Ache for You (Slow Burn Book 3)

by J. T. Geissinger

  I look around for a restroom sign, but can’t see anything due to the press of bodies and the low lights. People are taking their seats and I should, too, but if I don’t find a ladies’ room, I’ll have to sit through the entire show squeezing my thighs together and praying my Kegel muscles are strong enough to avoid having to make an embarrassing emergency exit.

  I head back to the guard at the door and ask directions to the nearest bathroom. He points down the hallway. I take off, holding my skirts aloft as I trot as fast as I can in my high heels.

  When I come to the end of the corridor, it splits left and right. There’s no sign for a restroom, no lighted placard or helpful attendant, only more yawning hallways echoing with the sounds of the show I’m about to miss.

  Did I pass it? Maybe I ran right by the door! Panicking, I decide to head right.

  I keep going, passing room after room with closed doors blocked by stanchions with velvet ropes, obviously not restrooms. Just as I’m about to give up and turn around, I spy a set of double doors open at the end of the hallway, spilling out light.

  When I run through them, I’m greeted by a wall of portable hanging curtains that set designers and interior decorators use to block off large areas of unsightly space. This particular curtain is crimson, so I know I’m in the right place.

  It’s weird that the curtains are closed, but whatever. I have to pee.

  I part the curtains where I find a break and walk into chaos.

  An entire small city has been set up in a space the size of a hotel ballroom. Row after row of gowns hanging from portable racks line the walls. Directors’ chairs opposite lighted vanity tables are filled with models in short red robes being prepped for makeup and hair. Designers scurry around a long line of models waiting near a curtained door on the opposite side of the room, fussing over last-minute adjustments. Rock music plays, photographers snap photos, girls take selfies, and assistants shout over one another for pins or scissors or shoes.

  I’m backstage.

  As if he’s a homing beacon, Matteo draws my gaze like a magnet. He stands at the head of the row of models about to go out onto the catwalk through the curtained door, inspecting each gown, accessory, and lock of hair to ensure it’s perfect.

  My heart throbs to life. I’m seized by the urge to run to him, throw my arms around his shoulders, bury my nose in his neck, and breathe in his delicious scent. I want to touch him so badly, to feel his strong arms pull me close, it’s like wildfire in my blood.

  Then he moves, the girl at the front of the line of models comes into view, and the fire turns to ice.

  The model wears a one-shouldered gown of vermillion silk. The skirt is voluminous. The bodice glitters with sequins. The cut, style, and design are exquisite, and as familiar to me as my own face.

  Because the dress is mine.

  I recoil as if I’ve been punched and suck in a hard breath, clapping a hand over my mouth. I stare in wide-eyed horror at the girl, my mind blank, a trapped scream trying to claw its way out of my throat.

  He said he wouldn’t. He promised. No, no, this can’t be happening, this is some kind of mistake . . .

  My gaze skips to another model, then another, and I realize with a cold sickness that it isn’t a mistake.

  Every one of the designs from my sketch pad is on a model about to walk through the door. He used them all.

  Shaking, I take a step back. My legs feel like lead. My head swims. Memories fly at me hard and fast, all the things Matteo said to me. All the beautiful lies.

  An animal moan of agony passes my lips.

  How did I allow myself to get here, humiliated and used, duped by my feelings, again? I swore I wouldn’t, I vowed I’d never again be such a blind fool, yet here I am, standing in a gown I made by hand for the occasion, watching a man I adore burn my soul to the ground.

  I stumble back, colliding with the wall, gasping for breath because I can’t get air, I can’t breathe, and if I don’t get out of this room this second, I’m going to die.

  I spin on my heel and run from the room.

  I run wildly down the echoing corridors of the palace, blind to its opulence, pain like poison eating through my veins.

  How could he? How could he? How could he?

  There’s an explanation. He loves you. You know he loves you. Give him a chance to explain.

  Are you nuts? Explain what, that he planned this all along? That he couldn’t convince you to sell him Papa’s business, so he made you fall in love with him instead? That he’s the most coldhearted bastard who ever lived?

  Just give him a chance!

  At the head of the sweeping staircase, I jolt to a stop. I’m breathing hard, shaking badly, and almost certain the contents of my stomach are about to make a large unsightly stain on the red carpet, but I fight the urge to fly down the stairs for a moment, long enough to hear the voice in my head urging me to stop. Urging me to take my seat in the front row and let it play out. To let all the dominoes he stacked up fall.

  There has to be a reason he invited me here tonight. In my heart of hearts, I don’t believe he’d be so cruel as to give me a front-row seat to his betrayal.

  Whatever his reason for doing this, I want to hear it.

  I won’t run away. I won’t punch him in the nose and break all the china in the house. Though there’s nothing more I’d like to do than avoid the truth, the reality is that I’m in love with him in a way I never was with Brad.

  I’m in love with him. Even if he’s made a fool of me. Even if he’s lied to me. Even if anything.

  I’m in love with him. Come what may.

  A terrible decision, really.

  You can do this. Go inside and take your seat. Watch the show. Afterward, talk to him. Like an adult. Have it out. Find out the truth. Deal with whatever it is.

  “Okay,” I whisper, steeling my nerves. “Okay.”

  I turn around, determined to march back into the show and take my seat, but as soon as I take a step forward, the sheer floating panel attached to the back of my waist gets caught on one of my heels. I stumble, teeter, and flail my arms to regain my balance, but suddenly the world has tilted sideways and gravity is doing its thing and I’m falling backward down the staircase.

  My head hits a step.

  I see stars.

  The last thing I remember thinking before tumbling all the way down the elegant staircase of the Royal Palace of Milan is that even Cinderella didn’t have to put up with this much shit.

  THIRTY-NINE

  MATTEO

  Where is she?

  For the hundredth time, I peek through the curtains. I see the audience in their seats, I see the photographers lurking in the wings, but I don’t see Kimber.

  Finally I have to admit defeat.

  She isn’t coming.

  Maybe she’s gone back to her ex-fiancé. Maybe she’s realized what she feels for me is more annoyance than attachment. Maybe my insistence on giving her space to decide I wasn’t a rebound was a colossal mistake.

  Whatever it is, she isn’t here.

  The last two weeks I’ve spent in agony without her are nothing compared to this moment.

  “Matteo! We have to start! What are you waiting for!”

  Antonio is beside me, hopping up and down in anxiety. He’s already sweat through his shirt. If I don’t give the signal to begin, a heart attack could be next.

  All the models are staring at me, waiting. The audience is beginning to get restless. I can’t put this off any longer.

  I jerk my chin at Alexa, the model in the red dress at the head of the line. She takes her cue and glides out onto the catwalk. The model behind her steps up. After a count of ten, I jerk my chin at her, too.

  Then I let Antonio take over. I need to go sit somewhere quiet and nurse my aching heart.

  I was so excited to see the look on Kimber’s face when she saw all her designs on my models making their way down the catwalk. Her dress shop in the States might have been obscure, but with
her name featured as the star designer of the House of Moretti’s new collection, she’ll be famous overnight.

  She deserves to be. Her work is some of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.

  I want her to have everything her father never had. All the money, all the acclaim, all the options that come with success. Her father was a brilliant designer as well, but he toiled in anonymity his entire career. By featuring Kimber’s designs in the show, I can honor the DiSanto name and her father’s legacy, kick-start her career, and get her headlines that will outshine those from her disastrous wedding, all in one fell swoop.

  Even if she’s decided she’d rather go back to that idiot of an ex-fiancé than be with me, I can still give her something he’ll never be able to.

  I can give her the world.

  Soon enough, the show is over and I’m out on the stage, bowing and waving to thundering applause from an audience that doesn’t include the only person whose opinion matters.

  I’ve never felt so wretched in my life.

  FORTY

  KIMBER

  The relentless beeping is what finally wakes me.

  That, and the extraordinary amount of pain I’m in.

  I blink open my eyes and fight to focus my vision until a clock swims into sight. It hangs on a wall painted sickly yellow opposite me. The clock ticks cheerfully with noises that ricochet inside my head like gunfire.

  Where am I?

  I turn my head and am rewarded for the movement by a white-hot spike of pain so intense it makes my vision shimmer. I hear a bellow, and assume either someone has let an elephant loose in the room or that trumpeting sound came from me.

  I suspect my little tumble down the palace staircase has not ended well.

  “Poppins! You’re awake!”

  Into my field of vision looms Jenner, looking uncharacteristically disheveled. His hair is mussed, his eyes are red, and his clothing is wrinkled, as if he’s coming off a long weekend of heavy drinking and sleeping in his car.

  I try, and fail, to ask what’s happening. Alarmed by my feeble bleating, Jenner says, “Oh God. Nurse! Nurse! She’s awake! She’s making strange noises!”

  He disappears from view, but returns rather quickly, accompanied by a stern-looking male nurse who shines a bright light directly into my eyes.

  “Mrpf!” I protest, scowling.

  “How are you feeling, Miss DiSanto?” asks the nurse, in a tone adults use when speaking to infants. I’d like to smash his face.

  “Everything hurts.” I manage to form the words correctly, which makes Jenner utter a cry of relief. The nurse thinks it’s pretty cool, too, because he beams at me.

  “Good! That’s a very good girl.”

  If this guy hands me a lollipop, I won’t be responsible for my actions. “What happened?”

  “You’ve had a bad spill, I’m afraid.”

  “How bad?” I try to crane my neck to look down at my body, but discover there’s a brace around my neck, preventing me from moving that way.

  Terror sets in.

  “How bad is it?” My voice is high and pitifully thin. The elephant has left the building.

  “You’re going to be just fine,” says Jenner, in a soothing tone that manages to terrify me even more.

  “I’m fucked, aren’t I? I’m paralyzed! I’m a quadriplegic! Oh God, just tell me the truth! I’ll be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life, right?”

  The nurse looks at Jenner with his brows arched. Jenner lifts a shoulder. “If you knew what she’s been through lately, you’d get it.”

  “You’re not paralyzed, Miss DiSanto,” says the nurse patiently.

  “How do you know?” I holler, unconvinced.

  He glances down. “Because of the death grip you have on my arm.”

  I follow his gaze. Sure enough, that’s my hand digging into his nice tanned forearm. “What about my legs?” I shout, not letting go. “Why can’t I move my legs?”

  Jenner says gingerly, “Could be the casts.”

  “Casts? Plural? I have casts on my legs?”

  “And on your left arm. Apparently your bones are as brittle as a sardine’s, love.” He adds brightly, “At least you didn’t snap your neck!”

  “What about my brain?” I ask frantically, struggling to sit up, though it sends stabbing pain everywhere. “Do I have brain damage? Swelling? Posttraumatic whatever? Am I going to need help feeding myself and forget everyone’s names and get lost when I go for a drive in my own neighborhood?”

  I can tell the nurse is trying not to roll his eyes. “You have no brain damage. The scan showed no evidence of hemorrhage or swelling, and the EEG was normal.”

  I exhale in relief, flopping back against the pillows, letting out a little grunt when I’m reminded by my nerve endings that I’m not supposed to be flopping against anything at the moment.

  “Just relax, miss. I’ll have the doctor come in and go over everything with you, all right?”

  I feel weepy. In four seconds, I’ve become overly fond of this male nurse with the strongly accented English and the cowlick that needs a professional stylist to wrestle it down.

  “Okay,” I say, trying not to blubber. “Tell him to bring good drugs.”

  The nurse smiles. “I can help you with that.”

  He presses a button attached to a cord hanging from a metal stand next to the bed, on which also hang two bags of clear liquid. The liquid runs down a plastic tube, ending in a catheter inserted into the vein in the inside of my elbow. Within seconds, I’m infused with a warm, fuzzy glow.

  “Oh boy.” I laugh, giddy. “Those are good drugs. Lord.”

  “If you need another dose, just push the button.” He tucks the cord next to my arm and leaves, pulling a curtain around the side of the bed closest to the door.

  “How did I get here?”

  Jenner pulls up a chair, sits, and takes my hand. “In an ambulance.”

  “How are you here?”

  “Believe it or not, Brad.”

  I think about that for a while. My brain swims with images of a grinning blond prepster with a broken nose wearing a leisure suit while riding a unicorn. Oh dear. I’m hallucinating. “I don’t get it.”

  “The paramedics found your phone in your handbag. Brad was under your emergency contacts.”

  Note to self: change your emergency contacts. I crinkle my brow in confusion. “How’d they get past the lock screen?”

  “Your thumb.” He says it like Duh.

  “So they called Brad. Who was in . . .” I struggle to recall his whereabouts through my lovely drug cocktail. “Florence.”

  “Yes. He called me, and I got here before he did—”

  “Wait, he’s here?” I look around, expecting him to pop out from the bathroom waving his hands and yelling, “Ta-da!”

  “He was. Earlier.”

  The way Jenner says that makes me suspicious, but I can’t figure out why. I peer at his face. It’s slowly getting closer, then retreating, then getting closer again. This is some stuff.

  “How long’ve I been out?”

  “Since they brought you in last night.”

  It hits me with the force of a wrecking ball—last night.

  The show.

  Matteo.

  I let out a little whimper of pain and close my eyes.

  “Poppins?”

  I whisper, “Matteo. He used my designs in his show.”

  Very seriously, Jenner responds, “I know.”

  I open my eyes and look at him. “You do? How?”

  He glances at a folded newspaper on the small table beside the bed, but before he can answer, I hear the door open and footsteps entering the room. There are some hushed whispers I can’t make out, then from behind the curtain drawn around the bed, Brad appears, hand in hand with a good-looking young man I’ve never seen before. He has dark eyes and deep dimples, and thick black hair so glorious it could star in its own commercial.

  “You’re awake!” says Brad, loud enough to make
me wince.

  “Don’t remind me. Who’s this?”

  Brad slings his arm around the shoulder of the good-looking young man, who smiles shyly at me. “This is Gio.”

  I know it’s probably inappropriate, but I start to giggle. I mean, really. This is my life.

  “Hello, Gio.”

  “Buongiorno,” he murmurs, all sorts of cute and bashful.

  I make eyes at Brad, mentally transmitting I can see the appeal.

  With a wriggle of his eyebrows, Brad sends back Right? Then he goes all businesslike and weird, dropping the smile and the friendly demeanor. “So, Kimber, let’s talk.”

  “Why do you sound like an attorney all of a sudden? Is this about your trust?”

  He blinks, caught off guard. “The trust? No, this is about you. I wanna talk about how you’re doing. What’s going through your mind today?”

  He has a strange air of expectancy as he waits for me to answer. I look at Jenner, who’s gazing back at me, inscrutable as a cat. Then I look at Gio, who’s still doing his cute shy thing.

  Then I’m mad.

  “Cut the crap, Wingate. I’m lying here in pieces. What do you think is going through my mind?”

  “I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking. Last I heard, you and Matteo had separated because he was giving you time to make sure he wasn’t a rebound.”

  You could hear a pin drop the room is so quiet. Except for the beeping of the machine I’m hooked up to, of course.

  “Maybe we can talk about this later,” I whisper, thinking I should push the red button on that drug-cocktail bag again. My heart needs a stronger dose of numbing chemicals.

  Brad and Gio draw closer to the bed. Brad says, “Jenner told us you went to Matteo’s show at the palace. So . . . ?”

  He leaves the sentence hanging, an invitation to continue. He knows I find it impossible to resist dangling questions, the bastard.

  With a great gust of a sigh, I nod. “I did. And then I fell down the stairs.”

  Brad makes a face. “Back up. What happened in between the arriving and the falling down the stairs?”

  “Why are you shouting?”

  He makes grabby hands at me. “C’mon. Talk. You’ll feel better if you get it off your chest.”