by L.J. Shen
Once we disconnected, she cupped my cheeks and smiled down at me. She had a lovely smile. Not only because it was aesthetically attractive, but because her goodness shone through it. I could see why Baron “Vicious” Spencer was so madly in love with her. Rumors about the way he worshipped her, how he’d built a cherry-blossom garden for her in their backyard, had traveled throughout higher society in Todos Santos. She had this quality about her that made people do crazy things to please her—an invisible hold.
“How are you?” she asked.
I couldn’t lie.
“Worried. Is he okay?” I dropped my voice so people around us couldn’t hear.
Some moved to other pieces in the exhibition, but most waited patiently for us to finish talking so they could speak to me. I found the situation bizarre. The entire point of making art was so I didn’t have to explain it.
She smiled, but said nothing. She pulled me behind the assemblage so we couldn’t be seen or heard.
“Lenora, you’re about to be showered with proposals from gallery owners in approximately two minutes, but I wanted to be the first to offer you a spot in my gallery in Los Angeles. You don’t have to answer now, of course, but I would be very excited to work with you. And I would like to take this opportunity to thank you again for all you did for Vaughn.”
I swallowed. “Is he going to be there? In Los Angeles, I mean?” I eyed her.
I hated that I was desperate, that I still cared. No. Scratch that. I hated that he was all I cared about. At this moment, I didn’t consider the merits of working in her gallery because it was prestigious or huge or offered a lot of work experience, God forbid.
Emilia shook her head. “I’m sorry, sweetie. Love is a trickster. It has a way of twisting you, doesn’t it?”
My head hung low. “Yeah.”
“The pain fades, eventually.”
“How do you know?”
“Once upon a time, I felt it, too.”
I squeezed her hand in mine. “All right. I’ll think about it. Thank you.”
She kissed my cheek and walked away.
The rest of the evening was a blur. I had business cards shoved into my hands, people asking for my number, my email, my price. By the time ten o’clock rolled around, my legs were trembling with exhaustion.
I leaned against Poppy for support, plucking a heel off for a moment and massaging my foot on a wince when she turned to me and said, “Papa called you a cab. Hurry up, now.”
“A cab?” I frowned. “Why?”
“He’s taking Pope for a drink to close up a deal.” She cocked her head toward the two of them, arching a meaningful brow. Dad and Pope were standing next to each other, shaking hands and laughing. I grinned. I was so happy Pope was going to stay close by, that we wouldn’t become glorified strangers who sent each other the occasional Christmas card. I looked back to her.
“What about you? Are you coming with?”
She scoffed. “Hard pass. After Pope has a drink with Papa, I intend to have something else with him, so I’m tagging along.”
“Are you serious?” My eyes widened.
“As a heart attack. Have you seen him? He is gorgeous, and he did a lot of growing up while we were in California. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Of course not, you slag.” I laughed.
She shrugged and strutted back to them. I shook my head. Rafferty and Poppy. Who would have thought?
In the cab, I let my mind wander to the fact that Pope had once touched me in a way I wasn’t sure Poppy was going to appreciate. I shot her a quick text saying there was something I needed to tell her, and perhaps she should hold off on the shagging session with my best friend.
Her reply came promptly.
Poppy: For God’s sake, don’t worry about us! Just go home.
Me: Pope and I did things. They meant nothing to either of us, but they still happened. I don’t want you to be blindsided.
Poppy: Buh-bye!
Upon arrival, I shoved the key in, pushed the door open, and locked it behind me. Sighing heavily, I shouldered out of my coat and hung it in the foyer, kicking my heels off once and for all.
“Argh, never doing the high-heel thing again,” I announced to the empty space.
After finding a glass of water, I went upstairs to my old childhood room, which barely reminded me of my younger years now. I identified that period of my life with Carlisle Castle more than anything else. I pushed the door open. As soon as I did, the glass slipped from my fingers, dropping noiselessly to the carpet.
A yelp escaped my throat.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” Vaughn said, perched on my bed, looking at me like nothing had happened at all.
Like he’d never left.
Like he hadn’t broken and entered into my house for the thousandth time.
Like there wasn’t a six hundred kilogram sculpture in the middle of my room—life-sized, gigantic, and absolutely gorgeous. I’d never seen anything like it. Violent shivers ran down my arms and back, and pure adrenaline dropped me to my knees as I tried to gulp a deep breath.
“It’s…”
“Us,” he said, standing from my bed and approaching me in measured, careful steps.
He looked good—healthy, tall, ripped, and still in his tattered black jeans and half-torn black shirt that couldn’t dim his brutally stunning features. He stopped in front of me, offering me his hand.
Tentatively, I took it.
I stood, stepped forward, and examined the statue.
It was the two of us, curled against each other as children, lying on a bed. We were twelve and thirteen and looked just the way we had the day I’d caught him and Harry. Only in the sculpture, he wasn’t standing above me, watching and threatening. Instead, we were entwined together, his face partly covered by my hair. I was breathing into his neck, my arms protectively circling his shoulders.
Everything had been realistically carved, to the point that it looked like a giant, living picture. I was sure if I put my fingers to our necks, I’d find a pulse. But when my gaze moved down to our stomachs, I noticed something weird. Our bottom parts were meshed together, mermaid-like, as if we were conjoined twins. We didn’t have legs. We couldn’t escape each other.
We were one.
The name of the sculpture was carved on its side:
Good Girl
Vaughn took me by the hand and walked me to my bed, where we slipped under my blanket, legs entwined, mimicking the statue—his face in my hair, my nose pressed against his neck. Home, I thought, and everything became clear.
That’s why Papa had taken Pope for an after-show drink. That’s why my sister had stayed behind. She had no interest at all in Rafferty. They wanted to give us our privacy.
Emilia knew, too. That’s why she didn’t tell me how Vaughn was doing.
It dawned on me that Vaughn and I had been ruthlessly patient with one another all those years. He’d waited for me to open up while I long-sufferingly watched as he crawled from behind the tall walls he’d built around himself.
“I started working on this statue before we were together. I started it before we’d even kissed. Before Jason. Before Arabella. Before everything, there was you,” he whispered into my hair. “You came before art. Before life. Definitely before hate.”
I shook with unrestrained tears. They were falling down my cheeks now, hot and furious and grateful. I pulled back reluctantly, catching his gaze.
“How could you think you are less than enough? How could you ever think that?” I asked, feeling my cheeks heating up with anger.
“I don’t think that anymore,” he said softly, caressing my hair. “Or if I am, I don’t care. I couldn’t go through with it. I couldn’t kill your uncle. I stood there with my weapon, and all I could think was what if he were right—if it was getting revenge or getting the girl…” He closed his magnificent blue eyes, taking a deep breath, opening them again. Determination zinged through them. “I’d rather have the girl.”
I still didn’t believe Uncle Harry had committed suicide.
Vaughn shrugged. “Perhaps another angry god.”
I nodded, catching his drift.
“Why did you leave if you hadn’t killed him? Where have you been all this time?” A pang of pain slashed through my heart. Those weeks apart felt like forever. They’d stretched longer than all the years I’d lived without him by my side.
“I stuck around, admiring you from afar—but never too far.” He took my chin between his thumb and index, bringing our lips together in a sweet, unhurried kiss. “Stayed at the cottage my parents rent downtown. I watched you walking into town with Rafferty, buying groceries, and hiking. I didn’t come close, because I knew that without me out of the way, you wouldn’t have your chance to display your work at Tate Modern. And frankly, you were far more deserving of this spot. I’ve been your shadow for so long, Lenora. I wanted you to bask in the sun a little.”
“My shadow?” I breathed.
He nodded. “Always there, following you, even when you didn’t see. Remember the day Arabella, Soren, and Alice crowded you in that locker room and a door slammed in the distance, making them leave? That was me. And they paid for what they did. I stole Soren’s Maserati and totaled it, causing his parents to almost disown him, and I planted cocaine in Alice and Arabella’s purses. Alice’s parents gave her so much shit they decided to send her to rehab instead of college. With Arabella, I got even better results. She got hooked.”
Silence.
“I’ve always loved you in my own fucked-up, destructive way.”
I closed my eyes, relishing the word as it rolled off his tongue. So fantastically rare, and forever mine.
“Say it again,” I whispered to his lips, cupping his cheeks.
“I love you,” he said, his tongue flicking my lips when he pronounced the L, opening them in the process. We kissed hungrily.
“Again,” I growled into his mouth, clutching his shirt, knowing it was wet because of my tears and not giving a damn.
“I.” He nuzzled his straight nose along my jawline.
“Love.” He flicked my ear with his tongue.
“You,” he finished, closing his mouth over mine in a passionate kiss that made my eyes roll in their sockets and took my breath away.
He moved on top of me, thrusting his groin into mine, pinning me down, and just like the sculpture, we became one again. He kicked his jeans off, I hoisted my dress, and a few minutes later, he was inside me, and we were perfectly tangled. He drove into me deeply, again and again and again, until I was delirious with pleasure and my heart soared and bloomed. I could feel my love-cells multiplying inside my chest. More. More. More.
This. This was what I wanted and needed. Vaughn Spencer, of all people. In my bed. Protecting me from my favorite monster.
Himself.
Two years later
It is the scent of cotton and lavender that gives her away.
I catch the faint waft of the feminine shampoo I’m so addicted to that I pathetically pack it with me in mini bottles whenever I have to leave her to travel for work. Which, granted, isn’t often. Either we join each other while traveling or we don’t travel at all. It’s still fucked up to think we spent years away from each other while we were young.
I look up from the desk in the studio I share with Len, in the shed of our garden, and stare at the door. Nothing.
You can’t fool me, Good Girl. You never could.
I put down the blue diamond I have in my hand and stand to walk outside. The air is humid and hot around me, even though the sun set hours ago. I check the time on my phone. One in the morning. Fuck. That’s why she checked on me.
Has she seen what I was doing?
Of course she has, jackass. That’s why she tried to slip away unnoticed—not to ruin your surprise.
I walk past our small garden and open the back door to our house. We live in a small villa in Corsica, France. We love that it’s on an island, that it’s within proximity to everything and everywhere we need to visit in Europe, and that our friends can visit us any time, because who the fuck doesn’t want to vacation in the South of France?
Padding barefoot down our dark hallway, I reach our bedroom door and pause. Our bedroom is the most glorious place in the house. Maybe the universe. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea. Whoever designed this house was smart enough to put in floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the wonder that is sunset in Corsica. I push the door open and walk over to our bed. Len is lying there, curled into herself like a shrimp, pretending to sleep, her eyelids fluttering.
I brush my thumb against her cheek, watching as goosebumps rise on her skin. This is how it all started, I think. A balled-up girl in the dark, begging not to be noticed.
No can do, sweetheart.
I tried so hard to ignore her existence when I saw her again after I gave her that chocolate, because I knew how fucked I’d be if I let her in.
And she burst in anyway, tearing down my walls. I lower myself to her ear and breathe the words tauntingly:
“I know you’re not asleep. Your eyelids are moving.”
Her eyes pop open, and she rolls from her side to her back, staring at me defiantly.
“What if I am?” she whispers, challenging me. “What would you do?”
“That depends.” I sit on the edge of the bed, removing a lock of hair from her face. “How much did you see back there?”
“Enough to expect either a ring or a swift, yet very painful breakup, if you give that piece of jewelry to someone else.”
A simple nothing would have been sufficient. But of course, nothing is simple where my girlfriend is concerned. We’ve spent the last two years setting up a home in Corsica and traveling all around the world, following our inspiration. We spend six months at home, working and selling our art, and six months chasing memories and dreams and views most people only get to see in cheap, pastel paintings at their doctor’s office.
I said I wouldn’t go back to Todos Santos, and I’ve kept my word. We do travel there during the holidays, though. Sometimes Poppy and Edgar tag along. They’re a part of my family now. You know shit’s getting serious when you put up with a girl like Poppy Astalis. It practically feels like Len and I are married, but that’s not enough for me. Every single time I see some random motherfucker checking her out at the airport, in a pub or a club, or even the goddamn fucking supermarket, I get an unexplainable urge to bash his head against the floor until both crack.
Considering this fact, it would be best if I put both the world’s male population and myself out of misery by putting a ring on it, pissing on my territory, and making sure everyone knows Lenora Astalis is off limits.
Because that’s the essence of what I’ve been trying to do for years anyway, isn’t it? Put my mark on her. Make sure people know she is mine.
“A quick and painful breakup is not in your future,” I deadpan, expressionless.
She scoots up, leaning against the headboard and folding her arms. She is smiling now, that smile that disarms me of every negative feeling I have.
“What is it, then?” She raises an eyebrow.
“That depends on your answer,” I shoot back.
“That depends on your effort,” she retorts. “And right now you are cocking it up royally. Why don’t you try when the ring is finished and find out?”
Not a no, then. Plus, she is playing right into my hands, thinking I’m some kind of rookie.
“Wait until the ring is ready?” I repeat.
She nods slowly, watching me. All she saw was the diamond.
“Fine.” I go down on one knee in front of the bed, plucking the little box out of my back pocket.
Len perks up, cupping her mouth. “But I just saw you… I…” She blinks rapidly, but stops saying whatever it is she is saying, because now she’s the one fucking it up.
I put a hand on her knee, using my other hand to open the box. It was a bitch to make this ring. First of all, because I had to chase Edgar’s ass to open up his safe in Switzerland and give me her mother’s original engagement ring. Second, because I added to that ring every single rare diamond I could get my hands on, other than the blue one she just saw. No. That one is going to end up in a necklace the entire family is making for her. An engagement gift.
Things are going to get real awkward real fast if she says no.
“You saw what I wanted you to see. I think I always had this idea that you should be my savior, but naturally, the stubborn ass that I am, I didn’t understand it. Now I do. I want you to save me today, and tomorrow, and in a month, and in a year, and in a decade. Save me. Give me your best and your worst and everything in between. I’ve always watched my dad loving my mom and thought he was stuck in a state of insanity. But he wasn’t. Turns out, love really can be that fucking intense.”
She has tears in her eyes. Happy ones, I hope. Although, there’s really no knowing in my case. I know a lot of people who’d be brought to sad tears at the prospect of spending the rest of their lives with me. Arabella, for instance. Last I heard, she was in rehab, seeking treatment for a mental breakdown.
“Save me,” I whisper, taking Lenora’s hand and waiting for her to give me the okay to slip the ring onto her finger.
“How did you know?” she rasps. “That I’d come out there now. It’s the middle of the night.”
“I didn’t.” I grab her wrist, kiss the inside of her palm. “I’ve kept the damn ring with me for months. You finally cracked and peeked.”
“You’ve been acting mysteriously.” She rubs my lower lip, back and forth.
“Not mysterious enough, as it turned out. We could’ve already been pregnant twice had it been up to me.”
“You can’t get pregnant twice at the same time. It’s a one-time thing.” She cracks up, covering her face. I think she’s blushing, but it’s damn hard to see in the dark.
“Is that a challenge?” I hiss, hooding my eyes. But my nonchalance expires a second later. “Am I going to kneel on one knee for all of fucking eternity? Not that I mind. Just asking for a friend.”