Abilene squealed and threw her arms around my neck, strangling me into a hug. “A party with Maxen Colchester!”
I had just told her about Merlin’s party tonight and how Grandpa wanted us both to go. Her dark blue eyes had simmered with excitement, had taken all of three seconds to boil over, and then she was shrieking and hugging me, jumping up and down as she did.
“Oh my God, just you wait and see how fantastic this going to be!” she exclaimed. “This is so perfect, it’s too perfect. Maxen Colchester. I’ve been dying to meet him for so long.” And then she added, as if realizing that I was still there with her, “And maybe he’ll bring his cute friend, the one they have on the news all the time.”
“Embry Moore,” I supplied, the sudden rush of adrenaline making my head spin. I felt outside of myself, like I was floating, like I was drifting backwards in time, back to Ash and our kiss four years ago. Back to the courtyard this afternoon, his hand in my hair and his eyes on my throat, like a hungry vampire. God, I couldn’t stop seeing his face in that moment, couldn’t stop feeling his body pressed against mine.
“Right,” Abilene said, letting go of me and clapping her hands together, “Embry Moore. And then you can meet Embry and I’ll meet Maxen, and everybody will fall in love and live happily ever after.” She said it with a laugh that could have been self-deprecating, as if she understood how ridiculous the whole idea was, but all the same, her eyes shone with the kind of dangerous Abilene energy that meant she was about to get her way. I’d seen that energy before every lacrosse game, before every meeting with the headmaster, every night before she’d swung her leg out of the dorm room window to sneak out.
And for the first time in four years, my little lie of omission suddenly seemed a lot less little.
I almost opened my mouth to tell her—well, I don’t know what exactly I planned on saying—but she interrupted me by shoving my purse into my hands.
“We’re going shopping,” she declared. “And we aren’t stopping until we find the perfect outfit.”
And as usual, I let myself get swept up in her plans. Who knew what the night might bring? Ash might change his mind about going, or he might change his mind about talking to me at all. Dread soured my stomach, even as a part of me realized it might be for the best. It would hurt awfully, but it wouldn’t hurt as much as losing Abilene’s friendship.
Would it?
Merlin’s party was on the rooftop of an upscale hotel overlooking the Chicago River, and by the time Abilene and I arrived, it was well underway. While Grandpa went early because he planned on leaving early to catch a late meeting, Abilene had insisted we get there an hour after the party’s start time, so that we didn’t look desperate or worse—get forced into making small talk with inconsequential people. I rolled my eyes at that, but I didn’t argue. I was still twisted up in knots about going—about Ash—and it didn’t take much to convince me to hide in my room for another hour.
But when we got there, I had to agree that Abilene had made the right decision. It was so much easier to step off the elevator and melt into a crowd of boozy chatter than it was to stand around awkwardly and stare at the newcomers walking in. I offered to get Abilene and I each a drink and slipped away from her, tugging self-consciously at the short hem of the raspberry mini-dress Abilene had somehow talked me into buying.
“Miss Galloway,” came a voice from behind me.
Startled, I turned to see Merlin himself standing behind me in line, elegant as always in a three-piece suit. Even the strong breeze ruffling his black hair looked refined. But all that elegance couldn’t hide the dislike that glittered in his onyx eyes or the displeasure pulling at the corners of his thin mouth.
“Mr. Rhys,” I said politely, making to turn back around, my chest thudding with nervousness.
He caught my arm before I could turn away and steered me away from the line, towards the far corner of the patio. “I know you are here because of your grandfather,” he said once no one could hear us, “and because of the love I bear him, I won’t ask you to leave. But you should.”
“You want me to leave?” I asked, stunned. Of all the things to worry about tonight, that had never occurred to me. That I actually wouldn’t be welcome.
“Of course.”
“Of course?” I repeated. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand. Did I do something wrong? Do you…hate me…or something?”
“Hate is a word used by the young,” he said, looking at me with an exasperated, chastising look. “I have no reason to hate you. Surely it must occur to you that I don’t act or speak without a good reason to do so.”
“And there’s a good reason why you don’t want me here tonight?”
At that, Merlin’s face softened, and when I did, I saw that underneath his sharp, predatory gaze, he was a handsome man. Handsome and tired, like Ash had been when I met him. “There is a good reason. And it’s that I don’t want to see you or someone else I care about hurt. But I suppose it might be too late for that.” He sighed and stretched his neck. “Do you remember that night in London, when you kissed Maxen?”
Heat rose to my cheeks. “Yes. Not that it’s any of your business.”
Another sigh. “It is my business. I don’t like that it is, but I can’t help a lot of things I don’t like. You see, I care a lot about Maxen. I believe someday very soon, he’s going to be more than a hero. I think he’s going to be a leader. But a leader is only as powerful as the people around him, and it matters which people he surrounds himself with.”
I bristled at that. “I’m not a bad person, Mr. Rhys. And I’m not a weak or stupid person either.”
“Oh, no,” Merlin said, shaking his head, “you misunderstand me. You are absolutely none of those things. You are too much of the opposite.”
I had no idea whether that was a compliment or a warning, but I did know that I wasn’t willing to let go of Ash, not for Merlin. “I’m not convinced.”
Merlin gave me a sad smile. “The thing is, Miss Galloway, you don’t need to be convinced. It’s over now, for better or for worse.” And then he took my shoulders and turned me to face the other guests, and the noise of the party faded until there was only the sound of my sharp, staccato breath and the wind blowing off the lake.
Ash. Ash was here.
My chest expanded.
And then Ash turned and I saw that his arm was wrapped around a pretty brunette. She smiled up at him, and he leaned down and kissed her nose, and they both laughed. The sun glinted off a dazzling ring on her left hand.
Ash was here with another woman. The same Ash who’d almost kissed me this afternoon, who’d pressed his hard-on against me, who’d smelled and kissed my hair as if it were the only thing he wanted to smell and kiss ever again. A flash of rage—hot and bright—and then I remembered the way he’d stepped away from me in the courtyard, the unsteady, troubled way he’d said that was wrong, I’m so sorry. How miserable he’d looked when he said that we needed to talk tonight.
Of course. It all made sense now—the aborted kiss, the misery, the talk.
My chest contracted, and somewhere inside myself, a valiant, flickering little hope was snuffed out, leaving only smoke and the faint whiff of what could have been.
“He asked her to marry him yesterday,” Merlin said, his polished voice cutting through the wind. “So you see how things are.”
It felt like I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think.
But yes, I could see how things were. I certainly could do that.
“This is what I would have protected you from,” he continued quietly. “Discovering this so, ah, publicly.”
I made myself turn away from the happy couple, feeling disoriented, feeling weak. “Of course he would have met someone else,” I mumbled, mostly to myself. “It makes sense. He’s not a priest. Why wouldn’t he be with someone?”
But I had honestly never thought of Ash with another woman, it had never occurred to me to imagine such a thing, and the reality of it felt almost cruel in its obviousness. He was handsome and famous and kind and delightful, and why wouldn’t he fall in love with a beautiful woman? Why hadn’t I thought of this?
Whatever my reasons had been, I felt terribly and horribly ashamed. Ashamed of falling in love with a man I didn’t know, ashamed of hoping he’d remember something that happened in another country four years ago, ashamed of being young and clueless and helpless and so utterly stupid.
“I should go,” I said suddenly, feeling a familiar ache at my throat. “I need to go.”
Merlin didn’t say anything to convince me otherwise, he merely nodded. “You’re a good person, Greer. And you deserve happiness. I only ask that you keep your kisses to yourself a while longer. And someday, there will be a happily ever after for you too.”
I didn’t want to keep my kisses to myself, though, and I certainly didn’t want a thin promise of someday. I wanted Ash, and this afternoon in the courtyard had sealed my fate. I was doomed to want him and not have him, and like the Lady of Shalott, I’d be weaving pictures of my pain and devotion for years to come.
“Goodbye,” I muttered, swallowing past the knot in my throat and turning away. Merlin stayed in the corner, his gaze like iron chains weighing me down as I tried to flee, linking me to him and his awful words. I had this miserable portent that I would be dragging these chains for years. My curse, my punishment for a crime I couldn’t have stopped myself from committing, even now.
A curse for a kiss. That’s how wizards worked, wasn’t it?
There would be tears, I knew, and soon. I kept my head down as I walked, trying to hurry without actually seeing what was in front of me, navigating around tipsy businessman and lobbyists and state senators, trying not to run into the low sofas and glass tables, remembering vaguely that the elevator had been in the center of the patio.
And of course, since I wasn’t watching where I was going, since my mind was so busy with Merlin’s words and my heart was too preoccupied with its mortal wound, I tripped over a step I hadn’t seen and stumbled right into Ash’s hard body.
I hadn’t known he was there, had been trying to avoid coming anywhere near him, in fact, but the moment I put my hands against his solid chest, the moment he grabbed my elbows to catch me, I knew it was him. That body and those hands…the memory of them had been etched into my brain forever. More than etched—branded.
My cheeks flamed red with humiliation, my pulse spiking and my chest caving in from the weight of this embarrassing moment. Being held by the only man I ever wanted to hold me…and at the same moment that fantasy had to be euthanized. At the same moment I realized he was going to be married to another woman.
Get away get away get away, my mind screamed in a rabbit-shriek of panic, but my body keened for his touch, begging me to press closer to him, melt into this moment forever.
I found a breath but I couldn’t find my voice. He’d stolen it.
“Greer,” he exhaled. His pupils had shrunk and then dilated into wide black pools, as if he’d stepped through an invisible doorway into some sort of darkness no one else could see. He flicked his tongue across his lower lip, as if unconsciously remembering our kiss, remembering this afternoon, and I let out a tiny helpless noise that only he could hear. His grip tightened on my elbows.
I could feel Merlin watching me, his elegant hands inside his elegant pockets, waiting to see what I would do. Waiting to see if I still carried his chains and his warnings in my heart.
“I’m so sorry,” I mumbled to Ash’s chest, ducking my head down. “Excuse me.”
I tried to take a step back, but his hands stayed firm on my arms, his eyes searing into the top of my head. He wasn’t letting me go, and I didn’t want him to let me go, but I couldn’t do whatever this was. I couldn’t do the fake acquaintance, catching-up small talk thing. I couldn’t do the pretending and the smiling and the polite questions when I knew that he’d be going home with his someday wife tonight.
I jerked myself out of his hold, stepping back and twisting away, and I ended up twisting right into Ash’s fiancée, who seemed to be returning from the bar, a martini in each hand. We collided and cold gin splashed onto the front of my dress, soaking the raspberry fabric and turning it into a deep maroon.
“Oh my God, I’m such a klutz!” she exclaimed as I blinked, unable to process this new development as fast as I needed to. “I’m so sorry, oh my God, here, here,” and she set the glasses on the ground and started trying to mop at my dress with her own, fussing over me with that big sister behavior that all women nearing thirty have towards younger women.
I know now that her name was Jenny—Jennifer Gonzalez, soon to be Jennifer Gonzalez-Colchester, a family law lawyer and amateur sharpshooter—but in that moment, I only knew what I saw. I saw that she was lovely, with large brown eyes and skin the color of rich amber. I saw that she was kind, with the way she apologized and worriedly sponged at my bodice with the hem of her own fluttering dress. I saw that she was happy, and it was Ash that made her so.
I saw that you can be hurt—mortally wounded, in fact—and it doesn’t have to be anyone’s fault. Sometimes the world is just cruel that way, and it wasn’t fair to grudge them their happiness even as it tore down my own.
Tears burned hot at the back of my eyelids, and I pushed Jenny’s hands away. “Thank you, I’m fine,” I said thickly. “I have to go, though. Excuse me.”
And I pushed past her to get to the elevator. My only thought was of escape, my only feeling was the desperate, clawing need to be alone, and so I ignored her concerned voice, the hesitant murmurs of the people around us.
But I could not ignore Ash’s voice. I was almost to the elevator, almost to freedom, when I heard him call my name. “Greer?”
I didn’t want to look back and yet it was the only thing in the world I wanted. My head swiveled of its own accord, and I glanced at him over my shoulder. He was looking back towards Merlin in the far corner, and as he turned back to face me, confusion and a dawning realization were written all over his face. He took a step toward me, his eyes begging me to stop, but I couldn’t. Not even for him would I draw out this public gutting.
I turned around and stabbed at the elevator button several times in quick succession. Luckily, it opened for me right away, and I stepped inside. I refused to look up, kept my eyes only on the door-close button, and jammed it in so hard that the knuckle on my thumb turned white. Out of my periphery, I could see him say something to Jenny and then walk toward me, and panic flared in my chest.
By the grace of God, the elevator doors slid shut then, leaving me all by myself. With a gentle lurch, the elevator started going down, and I slumped against the mirrored wall and finally allowed myself to cry.
When the elevator doors opened to the hotel lobby, I was still crying. In fact, my tears had escalated into very loud, very embarrassing sobs, the kind that leave you sucking for air, the kind that contort your face into something ugly and wrung out. And my phone was buzzing insistently in my coat pocket, and I was fumbling for it as I exited the elevator, trying to hold in my sobs and failing, trying not to make eye contact with any of the hotel guests in the lobby, and then I pulled out my phone and saw texts from Abilene on the screen, coming in almost too fast to read.
Abilene: r u okay?
Abilene: did you just leave the party
Abilene: like, it looked like you were running for the door
Abilene: maxen *is* here but fuck he’s with some girl
Abilene: some lawyer
Abilene: r u coming back up? come back up so we can figure out what do about this lawyer girl with max
Goddammit, Abilene. I tried to wipe at my eyes so I could see the phone’s screen to type an answer, but there were too many tears, and then I was jostling against a stream of people walking into the lobby, and for the third time tonight, I walked right into another person.
“Fuck,” I swore, already swerving to push past him and reach the door.
“My favorite word,” said a smoothly pleasant voice, and that voice was hypnotic in its charm. Almost against my will, I looked up into the face of one of the handsomest men I’d ever seen. Maybe the handsomest on purely looks alone, since so much of Ash’s attractiveness came from who he was as a person. But this man, with his ice-blue eyes and cheekbones even God would be jealous of, he’d be stunning no matter what kind of person he was.
I was halfway to smiling at him through my tears when I realized I’d seen those blue eyes and those cheekbones before, and my smile froze in place.
He was Embry Moore, and he was Ash’s best friend. And that association was enough to jump-start my body again, if not my mind, because the last thing I could handle was a protracted interaction with someone close to Ash.
“Pardon,” I mumbled, the tears coming out thick and hot and garbling the word. I moved around him and reached the wide revolving door that led to the sidewalk outside, and then I was free to the warm evening air and the impatient honks of taxis and the sound of sirens somewhere in the distance.
I took a deep breath, trying to stave off the tears for long enough that I could come up with a cogent plan. There was Abilene to think about, of course, and also questions from my grandfather I wanted to avoid, which he would certainly ask if he came home from his meeting and found me home early, crying into a pillow.
I could fake sleep, though. And there was no way I could stay here.
I would just have to tell Abilene I was going home, and then I would hide until I could find a way to lie about what happened tonight, or at least hide it. But when I reached for my phone, I couldn’t find it anywhere—not in either of my pockets or the inner pocket of my jacket—and that’s when I heard the footsteps.
I turned around to see Embry Moore walking to me, my phone held in his outstretched hand. Like Ash, he wore a fitted button-down shirt, but unlike Ash, he’d layered a gray vest and gray blazer on top—both the shirt and jacket sleeves rolled up to the elbow. With the cuffed sky-blue pants and loafers, he looked like a playboy let loose from his yacht, and even in my current emotional state, I couldn’t help but appreciate his graceful and lanky male form as he strode confidently toward me.
“You dropped this,” he said in that sophisticated purr, a purr that belied money and education and privilege.
“Thanks,” I muttered, taking the phone with one hand as I tried to wipe my face with the other.
“Are you okay?” he asked, ducking his head a little so he could look into my downturned face.
“I’m fine,” I snapped, turning and starting to walk again. It was unbelievably rude to leave him like that, I knew, but I couldn’t help it. It was just a testament to how fucked up tonight had become.
After a few steps, my tears finally started to slow. I had a plan—I had my phone back—and if I could just make it back to Grandpa’s hotel, I could cry until my pain dried up and my body went limp. I just had to make it there was all, and that started with getting a cab.
I swung towards the road, and to my utter shock, Embry Moore was right behind me, his hands jammed into the pockets of his ridiculously blue pants. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked, concerned. “I feel constitutionally unable to leave you alone like this.”
“I’m fine,” I said through gritted teeth. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
“But what is anyone’s business, really?” Embry mused philosophically. “That’s the first question man ever asked God, you know. ‘Am I my brother’s keeper’?”
I snorted, the derision somewhat undercut by the tears and snot that accompanied it. “It was a rhetorical question asked by a murderer to stall a missing persons investigation. I wouldn’t start with Cain as your entry point into the fundamentals of humanity.”
“John Steinbeck did. Are you saying Of Mice and Men is a bad book?”
“I’m saying that the parallels to be drawn from the world’s first murder to migrant farm brotherhood to us standing on a Chicago curb right now are nonexistent.” But despite myself, I found my lips tugging up into a smile.
“Well, now you’re just being deliberately uncreative,” he pouted. It was an unfairly sexy look on him.
“Also, Steinbeck once ended a book with an adult breastfeeding scene,” I pointed out, needing to say something before I started staring at his perfect, full mouth.
“To illustrate the human condition!” he exclaimed with mock frustration. “Who hasn’t breastfed a little bit to understand the dehumanizing depths of poverty and displacement?”
“Me. I haven’t done that.”
“Well, me either, but maybe if I buy you a couple drinks tonight we could change that for each other.” He waggled his eyebrows, and the whole thing was so ridiculous that I giggled.
“I’m not letting you breastfeed from me,” I said, wondering how this conversation got so strange and funny, and also wondering when I’d stopped crying, because I realized I had.
“Get your mind out of the gutter,” he said with a pitying shake of his head. “I obviously meant that you would breastfeed from me.”
I giggled again. “I didn’t peg you for the kinky type.”
“You aren’t pegging me at all. That’s our current problem.”
And it was a joke, and he said it with that crooked dimpled grin, but suddenly my mind was filled with the image of Embry underneath me, moaning and panting, and heat filled my cheeks.
He was still talking. “Can I tell you about my actual kink?”
I nodded a little uncertainly, realizing that I’d stepped away from the curb and was facing him completely now.
“Well, the kink that really gets me off is taking gorgeous strangers to get hot dogs on Navy Pier. Sometimes if I’m really kinky, we ride the Ferris wheel too.”
Was he saying that he wanted to do those things with me? “I imagine the porn for that particular kink is woefully lacking.”
“It is. I only get my fix in real life.” He stepped closer to me and offered his arm, and even through the shirt and blazer, I could see the firm swells of muscle. “What do you say? You, me, hot dogs and more Steinbeck-bashing?”
Yes.
It was incredible that as much as I wanted to hide away, as much as I wanted to cry and wail and gnash my teeth, as much as Ash filled every breath and thought with his face, I wanted to say yes. Embry was so funny and smart and effortlessly charming, and I felt better just for these last five minutes with him. Not to mention how flattering it was after everything that someone as famous and interesting as Embry wanted to spend time with me.
Also, he was so fucking hot.
But— “Don’t you have a birthday party to be at?”
His eyebrows pulled together, puzzlement sliding into understanding. “Ah. I’m guessing if you know who I am and what party I should be at, you came from there yourself?”
I looked back toward the street, not wanting to talk about it. “Yes.”
“Ah.” And then he thankfully, thankfully left it at that. “So what do you say? I mean, if you can play hooky from the party, so can I.”
“I don’t know…” I kept my eyes on the road because I knew if I looked at him, it would be all over. “I had planned on going back to my hotel. Calling it an early night.”
“What a waste that would be,” he said softly, taking a step toward me.
I allowed myself to glance at his feet, the cuffed pants showing the barest glimpse of dark brown hair just above his ankles. I wondered what that dark hair looked like on his calves and thighs, if it looked dusted on or if it grew thick and manly. If it matched the hair stretching from his navel to his cock. I wondered what it would feel like under my fingertips or rubbing against my own legs.
“You don’t even know my name,” I stalled.
“I know that you’re beautiful. I know that you know your twentieth-century American lit. I know that you’ve been crying and I would do anything to see you smile instead. I’d say that’s enough for a hot dog and a Ferris wheel ride, wouldn’t you?”
My resistance, already crumbling, caved completely, a pile of hesitation and good intentions now resting at my feet. I looked up into those glacially blue eyes and knew that something was about to change. Maybe it had already started to change.
“My name is Greer,” I said.
“Sweet Greer.” My name sounded so heavenly on his lips. I wished he would say it over and over again. “Let me take you out for bad food and neon lights. I don’t know what happened to make you leave Merlin’s party in tears, but I don’t want it to have the final say in tonight. I think we should have the final say, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I whispered, and I slid my hand onto Embry’s arm.
He grinned down at me, and the world was never the same.
