by Lindsey Hart
She raised a shaking hand and gripped the knob, expecting it to turn. It didn’t. It was locked. Locked. For the first time, Dallas had locked her out of the room they so often made music in together.
“Dallas!” Leena yelled. She balled her hand into a tight fist and pounded at the door. “You can’t lock me out. Get out here and face me if you’re not planning on going through with this. You can’t hide away. Not this time. I’m not going to let you.”
She waited, breath trapped in her lungs. Every single heartbeat felt like another hour. She already knew that Dallas wasn’t going to let her in and he certainly wasn’t going to come out. He knew, he knew how much this meant to her and the fact that he was going to turn her down… Leena didn’t even know what to think.
Not after what they’d shared. Not after that rehearsal. Why? Why couldn’t he have just refused to play the role in the first place? Why did he have to give her hope? Why did he have to start opening himself up if he was just going to slam every single door closed in her face.
“Dallas!” Leena screamed. She wasn’t proud of herself when she resorted to pummeling the door. She even gave it a few good kicks, which only made her bare feet sting. She cursed under her breath and was about to turn away when the door actually broke open an inch.
Dallas stuck his head out and it was painfully obvious that he wasn’t in a good state. He looked like he hadn’t slept in months. His hair was a knotted mess. He hadn’t shaved and the black circles under his eyes were so deep they actually made his eyes look sunken in, like skeletal sockets. His clothing hung on his frame, his plaid shirt wrinkled and buttoned up wrong. His jeans were dirty and stained, like he’d pulled them out of some horrible corner and shrugged them on without even realizing what he was doing.
“Dallas?” Leena’s mouth fell open. “What the hell? You were just… we were just… two days ago. I’ve been too busy to check in on you, but I thought you were fine. You were the best I’ve ever seen you. I thought that you wanted to get past this. That we had talked about maybe even getting help… god, do you even know that our show is tonight? In less than an hour?”
He shrugged. He stared out at her, seeing nothing, looking past her.
There were some moments in life that changed a person forever. A breaking point. Leena knew, right then, that she couldn’t take another minute. She’d had so much hope. She’d given Dallas her trust, her heart, her everything, for half of her life and what did she have to show for it? Nothing. Absolutely no progress. Worse, he played her. He didn’t even see her standing there, the woman who was his wife, the woman who had just confessed her love to him and poured out her heart and soul.
She sighed hard. “Look, Dallas, the play doesn’t really matter. The only thing that matters… I only have one question,” she whispered raggedly. He stared at her, uncomprehending, his eyes haunted and soulless. She waited. She knew she shouldn’t ask. “Do you love me? Do you love me at all? In any way?” Her words hung in the air between them, thick and palpable and she wished she could steal them back, ram them back in her mouth and swallow them back to the broken-hearted place they’d come from.
Dallas’ hand on the edge of the door tightened. His knuckles turned white. Leena wouldn’t have even seen it had she not intrinsically known to look.
“I… I don’t know-” He stumbled back a pace. His hand fell away. The door hung open, gaping like a cavernous wound.
The blow of those words hit her right in the heart. They lacerated her. She couldn’t just stand there gaping, fighting off a deluge of tears, endless pain, a broken, bleeding heart.
“Then… then I can’t do this anymore. Goodbye, Dallas.” Leena backed away from the door, amazed that she could even force her feet to move. They felt wooden, like blocks nailed to the floor. She broke free anyway, whirled and ran blindly. She didn’t know where she was going. She just had to get out of there. Anywhere but that building, that building that was her home for so very long. Anywhere, as long as she was away from Dallas. Away from herself, her aching, shattering, bleeding heart.
Leena burst out the back door of the theatre. She’d rarely ever used it. She didn’t stop to think that it was the same door she’d used the day of her accident. She rushed across the same street, hardly bothering to look. Luckily this time there was no traffic. No car to throw her over the hood. No blackness, no waking up in the hospital.
She almost wished there was. She would have given just about anything for a second’s respite from the pain twisting her chest into a vortex of despair. If someone had driven a dagger into her chest or run her down in the street, it couldn’t have been any more painful than knowing, finally, unequivocally, that she was alone. All her hopes, her dreams, her love, her sacrifice, meant absolutely nothing at all.
It hurt even more for the fact that she’d given Dallas her body blindly. She’d finally started to hope, to truly believe, that there might be a breakthrough. She’d dared to think that she could be loved in return and it hurt, that stealing of hope, that crushing of her dreams.
“Leena!”
The sound of her name carried across the street, on the wind, into the biting cold that she only just noticed. She realized she was wearing nothing but a gauzy robe and the wind was ice. Her skin was chilled, frozen. She shivered violently as she noticed the frigid temperature.
“Leena!”
Her name reached her again and she whirled. It sounded so much like Dallas’ voice. Strained and high pitched, struggling to get out, forced from the most fearful part of his own soul. But that was ridiculous. Dallas didn’t venture out. He would never leave the theatre…
Leena turned slowly. So very slowly it felt like her every action took a thousand years to complete. It is him. Dallas was there, struggling across the street towards the alley she was standing in, sheltered between two tall buildings. His head turned wildly, side to side, back to front, as though something was chasing him, the hounds of hell nipping at his heels. His eyes were wild, the whites vivid, wide and terrified like a spooked horse.
“Dallas?” She couldn’t really believe it was him. If a ghost had run at her, she wouldn’t have been more shocked. “What are you doing- out- out here?”
He stopped just short of where she stood, between two tall brick buildings. A dumpster stood off to the left, ten feet behind her. Traffic rushed by on the street, but it was too cold for foot traffic. They were alone, their breaths swirling above their heads. Dallas’ shoulders heaved. His breaths were rapid. He didn’t look around or behind him any longer. He stared at her, transfixed. Leena stared back, unable to believe her eyes.
“Leena…” Dallas’ frantic whisper reached her, his breath a puff of cloud in the air between them. “Please, don’t go. I won’t make it if you leave me. I’ve been so blind for so long. You never gave me a chance to finish. I was trying to say that I don’t know if someone like me can love you properly. I have no idea what love even means or if I can give you what you want and need. I’m afraid. I don’t even know how to get through the day most of the time. You’re the only thing in my life that has been constant. You’re the only thing I could give up music for.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t say things you don’t mean.”
“I do mean it.” Dallas lunged forward and gripped her hands. “God, you’re out here in your bare feet. You’re shaking. Please, come back inside with me.”
“Because you can’t stand to be out here?”
“Because I don’t want anything to happen to you again. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry about tonight. Please, give me one more chance.”
“I’ve given you endless chances!”
“I know. I know you have. I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve an ounce of the kindness and compassion and love you’ve shown me.”
Leena shivered. Not because she was cold, but because Dallas pulled her into his arms. He was shaking, trembling as she was, but underneath his plaid shirt, he was warm. His hands closed over her back. Her face crushed into his che
st and she let him hold her. She let him take her away, transport her to a world where she’d always dreamed of being swept off her feet, like the roles she sometimes played. Swept up and carried off into the sunset.
And like the knight in every hero story, Dallas scooped her up. He cradled her against him, hugged her tight to his chest. She breathed in and didn’t smell the staleness of rumpled clothes or sleepless nights. She just smelled Dallas. The man she loved more than anything on earth.
“Think we can still make it?” He said as he stalked across the street, back towards the theatre. “We might be late, but maybe we can put on some kind of ballet early or whatever.”
Leena looked up, up into the face of the man who had so completely changed her world. From the second, the very second, she’d seen him, she knew that, though she might never be his, he was always going to be hers.
“Minnie might kill you,” she hissed. Dallas reached the door. He managed to pull it open while balancing her in his arms. She hung on tight, wrapped her hands around the striated muscles of his neck, glorying in the warmth that seeped into her frigid hands.
“That’s a chance I’m willing to take.” The door slammed closed behind them and Dallas set her back on her feet. He gripped her arms before he pulled her back to him. “If you’re willing.”
A breath escaped between parted lips. A hiss of an exhale. The silence in the hall where they’d just entered seemed to roar around them. Dallas blinked. Leena realized his lashes had little beads of moisture on the tips, probably from the crystalized fog of his breath earlier.
She could say no. Walk away and live an easier life. Find someone who would treat her well, always. She could walk out and just, for the first time in almost a decade and a half, expect the normal.
Dallas’ shoulders sagged in defeat. He blinked rapidly, sorrow welling in his eyes. It wasn’t just the beads of condensed breath that glistened in eyes that were no longer tired, but alive and burning.
“I’m always willing,” Leena whispered. “Always. You should know that by now.”
“You were going to walk away.”
She shrugged. “I was. I might have. Or I might have turned around and come back and just got on with it like I always have, hoping, hoping that you would come around. That this was just a setback. That we’d keep moving forward. That when I cooled down… literally… I would just walk back in here and keep fighting. I love you. I love you with all my heart and soul and all the music that is in me. That is never going to change. Never.”
Dallas blinked hard and silvery tears tracked down his cheeks. He stepped forward and cupped her face. Leena closed her eyes, leaning into the touch, craving more, feeling it all, savoring it all, the entire force of the world. When his lips met hers, the flames of lost years, of all the tremendous hope of the future, of everything, lost and gained and yet to come, burst over them.
When Dallas pulled away, Leena swayed on her feet. He wrapped his hands around her waist, supporting her until the world stopped spinning around her.
“Are we doing this then?”
“Dallas… I love you.” She reached up and brushed a strand of hair away from his face. “If you don’t want to do this, it’s alright. We have a stand-in. For both of us. I’m not going to be disappointed. I have everything I want, right here, right now. I’ve always had it. Always.”
“Then come. There’s still time. I want this. I want this with you. This is our story. I’m not going to let other people tell it.” He looked at her like a man completely captivated, like a man enchanted, like a man in love. She knew then, in that moment, that they were going to be alright. No matter how bad things got, they were going to make it through. Dallas would make it through and she’d be right there with him like she’d always been.
Leena extended her hand and Dallas’ calloused palm curled around hers. She laughed softly, happiness radiating from outside, from inside, from all around. She knew she was probably grinning like a fool and she didn’t mind one bit. “Alright. Let’s go.”
They’d spent nearly a decade making music together, but for the first time, it was really going to be their music. Their gift to the world. That play was the real start of them when she’d written the ending to it years ago. It was their new beginning. It was their heart, their soul, their love, their story. She couldn’t wait to tell it. She couldn’t wait to start their new masterpiece, the story of the rest of their lives.
The End
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BEAUTY & THE JERK
By
Rose Chapman
BOOK DESCRIPTION
Loosely based on the story of The Ugly Little Ducking.
Stephane Hayes.
A Billionaire. A Hunk. A Playboy. And a Huge Jerk!
Mia still remembered that time he called her an ugly little duckling. Admittedly, they had been kids but that comment still rankled.
Meeting him again thirteen years later had not changed one thing. She still hated him.
And she hated even more seeing him flirt with her sister.
"Why don’t we play a little game?” he asked.
“What sort of game?”
“A challenge,” Stephane said, his eyes glittering. “I’ll stay away from your sister. But only if you can resist me for the rest of the trip.”
The nerve of him. Well, she was about to show him just how much of a loser he was. He thought he was God’s gift to woman. Time for a rude awakening. There was no way she was going to be letting herself be seduced, come hell and high water!
CHAPTER ONE
It was with a very obvious huff that Mia Arnold dumped her bag in the back of the car and scowled at her older sister, who rolled her eyes. Lisa Arnold brushed her long, silky hair back, and Mia felt the familiar jealousy that rose up like a snake; her own, muddy brown hair was often frizzy and unmanageable, while there was never a hair out of place in Lisa’s straight, blonde locks. She stamped the feeling down, though, more intent on expressing her indignation over the current situation.
“I still don’t get why we’re all being forced to go,” she muttered, slamming the trunk closed after Lisa had tossed her own bag in.
“You heard mom and dad,” Lisa said in exasperation. “We’re supposed to be doing something together as a family. It’s been way too long since we went on vacation together.”
“Every time we’ve been on vacation, it’s only because dad had some sort of business to take care of in the area,” Mia retorted. “Excuse me for being suspicious of the motivation behind this one.”
Irritated, she stalked away from her sister. She was twenty-three years old, so she didn’t understand why she had to be pulled away from work for a ‘family’ vacation that would likely only end up as another excuse for her parents to find more work to do.
She sighed and got in the car. Tim Arnold was at the wheel, and he turned to smile warmly at her, which made her smile back; it had been too long since she had seen her father anywhere other than behind a desk.
“All good, Duckling?” he asked amiably.
She flushed at the nickname, trying not to remember the nasty connotation someone had once, a long time ago, put on it, and felt some of her ire leave her. Even if her father was always working, she knew he loved her, and she was long past the childish anger at his long absences.
“Yeah,” she said. “You still haven’t told us where we’re going, though.”
“All in good time,” he said with a wink as Lisa slipped into the car as well.
“Just a hint?” Lisa begged, as insanely curious as Mia was.
They glanced at each other and then turned back to their father with identical, mischievous smiles.
“Please?” they said in unison.
Her father laughed, and Mia couldn’t help but grin broadly. She and her sister were as different
as day and night, and they didn’t always get along; but there were always moments, however, just like this, where she had never felt more connected to her older sister. Lisa winked at her, and Mia muffled her own laugh.
“No,” Tim said, still chuckling at their behaviour. “You two are twenty-three and twenty-six years old, you know, so stop acting like children.”
“What’s the fun in that?” Lisa teased. “I’ve got an entire store of driving songs for us to sing.”
Tim groaned, obviously remembering the time a much smaller Mia and Lisa had insistently sung ‘ninety-nine bottles of beer’ all the way through a four-hour trip. Mia remembered that too; it had been great fun, at the time, to annoy their parents with it, especially since they were taking them to visit their hated great aunt at that time, but that song had been stuck in her head for months afterward. She and Lisa had agreed never to sing it again.
“Or games,” she piped up. “We play a mean game of ‘I spy’ on road trips.”
And it really could get mean; Lisa and Mia both had a competitive streak a mile long, something they had inherited from both of their parents. As such, accusations of cheating and being unfair were common between them whenever they sat down to play any game.
“Let’s just concentrate on getting to our vacation in one piece, okay?” Tim said, shaking head. He glanced at his watch. “Anyone know where your mother is?”
“I think she was checking the locks and making sure we have everything we need,” Mia said, glancing back toward their parents’ two-story house.
“Or she’s making sure she has all the pairs of shoes she needs,” Lisa said.