Even as the last thought rolled over into another, I knew it wasn’t true. He’d told me what we’d done was a new experience for both of us.
He also told you that he’d stop keeping secrets. Yet you’re standing right in front of one.
“Are you going to be alright?” Erik pressed his hand to my forehead, and I wanted to sigh at the cool sensation. “You’re looking a little...green.”
“Will you...” I trailed off, pointing at the door.
Erik took slow steps closer, and I wondered if he was even half as apprehensive as me. If so, he didn’t show it. I wanted to know how he was managing, because with every step he took I wanted to reach out and haul him back. Dart into the elevator and go on our merry way like this never happened.
He lifted a hand.
Rapped his knuckles against the door.
Stepped back and waited, shoulder brushing mine.
Whatever’s on the other side, Ambrose is responsible.
The world briefly swam out of focus. Then, without a volcano exploding or the sky raining blood or a freak tornado whipping across the city, the door opened.
With a curious glance at both of us, the girl that appeared in the frame took my heart and threw it into a juicer.
Her honey-blonde hair was the first thing I noticed.
Her soft, “May I help you?” didn’t have an accent, so I ruled out mail-order bride.
What I could see of her body in her yoga pants and t-shirt was lean and strong, so unless her diet plan was absolutely killer, she wasn’t his baby mama.
Yet that might’ve been better than what I saw.
Her face...
One side was unblemished other than a few barely-there scars near her hairline. Going by those features and the warm, brown eyes, I was positive she had to be about our age. But it would’ve been impossible to tell going by the right-hand side of her face alone.
Scars crisscrossed over almost every inch, some of them puckered and angry like they hadn’t healed right. Two of the worst ones on her cheek bisected her lips, pulling them into a permanent grimace. A few extended to her neck where they stopped, but my attention returned to the old injuries I couldn’t help staring at while something else about her niggled at the back of my mind.
And when she turned her head slightly to look between us, I figured out what it was.
The iris of her right eye was slightly bigger than the other, and it didn’t follow the left eye in its path.
A prosthetic, my addled mind managed to supply. She lost it.
Because of Ambrose.
It felt like I’d been turned to stone for hours, but it had only been seconds since she opened the door. Just long enough for her brows to pull down at our lack of response. But I couldn’t say anything.
There wasn’t enough left in me to speak.
Everything that made me me was busy surging up my throat in a burning rush as reality closed in around me on all sides.
The guy I loved was responsible for this.
The guy I’d let hold me and touch me and kiss me had done irreparable damage to this girl, and I couldn’t even apologize to her because I was going to be sick.
No thinking happened from that point on.
I just ran.
I heard Erik say something, then I crashed through the fire exit and into the stairwell right before I fell to my knees and gagged as my empty stomach expunged itself on the steps.
Erik held my hair while I heaved until I couldn’t anymore. Until I couldn’t do more than curl in on myself and dig my nails into my arms like the pain would make the feeling of my heart ripping in two somehow easier.
It didn’t.
“Emily...” Erik tried.
I wiped my mouth and let him pull me stiffly against his side. Burying my head in his shoulder, I shuddered and jolted.
If I’d been able to find an off button for my body, I would’ve pressed it then.
But there wasn’t one.
So while my brother awkwardly switched between patting my back or hugging me close, I let myself do something I hadn’t done in years.
I fell apart.
And in the back of my mind was a voice that felt the need to stab me one last time.
Told you so.
37
Ambrose
I frowned at the timestamp on my last message to Emily and tucked my phone into my pocket. Emily and Erik had their brunch hours ago, but they’d both gone radio silent since then.
Had things taken a turn they didn’t expect?
Were they all hanging out like a big, happy family?
I doubted that last part greatly, and not just because I couldn’t get rid of the strange tightness in my chest. Being unable to reach her had annoyed me at first, but I was getting worried.
I couldn’t go to her yet. I had to take care of something that I should have the day Kaylee’s name got brought up. Besides, however shitty Erik’s attitude could be, I knew he wouldn’t let anything happen to her.
Fuck, at least he’d better not.
Otherwise, there wouldn’t be anywhere on this world he could hide from me.
Focus. I relaxed my fists, tossing a quick nod to the security guard as I went to the elevator.
Odds were, everything was fine, and she was back at the house baking up a storm to compensate for however much her parents had annoyed her today. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d turned her phone off to do that.
And seeing as how I didn’t do anxiety in the first place, it made more sense that the rare case of it I’d caught had more to do with Kaylee Vandyke than it did my girl.
My girl.
I flashed a smile at my reflection in the elevator as it headed to the top floor. Had I ever managed more than a grimace when it came to facing the greatest mistake of my life? I didn’t think so. This was yet another example of how much more level I was with Emily around.
A couple of months in and I barely recognized the guy who’d picked her up at the hospital that day, pissed at the world and everything in it.
I took a few deep breaths and let my breathing even out. My posture straightened. I fought the urge to check my phone and see if Emily had responded.
The sooner you get this out of the way, the sooner you can get back to her.
Of course, that would involve telling her everything, but it was beyond time.
I was tired of carrying this around day in and day out. Tired of telling my friends half-truths while they went to great lengths at my expense. Tired of seeing that shadow of doubt in Emily’s eyes.
To keep silence.
That was my role within the Tarots. The rest—the leadership, the show of force—was everyone else following the legacy my mom had built around the title of Death.
I wasn’t anymore fit to lead than Chrom, Baron, or Erik. And maybe once this was out there, we could work on returning things to how they were supposed to be.
I grudgingly added a conversation with Renata to my to-do list. We’d be at each other’s throats in a heartbeat during a prolonged talk, but if we were ever going to reclaim the balance that was supposed to exist, we needed our High Priestess.
She would be my counterbalance, and while I was sure there’d be times she’d disagree just because it was me, her input would inevitably be valuable as well.
Between her and Emily, the two of them were guaranteed to wrangle my ego and defiant nature into something slightly more manageable. A fun process? I doubted it. Worthwhile? Yeah, I thought so.
The elevator opened and I strolled out, stopping in front of a familiar door. It didn’t feel like it had been months since my last visit, but time flew when every moment of it wasn’t soaked in dread.
I exhaled a quick breath, wiped my palm on my jeans, and knocked.
“Coming,” Kaylee called from the other side.
I shifted on my feet. All too soon, the door opened.
She smiled at the sight of me, every part of her face joining in except for the side where her lip
s refused to stretch that high.
“Man, I’m popular today,” she said like she wasn’t looking at the reason she was up here, hidden away from the rest of the city with a mangled face. “Don’t just stand there like a lurker. Get your butt in here.”
I cleared my throat, shaking myself from the stupor that her raised scars always caused. “Yeah, yeah. My bad.”
Stepping into her space didn’t require looking around. I’d helped put most of it together by hand at one point or another. She hadn’t wanted me to spend so much time on the cat perch dominating one corner of the room, or the standing desk situated in another, but it was amazing how useful a few videos and a stubborn streak a mile wide could be.
“Have a seat,” she said, breezing past me. Two orange balls of fur—Sebby and Whisper—appeared from nowhere and wound around her legs, but she moved with them without falling. “Can I get you something to drink? Wait, don’t tell me. Water.”
Another slight smile made my cheek twitch.
Thank you, Emily Brennan.
I took a seat on the couch, leaning forward on my elbows. “What’s wrong with water?”
“Water’s boring. That’s what’s wrong with it.”
She reached in the fridge and pulled out a pitcher. Being solo for so long meant she spent longer than any one person should online. After finding out how much waste got dropped in the ocean, she’d sworn off most disposable plastics.
So instead of returning to sit in the chair across from me with bottled water like a normal person, she put a glass of pre-filtered water in front of me instead.
To be fair, it was delicious. I knew it would be before I took a sip because it always was. But I also didn’t know how—or if it was even my place—to tell her that for every piece of plastic she avoided, someone who didn’t give a damn was leaving behind a footprint twice the size of hers.
Kaylee reached down and played with Sebby...
Or maybe it was Whisper.
She claimed they had different patterns in their fur to tell them apart, but I could never tell if she was just fucking with me or not.
“So,” she said once one of the fluffballs had hopped in her lap and started purring, “what brings you by? I don’t get too many surprise visits from you.”
There wasn’t a trace of malice in her voice. Her smile stayed in place. The good mood she was always in lingered, and I wondered how.
I wondered the same fucking thing every time I’d seen her since our lives went sideways.
What she’d endured wasn’t for the faint of heart. Unimaginable pain. Lifelong scars. The loss of an eye. And the cherry on top? She’d gone from princess in the making to being shunned and stashed away like a leper.
Kaylee had an origin story fit for a villain, yet I’d never seen her hurt a fly.
How?
How was she so good?
How could she stand the sight of me?
I’d wanted to know for years. But for the first time, I felt brave enough to ask.
My fingers flexed around the glass. “How do you do that?”
“Do what, Amby?”
God, that stupid nickname from when we were young enough she couldn’t pronounce my name.
“That.” I waved my hand in her general direction.
She giggled, the sound light and carefree. “You’re going to have to give me more than that. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Groaning, I put the glass down before I was tempted to throw it at something. “How are you so goddamn perky? You’re like a cheerleader but with an actual brain.”
Kaylee scratched the cat—I’d given up attempting to figure out which one—behind the ears and lifted a brow. “Why wouldn’t I be? Did life suck big time for a while? Yes. Does life still suck sometimes? Also yes. But you know what, I got lucky.”
“Lucky,” I said, barely keeping my jaw from hitting the floor. “You call this”—I gestured at the same walls she’d seen day in and day out—”lucky?”
“I have a roof over my head, a gym that never closes, a fancy bachelorette pad with killer internet speeds, and a best friend who quite literally takes care of all my living expenses. Expenses that I manage to rack up because I’m alive.” She stressed that last bit with a pointed look. “That wasn’t always a foregone conclusion and you know it. I wouldn’t be here right now if not for you.”
Her gaze was too bright, too earnest. I felt burned within the spotlight of it, unworthy of the appreciation looking out at me. I looked down, unable to bear it.
“You wouldn’t have been in any danger if not for me,” I whispered.
Kaylee said nothing for a moment. When I glanced up at her, there was a distinctive pinch to her features that hadn’t been there. In fact, I couldn’t recall seeing it any time before. Maybe back when I’d first started putting together her furniture, but she’d figured out soon enough that her scowls wouldn’t be enough to stop me. Instead, she’d somehow talked the delivery people into doing it for her from then on.
Which I was fairly certain broke a few of their rules if something like that wasn’t approved beforehand. But there hadn’t been a person alive that could say no Kaylee before the incident. That was one thing that hadn’t changed as the years went on.
“Finally,” she said, standing up.
Finally what?
I didn’t move as she sat down beside me. My focus stayed on the fur bundle that found my leg, and I absently reached down to play with a curly tail while doing my best to ignore how close she was. I didn’t react to her proximity like I did Emily—no one but her would ever make my heart pound and the rest of the universe cease to exist. But the awareness was there all the same, grinding me to pulp beneath my guilt.
Kaylee reached out for me and seemed to think better of it. Her hand didn’t return to her lap like I expected. She put a hand on my knee and said, “You’re finally going to talk about it?”
I still couldn’t look at her. “There’s never been anything to talk about. I ruined your life and I’ll never stop trying to make up for it. That’s it. End of discussion.”
“What about—”
“What part of end of discussion did you not understand?”
She squeezed my knee. “Still so prickly, some things never change. Here I was, worried that you might mess around and change after finding a girl that can actually put up with you. I should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy.”
That got my attention.
My head lifted.
I narrowed my eyes. “You know about that?”
“Amby, baby.” Her eyes glittered with amusement. “I might be a social pariah, but this isn’t the eighteen-hundreds. I don’t need a carrier pigeon to find out what’s happening around town these days. Social media is always a few clicks away.” She fished in the side of her yoga pants for her phone and showed it to me. “If you think all of Black Rose hasn’t been gossiping about one of the almighty Tarots getting himself a girl, you’re the one that’s living under a rock.”
“I can explain.”
There went that furrow between her brows again.
“Explain what? I’m happy for you, ya big idiot. My only complaint is why you two don’t take any pictures together?” Kaylee scooted closer, wiggling her fingers. “It’s like you’re allergic to selfies or something, but you’ve got to have at least one picture together on your phone. Let me see. By the way, that’s not a request.”
Fighting another grin, I grabbed my phone and unlocked it so I could scroll through. It didn’t take long since I’d never cared much about pictures.
Stopping on one that made my smile break free—Emily and I were sitting on a bench at the mountain peak, her tucked into my side while I gazed down at her—I passed the phone off.
Kaylee’s hyperactive bounce as she snatched the phone was contagious. I forgot about the debt. The mistakes. The penance I’d always be paying for.
During that slice of time, I was just any other guy sharing good news with some
one important to them.
And that good cheer lasted all the way until her smile started to slide from her features.
“This is her?” she asked, pinching the screen to zoom in.
“Who else would it be? Do I look like a serial cuddler to you?”
Not even my shitty attempt at a joke brought her smile back. Seeing as how the last time her lips had thinned to the point they were now had been when she needed to get her prosthetic eye refitted, it was fair to say that the tension I’d barely escaped had returned with a vengeance.
A pit formed in my stomach and my heart eyed the pointy sticks at the bottom. “What is it?”
“I know this girl,” Kaylee said softly. “Well, I don’t know her know her, but she was here earlier, along with your pothead friend you’ve told me about. The Fool.”
The blood in my veins turned to ice first and cracked wide open. A thousand jagged needles pierced my insides before twisting at every angle. Fear like nothing I’d ever known crawled into my throat with bony fingers, lodging itself there like a cancerous lump.
“This girl was here?” I pointed to the screen because I had to be sure.
This was a mistake.
She was confused because she didn’t get out much.
Right?
Kaylee nodded slowly and I lunged to my feet with a loud curse that sent the cats running.
I turned on her, heart beating like a drum. “No one is supposed to know you’re here! Why the fuck didn’t you mention this earlier?”
Unaffected by my rage, she stayed exactly where she was, watching me carefully.
“This is an apartment complex.” Her tone said she was speaking to a child, and I hated to admit she wasn’t wrong right then. “Sometimes people knock on the wrong door. It happens at least a few times a month. They didn’t even stick around longer than a minute.”
I’m fucked. Boned. Dead as a doornail. Utterly and irrevocably doomed.
Is there a plane nearby that I can jump out of? Preferably without a parachute? The landing will be easier to survive than this shitstorm of epic proportions.
Who the fuck knows when I started to pace up and down her living room, nostrils flaring as I breathed fire with each exhale.
Defiant Prince: An Enemies-to-Lovers Romance (Black Rose University Book 1) Page 35
