Chapter 8
SIENNA
Everything in the restaurant glitters, from the glass table, to the golden chairs to the bright white teeth of the teen girlfriends of some of Kurt’s partners.
As far as I know, none of them are actually underage, but I never asked.
And Kurt is exchanging smiles and looks with some of them that suggests he would know a thing like that.
He’s definitely the type of guy who would keep tabs of what his associates are doing wrong. Just to have something to hold over their heads. I’m pretty sure that kind of thing is where most of his money comes from, but he doesn’t tell me anything about that and I don’t ask.
I just wish he’d go ahead and switch me out for one of these younger models already, like most of his partners had done to their wives.
All the bright glimmering inside this restaurant makes the night outside seem pitch black.
But I feel him out there. Feel him watching me with his bright eyes, the gaze hot despite their icy color.
The boy with such brilliant blue eyes I couldn’t stop looking at them.
All my friends made fun of me for liking him.
But I did. I loved him. I loved him more than I’ve ever loved anyone or anything. Before him and since.
I didn’t care what anyone said. He was put on this earth for me and I for him.
And everything would’ve been perfect, forever and ever, if I wasn’t such a liar and such a coward.
I could just walk out of this restaurant and into his arms right now. I know he’s waiting for me. And this time, I won’t let him leave me behind.
Even though I can’t see him, I smile at him through the window, just like I smiled at him that first time at school. He came over to me then and he’s there now, waiting to take me away. I know he is.
I see Kurt scowling at me in the reflection. He leans in. “What the hell are you doing? You look insane.”
I turn my smile in his direction. But it’s not the same smile. The one for him is plastic and fake.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell him and stand up before he can stop me.
He doesn’t chase me like I knew he wouldn’t. That wouldn’t look good in front of his partners. They’re not the sort who care enough for their women to go after them.
I have my purse with me but nothing else.
The nighttime wind is cold against my skin as I exit the restaurant, but I’m not cold, not with Zane’s hot gaze on me. Hot like extremely cold ice. And it’s waking my body, my very soul which hasn’t been awake in so long, I thought it was dead.
I just stand there, in the darkness on the sidewalk, waiting for him to appear. But the seconds and then minutes start ticking by and he doesn’t. I feel him watching me, feel him see me, but the darkness around me is absolute and he doesn’t materialize from it.
A hand grabs my arm roughly, squeezing like a vise. “What the fuck are you doing out here? Get back inside.”
Kurt is livid, rage rolling off him in waves. It’s hard to imagine he’s the same smiling, vivacious, entertaining guy he was inside the restaurant with his partners. Hard for them to imagine, maybe. But I know this is who he really is.
“I’m right where I’m supposed to be,” I tell him.
I could lie, tell him I needed some air, make some excuse. But I’m out here waiting for Zane, and I mean to stay out here until he comes for me.
Kurt drags me to the even deeper darkness beside the restaurant, a spot that none of the windows overlook. I know what comes next even before he bounces me off the rough wall.
“You’ll stop acting crazy and come back inside,” he hisses at me. “And you’ll make an effort to talk to the others, they’re starting to notice you’re acting weird.”
“And tell them what? That you’ll beat me up if I don’t?”
He gasps in surprise, but his face is full of rage. We don’t talk about the beatings, we never mention them, I never complain. It’s the way we’ve always done it.
“Let me put this another way,” he hisses in his coldest, most menacing voice. “If you want to live, you’ll do what I tell you to do.”
It happens so fast. One moment Kurt’s rage-filled face is barely an inch from my face, so close I can smell the wine and meat on his breath. And the next moment I hear a crunch as he bounces off the wall beside me, much harder than I bounced.
The energy of life is all around us, sparkling and swirling, as Zane looks at me. It’s like a tornado of fire and we’re in the eye of it.
“Who the fuck are you?” Kurt says, still looking dazed from the way his head hit the wall.
“I’m the guy who’s gonna show you what it’s like getting hit by someone bigger than you.”
“You don’t know who you’re messing with,” Kurt says, trying to sound tough, but he’s not actually coming at Zane. He wouldn’t dare, because deep down, he’s a chicken shit, woman-beating little coward.
“You don’t either,” I tell him. “This man has killed for me before. So you better back down.”
They both look at me. Kurt’s eyes are full of fear.
Zane’s are as hard and the wall we’re standing next to, as dark as the night around us.
But something soft flashed through them when I said what I said, something that reminded me so much of the way he used to look at me before I destroyed everything that my whole body went soft.
I take his arm and wrap my whole body around it. Because I don’t mean to let him go ever again.
“Please take me away with you, Zane,” I ask in a whisper. And there’s that softness in his hard as ice eyes again. Just for a moment. Until the black darkness returns, making me fear he’s going to say no.
“Let’s go,” he says, pulls his arm out my grasp, finds my hand and squeezes as he leads me away into the darkness.
“What the fuck?” Kurt says.
But we both ignore him and he doesn’t follow us.
The world is just the two of us now as we walk into the night. The way it always should’ve been.