by Laura Kenyon
Ethan shot an amused smirk at Rapunzel, who was too busy holding in her vomit to smile back.
After weeks of trouble, Ethan’s car had finally thrown in the towel—or at least quit long enough to strand him on the side of the Midtown Expressway.
“Say,” Sam said, smudging his greasy fingers all over his shirt and peering at Rapunzel. “You look familiar. Have we met?”
She stretched out—pinup style—and ran her hand provocatively through her butterscotch waves. She’d planned on switching to a jet black bob today, but Belle’s recovery had delayed things. “Maybe. Do you read Maxistam?”
“Ha.” Ethan ran his hand along her back and squeezed her shoulder. “I don’t think anyone actually reads Maxistam, sweetie.”
Rapunzel made a face but bit her tongue. She’d allowed him into her heart. She’d given him space in her closet. Did she really have to permit pet names around the guy from Railey’s Auto Shop?
“Nah, that’s not it.” Sam scratched his stubble. “Did your hair used to be lighter, maybe?”
Ethan’s laugh drowned out the roar of a dozen passing cars. “Mate, I tell the passage of time by the color of her hair.”
“That’s it!” Sam spat on the pavement. “You own that inn with the Queen of Braddax—or whatever she is now. Yeah, I went up that way, oh, ’bout two weeks ago. Real bad wreck. Guy plowed right into a tree.”
Rapunzel perked up for a moment, then felt a wave of sadness. He must have been talking about Gray. Gray, a fantastic guy who could have made Belle the happiest woman in the world but who was as caput as Ethan’s carburetor.
“Pretty guy,” Sam continued. “Likes to wear tight shirts.” Rapunzel scowled at this description. Tight and pretty compared to a man who smelled like he showered only once a week, sure. “Yeah, he was a funny one.”
“I’d say sarcastic more than funny,” Rapunzel said, “but yeah. I know who you’re talking about.”
“Nah, not funny haha. Funny weird.” Sam crossed his arms as Ethan shot her another glance—this time one of confusion. “Had his car fixed a week ago, but this guy just refused to take it back. Asked us—well, begged, really—to keep it on the lot till this morning. Never had that happen before. Wound up charging him per day in the end. Don’t know why he didn’t just keep it in that big hotel parking lot. Woulda been a whole lot cheaper.”
Rapunzel grabbed Ethan’s arm and gripped so hard he actually pried it away finger by finger. Gray had gone out of his way to stay at the inn—to stay with Belle—for an entire week longer than he had to? Her breath began to flutter. Did Belle know this? What did it mean? Curse or no curse, she’d seen her friend get beaten down far too many times to let that kind of love and—dare she say it—chivalry, walk out of her life.
The mechanic was still talking—saying something about Gray calling out of the blue this morning, wanting the car immediately, and being in some sort of fight when Sam dropped it off. A fight with “that talk show fairy with all the sparkle.”
“Talk show fairy?” Rapunzel wrapped her fist around her keys. “You mean Ruby Welles?”
“That’s the one. She’s a lot nicer on TV, huh?”
Suddenly, Rapunzel couldn’t stand still. Something wasn’t right. Gray loved Belle enough to fake his situation for a week, but one encounter with Ruby and he’d up and left? That old crank had done something—or said something. She just knew it.
“Did he say where he was going?”
“Not really.” Another spit. “Seemed like he had no plan at all, actually. But I did give him directions to Auto Giant in Carpale since his wipers were shot. We didn’t have the right ones in—”
“I gotta go!” she shouted, hopping behind the wheel before Sam could even finish his sentence. “Sorry babe! See you at home!”
She blew a kiss at Ethan, rammed her car in drive, and peeled onto the expressway.
Auto Giant. Her GPS proudly announced that it would take twenty minutes.
As her tires sloshed through the puddles and the buildings whizzed by, she thought about how much had changed in just a few months. Years and years of railing against true love and marriage and all the maudlin things it came with … and here she was, breaking the sound barrier in an effort to save it.
Cindy would never believe it. Crap. Cindy. She still needed to call her.
Rapunzel made it to the store in just under thirteen minutes. She parked beside a black X-Class, newly polished with a discrete “Railey Auto Shop” sticker on the back window, and raced inside. After asking three different employees for directions to the wipers aisle, she finally careened around the corner and shrieked for joy upon finding Gray.
“Rapunzel?” He had two pairs of wipers in his hands. “What are you doing here?”
“Stopping you from making the biggest mistake of your life.”
He squinted. “They’re just wipers. I think either one will—”
“Not the wipers!” She marched forward. “Belle! I know your car was ready a week ago. I know you stayed with her twice as long as you had to. I know you have feelings for her. And I know Ruby has something to do with you suddenly giving up.”
She saw something wholly unusual flicker across Gray’s face. Was it anger?
He held tight to one pair of wipers and placed the other calmly back on the rack.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “Ruby didn’t make me leave. She just reminded me who I am. And Belle’s better off without me. I’m no good for her.”
“And you think Donner is?” Rapunzel’s laugh came out as a roaring cackle. “Does this have to do with the fear thing? Yes, she told me about that, and no offense but I think it’s bullshit. I think you’re plenty afraid. I think you’re afraid of telling Belle how you feel … of giving up control … of letting someone in and not caring what everyone else thinks.”
She paused. Gray wasn’t the only one who should be listening to that advice.
“Look,” she said, “you need to get back in that car and go back to the inn and—”
“I’ve killed people, Rapunzel.”
The aisle went silent. A couple at the far end froze, looked at each other, and skittered out of view. Rapunzel stared at him, her face suddenly numb.
“What do you mean? Like in self-defense?”
“No.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head. “It’s more complicated than that. I got in with a really bad crowd when I was younger and was part of some awful, awful things.”
She had no idea what to say. Killed people? It just didn’t fit. Gray was a good guy. She knew this. “How … When you say younger …”
He sighed. “Just trust me. She’s better off. God knows I don’t like Donner any more than you do, but he’s the father of her child. He can give her a heck of a lot more than I can. And if anything happened to that baby because I stayed, she’d never forgive me. I’d never forgive me.”
Rapunzel’s head jolted back. “What do you mean if anything happened to the baby? What did Ruby tell you? Because we don’t know—”
“Look, Rapunzel, I appreciate you rooting for me, but it’s not meant to be. And it’s not because I’m afraid to tell her how I feel. I’m pretty sure she knows. Belle’s changed my life in ways I can’t even begin to explain. I’ve felt things around her that I never thought I’d be capable of. I wouldn’t think twice about giving up everything to be with her—if it was the right thing to do. But it’s not. And that terrifies me—the thought of her life falling apart because she loved me.”
“So then she fixed you,” Rapunzel said, not mentioning that she thought the whole unable-to-fear thing was bullshit to begin with. “Doesn’t that mean something? Isn’t that a sign that you’re—” She paused, the phrase contradicting everything in which she used to believe. “Meant to be?”
Gray pressed his lips together and placed a hand on her shoulder. As she reached to meet it with her own—a gesture of goodwill, if not agreement—she noticed the marks on his for
earm for the very first time. She let in a tiny gasp. She knew the symbols. She knew the awful things kids were forced to do to earn them. And she knew, by looking into Gray’s eyes, that he was trying to tell her without saying the words.
“No one’s beyond forgiveness,” she said as he let his arm drop and forced an unconvincing smile.
“Take care of her for me.”
Then he turned around, wipers swinging at his side, and disappeared from sight.
Chapter Twenty-Three
DAWN
Sleeping pills.
After everything the “sleeping beauty queen” had been through, the best plan Dawn came up with for ducking out of the castle without Hunter knowing was to slip him an evening concoction of sleeping pills. Just because they came from a box rather than a magic wand, she knew, didn’t make her much better than Jacara. But at least she was doing it to right a mistake—not create one.
And Davin was a mistake. She saw that now. But he wasn’t a bad guy. He deserved an explanation. And Hunter deserved to have a good night’s sleep from dusk all the way until sunrise.
Overwhelmed by the selection, she bought eight brands from the local pharmacy and chose one as soon as she got home. It guaranteed immediate action, eight uninterrupted hours of sleep, and a flavorless taste. She sent Morning off to her sleepover, arranged a last-minute one for Day, and poured two conservative portions of bourbon for their after-dinner drink. She spiked one with the contents of two pills and waited. Then she added two more just in case.
Hunter, who’d been playing his cards regrettably well for some rare evening foreplay, conked out within minutes. She watched him sleep for short while, amazed at the affection she felt after all these years of bitterness. Then she covered him with a blanket and left.
Even though it had been a week, she didn’t miss a single step on the road to Davin’s. She rushed through the wet leaves and past the ledge over which she’d tumbled. She hopped into the center of the river and flew down the secret pathway. She raced through the breathtaking diamond tree tunnel, let down the invisible perimeter fence, and bulldozed down the aisles of the most incredible garden she’d ever seen. She was going to miss this place. It was beyond anything she’d ever seen—and it was real. She didn’t need her memories to sugarcoat this, as they’d done with Selladóre.
“Dawn!” Davin cried out when he pulled back the door and saw her standing there, damp and out of breath. “What are you doing here? I … I wasn’t expecting you. Does Hunter know? Is everything all right?” Sweeping his arms over her shoulders, he ushered her inside and then pulled back to get a better look—or perhaps to verify she was really there at all.
He led her to the first sitting room, handed her a towel, and fumbled with a glass decanter. She requested only water and took a seat by the window. “Davin,” she said as he perched beside her. He seemed nervous, unsettled. “We need to talk.”
He nodded. His focus trained on the rust-colored liquid in his hands. From this angle—head bowed, a curtain of chocolate curls revealing only patches of his face—she could see the boy she used to know as clear as day. She placed her palm on his shoulder and he straightened up, aging eleven years and billions of dollars in an instant.
“I went to Selladóre today.” Her words were soft, and she wasn’t sure why she’d even said them. Why open the subject this way?
“You did?”
“It’s … different than I remember.”
He let out a snort of laughter. “Yeah. Like you said, it’s a caricature now.”
She nodded. She had said that. The night he went from business tycoon Liam Devereaux to her Davin. Looking at him now, however, in a designer button-down and charcoal slacks, she wasn’t sure which one he was anymore.
“That’s true,” she said, “but it’s not what I meant.” She bit down on her bottom lip and slowly pulled it out, feeling each blood vessel as it squeezed between her teeth. “A lot of what I thought I remembered was wrong.”
He stared ahead and Dawn could see the pressure building around his eyes—as if he knew what was coming. She forced herself to keep her distance—all six inches of it. She inhaled slowly and let the breath out one word at a time.
“I do love you, Davin. I worshipped you as a child. And during the last decade, I thought of you every time I was unhappy. Even just the memory of you helped me survive. You were the center of an alternate reality I created in my head. You were perfect then and—”
“But I’m not perfect now,” he interrupted, attempting to finish her thought. “That’s what you’re trying to say, isn’t it?” He pushed violently up from the couch and slammed his glass down on the server. “God, Dawn!”
She was on her feet in seconds. “That’s not what I was going to say!”
“No? Crap, you took everything from me. I don’t have a family anymore. I don’t have a home anymore. For a decade, I thought of nothing but making myself worthy of you.”
“I never asked you to do that!”
What happened next played out in an instant. Dawn raised her arm. He grabbed it and spun her towards him. They stood there, locked in the moment that would change everything. The pain and the anger in his eyes were intense. But so was the fury whirling inside her—a fury made all the more lethal by the shame of knowing what he said was true. She’d done this to him. And countless others. When she touched that needle. When she fell asleep. It was all her fault. Jacara should have just killed her. Elmina should have let her die. Her life wasn’t worth more than anyone else’s.
But what’s done was done. She couldn’t right one mistake by making another.
“You should never have left,” she said, the words sticking in the air between them—hanging there like the vines in his garden.
Then, slowly, he unclasped her wrist.
“I didn’t need a billionaire. I needed you. But too much time has passed. We’re different people now. You’re this slick big shot and I have two children who—”
“Don’t.” His hand halted in the air, not poised to hit her, but to plead with her. “Don’t tell me this is because of them. It’s not.”
She had no idea what to say, so she didn’t.
“It’s just like when we were kids,” he said. “You want to have it all, and you’re afraid of making the wrong choice. You’re smart. And you know if you leave Hunter and things go wrong with us, you’ll have nowhere left to go. No crown. No castle. No second-choice suitor to fall back on.”
“That’s not –”
He let out a reproachful laugh. “You think we’ve changed? That we can’t be together because we’ve changed?” Dawn saw a flash of something unexpected in his face—recognition, or maybe even a tinge of relief. “But that’s not why. It’s because we haven’t changed. You always wanted everything both ways, and I’m not gonna sit around and wait. Maybe I shouldn’t have left. Maybe I should have turned down everything my father built for me, remained a poor nobody, and taken my chances with a selfish princess who had a rich king gunning for her. Maybe, when I woke up after three hundred years of sleep—thanks, by the way—I should have told Angus to just buzz off and—”
“Angus?” Davin’s eyes darted to the carpet as his face flicked to the side. Dawn shook her head the way a dog would shake off the river. “Angus is the man who found you when the curse broke?”
His hand pounded through his hair as he broke off and began to pace the room. “Yeah,” he said, as if realizing this for the first time as well. “Yeah, he was. What the hell does that matter?”
Dawn wasn’t sure. It didn’t, really. It just seemed odd. He’d told her about the man who was standing over him when her curse broke—the man sent to tell him all about the empire that was waiting for its prodigal son. But they both knew Angus Kane. Why had he left out his name?
“I wasn’t keeping anything from you,” he said. “Angus told me to never advertise his connection with Perdemi-Divan to anyone. It’s probably a political thing. And you never asked anyway.” He swi
ped up his drink and gave a vindicated shrug, as if this proved she was too wrapped up in her own story to inquire about his. “You could have easily figured it out if you really cared. After all, it was Angus who took Hunter to Selladóre that day in the first place.”
Davin brought his glass up to his lips and paused. Then he started to laugh. It was an eerie, unbalanced laugh.
“What is it?” Dawn’s words were fuzzy now, and distant. She didn’t know what to make of anything that was happening.
“Well, Angus went to Selladóre that day because he knew the curse would break in its three hundredth year.”
“So?”
“So anyone could have broken the curse. Or if the entire year passed, it would have expired on its own. He didn’t have to bring Hunter.”
Dawn swayed in place as the information trickled into her brain, one drop at a time. Without Hunter’s kiss, she would have woken on her own soon enough and probably found Davin. Everything would have been different.
“Looks like Angus handpicked your dearly beloved for you.” Davin continued staring at the floor as he tipped his glass up in total defeat. “You should thank him sometime. Cheers.”
* * *
Dawn left Davin’s feeling like a soldier returning from war. Half of her wanted to run back to Hunter, while the other half wanted to crawl. She didn’t know what to make of Angus Kane’s incursion into her life, but the most important thing was that she’d broken things off with Davin. She’d taken a deep breath, stood before the man she’d pined over for centuries, and let him go.
As she hopped off the river path and started up towards her cliff, she began to feel a weight lifting. Despite Davin’s accusations, she’d been honest with him and herself. And she was finally going to be honest with Hunter. She was finally going to be the wife that he deserved.
She was almost in view of the castle when a headlight broke through the darkness, followed by the whine of an engine. A frigid burst of terror shot up her spine.