by Ruby Vincent
“How did your mom get the title dame?” he asked. “Isn’t that a British thing?”
“Yes. Our family is like most in the community. We trace our lineage back hundreds of years, but the Lewises kept in better touch with their relations across the pond. When Mom was ten, she was sent to live with cousins over there. She came back and forth after she turned eighteen, earned her damehood, and eventually chose here for good after meeting Dad.”
“How’d they meet? Was it at the cove?”
I smiled. “No, it happened the way it should. He bumped into her outside an ice cream parlor and got chocolate on her new dress. He felt terrible, offered to take her home to change, and they got talking on the drive. Mom said she knew as she waved him out of the driveway that England wasn’t the place for her anymore. She had to stay and get to know that clumsy charmer.” I stroked his arm. “What about your parents?”
“The cove. Dad dresses it up in romance when he tells the story. Says out of all the women there, the moment he laid eyes on Mom, he knew it would be her.”
“Did she feel the same?”
“Actually, she thought he was a goofy idiot with hair that wouldn’t lie flat and oversized dopey eyes.”
“What?” I giggled. “Then how are you here?”
“Because of that.” He traced my smile. “Dad made her laugh. On her worst days. Even when she was her meanest to him. He’d steal a smile from her. She said that in the end, if the only husband she could choose were the men at the cove, she wanted the man who was patient, kind, and made her smile.”
“That’s a sweet story too.”
“It is,” he agreed. “My whole life she’s been using it to convince me I should go the same way.”
“I very recently have come to understand how you feel.”
“God save us from mothers who know best.”
I burrowed deeper in his arms. “I’d drink to that, but then we’d have to go downstairs.”
“We should go,” he whispered.
“Why?”
“Because the carriage is about to turn into a pumpkin.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re seriously committed to this fairy-tale thing.”
“My mother will come looking for me. Strong assumption that my room is the first place she’d look. Either way, we can’t stay in here all night.”
No matter how much I want to.
I left Dad holding my purse when I went off for air. On top of me going missing, they can’t call me. They would be going frantic, and as angry as I was at them, I didn’t want those thoughts going through their heads.
With more willpower than I knew I possessed, I dragged myself out of the tub and we got dressed. I stood before Preston’s mirror, returning my hair to its perfect bun while he did up the buttons on my dress. I lowered my hands and he clasped my necklace, kissing the nape of my neck as he did.
Sweet, kind, and makes me smile.
Maybe I found the last beautiful boy worth breaking the rules for.
“How do I look?” I asked. “Can you tell I’ve been ravaged for the last hour and a half?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I like that look on me.”
“Ready to go?”
Nodding, I let him take my hand. We left our haven, walking into the brightly lit hallway. I took two steps and was stopped by Preston. Mimicking our earlier position, he pressed me against the wall, resting his forehead on mine.
“Let’s not do another two years, Belle.” He brushed a stray strand behind my ear. “Dinner on Friday. Say yes.”
Yes rose to my lips. I caught it in my throat and shoved it down. “I can’t. I don’t date, Preston. But if you want to skip dinner, we can go straight to dessert.”
“My body is really all you’ll take.” Though he said it with a grin.
“It makes the most sense. You have Europe this summer and I have everywhere. After that, it’s different colleges. Why start something we can’t finish?”
He sighed, eyes falling shut. “Damn. I was hoping you’d have another batshit crazy excuse like the siren thing. How am I supposed to counter that argument?”
I swatted his arm. “You’re not. What you do is take my tempting offer of hot, freaky sex to last up until one of us leaves.”
Preston placed his hand over his chest. “I humbly and graciously accept your terms.”
“The goofy trait runs in your family I see.”
Tilting my chin up, Preston closed the scant distance and—
“Preston! There you are.”
He ripped away from me, spinning in time to catch the brunette bombshell that launched into his arms.
“Delilah?”
She pouted, wrinkling her perfect bow-shaped mouth and enhancing her cuteness in the process. “I’ve been looking all over for you, baby.”
Baby?
“Delilah, I—”
The girl cupped his cheeks and kissed Preston square on the mouth.
I rocked back. My head struck the wood with a thud that flicked her attention to me. “Who is this?”
“Who are you?” I shot back.
“Delilah Winthrop.” She tapped his nose. “Preston’s fiancée.”
“His fiancée?” My voice was nothing more than a croak. “You have a fiancée? But on the terrace you said...”
“Belle, I can explain.” Preston peeled her off of him, pushing her to the side. “It’s not what you’re—”
“What’s there to explain?” Delilah was suddenly in our way again. In my air. Latching on to the man I was holding minutes ago. “We’re making it official at the end of the summer, but going to the cove is just a formality. Respecting tradition and all of that.” She laid her head on his shoulder, looking me straight in the eye.
“The truth is Preston already proposed and I said yes.”
I stilled. I didn’t so much as lift my head to meet his eyes. Why should I when I saw him tracing my figure in the garden? Felt his arms around me and his lips on my neck. Why should I look at him when I stood in front of his fiancée with my middle still aching?
“Right, Preston?” she asked.
“Delilah, for fuck’s sake,” Preston snapped. “Leave us alone.” He grasped my wrist. “Belle, if you just—”
Footsteps sounded in the hallway. “Hey, Preston. What are you doing up here? You ran out of the ballroom and disappeared.”
“Your mom’s been flipping shit, man. She said she’d skin me alive if I got you drunk and stashed you under a bench again.”
“She didn’t say that,” a dry voice responded.
“Her eyes did.”
Shock rooted me to the spot. Slowly, I raised my head, taking in the could-feed-a-family-for-a-year shoes, moving up to fitted black and gray pants, the bespoke cut of their jackets, and finally, at them.
No. This can’t be happening.
Both boys jerked to a stop. Both dropped their jaws in matching surprise. Both said at the same time, “Belle?”
“Carter. Nathan,” I rasped.
Saying their names out loud didn’t make them real. They’d changed so much since I’d last seen them.
Carter was practically a different man. He was taller than me now and had permanently shed the softness and chubby cheeks of childhood. Darkish-blond waves were transformed into snow-white locks. Even as a child, people fawned over his aquamarine eyes, but their shift into this icy blue would’ve drawn equal attention for a different reason. Coldness like I’d never seen swirled in his gaze and chilled me to my core.
Carter’s lips curled—drawing up to the faint scar slashed across his right cheek. I could never forget him. Not for a single solitary moment.
Because of that scar.
I forced myself to break his gaze and glance at Nathan.
For us it has only been a few years, but they rapidly changed him as adolescence does. He was slimmer in some places and firmer in the others. His curly hair—a gift from his Afro-Caribbean father—hung low in his eyes. His shaved style a thi
ng of the past. A multitude of tawny freckles sprinkled his nose, cheeks, forehead, and everywhere. They lay stark on skin tanner than I remembered.
What hadn’t changed were those heart-shaped lips, curved to look like he was smiling at the world even when he wasn’t. Doleful brown, bordering on black, eyes snatched me and dragged me into their depths to drown alongside his many victims. Those fooled into believing the eyes of an innocent deer didn’t conceal the heart of a hunter.
Carter and Nathan turned away, dismissing me with a single flick of their eyes, and just like that, they were real.
How can they be here?
Why wouldn’t they be here? a voice countered. The summer at the cove was moved up a year early, no doubt because these two were freshly graduated from the academy. Someone has to snag them before college opened their minds too wide and reminded them this entire tradition was archaic.
That explained what they were doing at his party, but not why they were upstairs searching for Preston.
A heavy, nauseous feeling settled in the pit of my stomach.
“You’re friends with Preston.” It wasn’t a question.
“This was a trick.” I turned on Desai knowing betrayal was lashed across my face as assuredly as it laced my voice. “The three of you. You played me to get me to sleep with you?”
“Sleep with her?”
Delilah’s cry wasn’t half as loud as Preston’s.
“What? Belle, no!”
I had to hand it to him. Preston put on an excellent shocked and horrified face while his fucking fiancée hung off him like a tree ornament, glaring daggers at both of us.
“You said you weren’t going to the cove.”
He tossed his head. “That’s— That’s not what I said exactly.”
“I don’t want to get married yet and not to anyone in there. That’s what you said exactly!”
Preston stepped toward me. “Belle, if you let me explain—”
“Explain what? You’re going to pretend some more that you didn’t know who I was when those two are your best buddies? Did your plan to get me into bed start at our run-in at the gallery, or did you three think it up when you saw my name on the guest list?”
I couldn’t stop myself. The accusations poured from my lips on the rush of pain and humiliation.
“Do you even have a cousin?!”
Delilah pulled a face. “Cousin? What cousin?”
I went cold.
A lash tightened around my body, forcing the air from my lungs, the blood from my face, and squeezed out the sweet memories working to reform my feelings about statues.
Preston reached for me. “Belle, I swear there’s an explan—”
I socked him dead in the face, his cartilage crunching under my fist.
“Argh!” Preston reeled back, knocking into Delilah and bringing them both down.
Nathan and Carter sprang to help as I stepped over the pair. Their shouts, swears, and shrieking faded without the need for distance. My walls were firmly re-erected.
Those sirens would never get past my blockade again.
NATHAN
“So.” Carter and I dropped Preston on his couch. “You slept with Belle Adler.”
The question didn’t need to be asked. The messed-up sheets, half the stuff from his desk on the floor, and the overwhelming reek of sex told the story.
It was a good thing we sent Delilah off for ice and she told us to fuck off and call a maid instead. She didn’t need to see the state of this place.
Preston glared through narrowed eyes. Blood gushed from his nose, marking two harsh lines past his mouth reminding me of a marionette.
Not far off. If Belle’s got her hooks into him, then he’ll be dancing on her strings forever.
“How do you know her?” he spat. “She freaked when she saw you too.”
“Pretty sure she freaked when she saw your fiancée.” Carter’s voice was flat. “The question is how do you know her? You got up and ran off. Why?”
“She’s Cinderella.”
“She is?” I blurted. “The girl you wouldn’t shut up about for the last two years? The one who shut you down at the gallery?”
He nodded.
I threw myself down next to him, blown away. “I should’ve known,” I muttered. “A girl like that could only be Belle.”
“How do you know her?” His head swung to me, splattering blood on the carpet. “Tell me.”
I shrugged. “How do you think?”
His eyes flared. “Are you fucking serious? You slept with her?”
“Many, many times.”
I thought he’d give me a bloody nose to match.
“What? You’re mad?”
“Why would I be mad?” he scoffed. “I fucked her drunken hookups out of her head. We laughed about her forgetting the names of everyone who came before me.” His smirk was red with blood. “You couldn’t have left her with anything worth remembering.”
Preston Du Pont-Desai could be a right bastard and if anyone was going to get that side out of him, it would be Belle. Every man that met Belle Adler wanted to own her, worship her, be the one who doused the smoldering pain in her eyes. I understood his reaction to lash out better than anyone ever could.
But I was a right bastard too.
It’s what made us friends.
“She didn’t lose it at the sight of me because she forgot me, brother. She remembers every single minute of being mine, and that’s why you’re bleeding on the carpet and Belle is off running every minute of our dirty, screaming fucks through her head.”
The punch came too quick for me to block it.
His fist slammed into my jaw, snapping my head around, and dumping me on the floor. I spat out a mouthful of blood and let it ride. I deserved the hit. Like I said, no one knew the drug Belle put men under better than me.
“You’re quiet,” Preston spat at Carter. “Did you sleep with Belle too?”
“If I wanted to talk to you about Belle Adler, I would have,” he returned. “I don’t give a fuck about that girl or what you two did with her, and neither should you. Both of you get over it and forget about her. She’s not worth it.”
I loved the guy, but Carter Knight truly was an icy son of a bitch.
One who’s been keeping secrets. I was just as surprised to hear Belle say his name.
“I’m not forgetting her,” Preston said. “She didn’t give me a chance to explain. Once I get her to listen to me—”
“You’ll what?” Carter broke in. “Convince her to live happily ever after as your mistress? We’re going to the cove in three days, and at the end of summer, you’re putting a ring on Delilah’s finger. You know what will happen if you don’t.”
I smeared blood on my sleeve, wiping my mouth. “He’s right. You can’t chase this Cinderella from the ball. Forget about her.”
“You want me to forget her so you can move in,” he flung. “You’re not putting a ring on her damn finger either.”
Anger flared hot and quick. “You managed to fuck Belle without hearing her rant on marriage and relationships? I doubt it. Trust me, even if I wanted to marry her, Belle will have nothing to do with me. From the look she gave Carter, I’m betting it’s the same for him.”
Carter said nothing—which served as agreement.
“None of us are going after Belle,” I continued. “We forget about her, Preston. We’ve all got too much to lose.”
“Agreed,” Carter said.
Preston shoved off the couch, storming to the bathroom.
He can fight it now, but eventually he’ll accept it. Nothing good comes from falling in love with Belle Adler.
Chapter Three
“Belle, where on earth have you been?”
Mom shot out of her seat, abandoning her matcha tiramisu, and pulled me into a smothering hug. Proof enough that I scared both of them. The dame never rose from the table until the meal was finished, and why display affection in public when private worked just as well?
&
nbsp; I buried my face in her neck, eyes stinging. What kind of fucking idiot was I falling for Preston Desai’s tricks?
A hand rested on my hair. “We checked the gardens and couldn’t find you,” said Dad. “Your phone was with us. We were worried sick, Belle. Please, no matter how mad you are with us, don’t put us through that again.”
My stomach twisted thinking of what must have gone through their minds. “I swear, Dad, I wasn’t trying to scare you. I... ran into someone outside and they offered to give me a tour of the mansion. I should have told you.”
Mom released me. “All that matters is you’re okay. Now, sit down and eat before they clear the last of the food away. You missed the entire meal.”
The last thing I cared about was green tiramisu. I let them steer me to my seat, trying and failing, to push the last couple of hours from my mind.
It killed me that I hadn’t assumed from the beginning that Carter and Nathan would be here. But not as much as my idiocy in not remembering that boys like that always find each other. Swimming in the same circles. Feasting on the same prey.
I went to school with Carter up until junior high. Then he went to Blackburn Academy like most people in our community do. The school Nathan returned to after his summers in my part of the world, Bracknell. And the school where Preston Desai must have attended—where Carter and Nathan poured their tales of me into his ear, and Preston told them all about the girl from the gallery.
As pissed as I was at them, it didn’t compare to what I felt toward myself.
So much for being immune to his kind.
Preston spun some words, made me laugh a few times, and I was ass up on his desk in less than half an hour. I should’ve known that story about his cousin wasn’t true. No one in their right mind would share a secret like that with a stranger.
The three of them are probably upstairs right now, laughing in every position Preston had me in.
I clenched my jaw, fists shaking under the table. It wasn’t an option before, but now there was no question of me going to the cove. I’d spend the summer washing wrinkled old testicles before I suffered through three months stuck in a manor with them.
Carter and Nathan weren’t the first beautiful boys to hurt me, but I swore they’d be my last. They and their twisted friend, Preston, would not undo the excellent job I’d done over the years of cutting them completely out of my life.