Chapter 5 #2
SW. Sloane Whitmore. Two letters that will mean nothing to whoever reads this, just another wish from another woman who walked into Scarlet Thorn looking for a miracle she knew she couldn't keep.
Unless Massimo reads it. And then those two letters will mean everything.
Worth the risk?
I fold the paper, the crease soft and imprecise because my fingers are still trembling and the tears have made the paper tender. I bring the envelope to my lips and press them together against the seal, the faint taste of adhesive mixing with the ghost of his whiskey still on my mouth.
I hold it over the slot in the box. My fingers grip the edges and for one long second I don't let go.
Dropping this wish means admitting I want him.
Admitting I have wanted him for years. Admitting that tonight wasn't wine-fueled recklessness or a birthday mistake but the truest thing I have ever done, and I'm about to leave the only proof of it in a velvet box in a room made of secrets.
I let go. The envelope hits the bottom with a soft thud that sounds final and ridiculous at the same time.
"There." I stare at the box, sniff hard, and wipe my nose with the back of my wrist because glamour is dead and I'm the one who killed it. "Happy birthday to me."
I grab my shoe and leave the wish room before anyone sees me cry any harder. The red door closes behind me with a quiet click and I retrace my steps down the dark corridor.
The service corridor carries me back down.
The elevator drops me to the lobby and my bare feet cross cold marble one last time.
Nobody stands behind the front desk, which means either someone is getting fired tomorrow or the universe decided I've suffered enough for one evening and threw me a bone. Either way, I'll take it.
The glass doors release me into Chicago.
Cold predawn air bites into my bare arms and legs, raising every hair on my body, sinking past my skin and settling into my bones within seconds.
The sky is gray-purple above the skyline, caught between night and dawn, and the city smells like exhaust and wet concrete.
A taxi idles at the curb with its roof light glowing.
I climb in. The vinyl seat is cold against my bare thighs and the cab smells like pine air freshener and an old pumpkin latte. I pull the door shut, give the driver my address, and lean my head back against the headrest.
My hands rest in my lap. Faint pink marks run across my wrists where I gripped the sheets so hard the fabric burned.
I turn my hands over and study my palms. They look the same as always, but they don't feel the same.
These hands know what his skin feels like now, the heat of his chest under my palm, the faint ridges of his viper tattoo beneath my fingers, the way his stomach contracted when I touched him.
I can't unknow that. And I'm not sure I want to.
The driver pulls from the curb and I close my eyes, letting the motion of the car rock me against the worn vinyl.
I look back. I don't decide to. My body just does it, the same stupid, reckless impulse that made me text the wrong name in the first place.
Through the rear window I see the glass entrance doors of Redthorne Holdings fly open. A man bursts through them, barefoot, shirtless, gray sweats slung low on his hips, the dark lines of the viper tattoo stark against bare skin in the predawn light.
Massimo.
He's running. Toward the taxi. Toward me.
My heart slams into my throat so hard I taste adrenaline on the back of my tongue. Every muscle locks me to the seat and my hands fly to the glass. My palms press flat against the cold window, fingers spread wide, and my whole body screams at me to open the door and run back to him.
"Oh God." The words come out strangled, barely a sound. "Oh God, oh God."
I slam my eyes shut and pray for strength to stay where I am.
If I open that door, I have to tell him my name.
If I tell him my name, he's not looking at his anonymous stranger anymore.
He's looking at Harrison Whitmore's daughter.
The teenager who parked herself in the back corner of the study with a textbook she wasn't reading just to be in the same room when he came over, who memorized the way he rolled his sleeves and loosened his tie and laughed at her father's bad jokes, and he never once looked at her as anything more than Harrison's kid.
Every soft thing he said to me tonight turns into evidence that I played him, and I will watch his face shut like a door and I will not survive that.
His friendship with my father, twenty years deep, goes up in smoke.
My father finds out his best friend took his daughter's virginity and there is no version of that conversation that doesn't end in blood.
And Massimo never touches me again. That's what's at stake. That's what I lose if I open this door.
I know what I'm doing. I'm hiding again.
Running back behind the armor before the sun comes up and makes everything real.
An hour ago I was brave enough to stand naked in front of a man and let him see every inch of me without a single layer of protection.
Now I'm in the back of a taxi pressing my palms against glass because I can be naked for him but I can't be known by him. How's that for fucked up?
His voice carries through the closed window, muffled by glass and distance but unmistakable. That low, rough voice that an hour ago murmured tesoro against my throat while his hand circled my neck and his body moved inside me with a patience that ruined me for every man who will come after him.
"Wait! Stop!"
I slap at the seat in front of me. "Step on it." I choke the words at the driver without turning around, my palms still flat against the glass, my breath fogging the window in quick panicked bursts. "Please go faster."
The driver glances at me in the rearview, eyebrows climbing toward his hairline, and presses the accelerator.
My heart clenches and I swear with everything in me I wish I was anyone else in the world right now so I didn't have to live with this pain.
My face crumples. The sob that rips out of me is ugly and loud and graceless, and I press my forehead against the window and cry with my palms still flat on the glass.
Through the condensation of my breath on the cold glass, I watch him stop in the middle of the street, chest heaving, hand still outstretched, getting smaller and smaller until the taxi turns a corner and he disappears.
I want to tell the driver to stop, but fairytales and reality don't share a zip code.