even when it’s the most difficult thing.

I think about the last three years, the way Mom learned to smile with her lips while her eyes were tired.

I think about the nights when we ate cereal for dinner because talking would have been too much, and how she would braid my hair afterward and call it “our ritual,” like it was always meant to be just us.

When Richard says, “I know family is not the same word for everyone, but I want ours to mean safety,” the tightness in my throat turns into something bright. I blink fast. I can’t be the first person to cry.

Mom squeezes his fingers. Her voice is softer than his, but it doesn’t tremble. “I promise to try. I promise to listen. I promise to make a home with you.” She swallows and then smiles, the real one, the one that shows the dimple she gave me. “I promise to let happiness in when it knocks.”

There’s a ripple through the guests, like the lake catching a breeze.

I glimpse Penny in the third row— my best friend since we moved here, back when I was the new girl no one wanted to talk to, the one who’s stayed with me through every mood and complaint— her hair a small bonfire, her eyes wide and wet.

She mouths, “Oh,” like she forgot any other words.