“I like you.” I stick my hand out. “I’m Confidence. Yes, that’s my real name,” I say before she can ask.
“I’m Mary Hassan, and what a fantastic name,” she compliments sincerely.
“Thank you,” I say in kind.
“Well, I know a little something about sitting at tables you weren’t exactly invited to, so I can empathize,” she says. “And, I have three grown daughters. You look about their age,” she says. And I think how lucky those girls must be.
Those girls are lucky to have a mother whose eyes light up when she talks about them.
“Do they live in Houston?” My heart jumps in hope that maybe I’ll make some new friends.
“No. My oldest and her husband are in DC. My middle and youngest both live in the UK,” she says.
“Wow, that’s amazing. I just took my first trip out of the country this summer. I can’t imagine living overseas. What took them there?” I ask.
“My baby got a job; she’s a lawyer—”
“Oh, me, too,” I say excitedly.
“Are you? I should introduce you. They’ll all be here for Christmas. Just three more months,” she says happily.
“I’d love that. I’m moving here. My best friend lives here actually, but I would love to meet more people,” I say gratefully.
“You’ll love them. My middle is married to an earl and lives in England,” she tells me proudly.
“Really? What is that like?” I ask, looking around this room and thinking I can barely handle these entitled rich people. How would I deal with aristocrats?
“She had a hard time with some of the people in his circle. She’s not what a countess looks like over there, but she’s won them over now,” she says.
“That sounds like a hard transition,” I muse.
“It was. But for her husband’s sake she worked her way through it. And now, she’s just like one of the locals. She even teaches a coding course at the local high school,” she says. I smile at the pride in her voice and reach for my drink to avoid having to speak.
Hayes is no earl. But around here, he’s like royalty. And given my less-than-warm reception, I’m worried about being his partner. I think that’s where we’re going. He wouldn’t have asked me to move in with him if he didn’t think so. I wouldn’t be considering it if I didn’t, too.
She touches my arm. “I saw you come down with Hayes. You make such a beautiful couple.”
“Thank you so much.” I glance down the table at him just as a man dressed in one of the dark blue valet uniforms rushes into the open doors of the dining room and bends to whisper in his ear.
Whatever the valet says can’t be good. Hayes’s jaw clenches, and his brow furrows. Then, he tosses his napkin down on the table and stands up.
“Excuse me, everyone,” he says. I watch him in hopes that he’ll make eye contact with me. He doesn’t.
I war with myself, watching the door, and unsure whether or not to follow him. Mary touches my arm again and I glance at her.
“I’m so sorry,” I say. “What were you saying?”
My eyes dart back to the door for a second and when I look back to her, she’s smiling sympathetically.
“That’s one of the benefits of being someone’s other half,” she says. “You don’t have to wait for them to say they need you. You just go because you know they always do.”
She cocks her head to the door. “See you later,” she says.
We share a smile, mine full of gratitude for this unexpectedly kind woman being here tonight. I start to stand up and she touches my arm.
“We own Palmyra, it’s a Middle Eastern Restaurant in Rivers Wilde ,” she says. “Come visit me, I’m there on weeknights.” She squeezes my hand and I squeeze hers back.
“Oh, that’s my favorite! I’ll come see you,” I promise.
“I’m so glad he has someone like you. He’s going to need you.” She nods at the empty seat at the head of the table.
I want to ask her what she means but at the moment, I’m more concerned about Hayes. I walk out of the dining room, and the weight of the stares on my retreating back are heavy. The whispers are loud and I’m sure everyone is wondering who the hell I am. I want to turn around and yell, “I’m his,” but that would just delay. And something tells me I need to get to him as fast as I can.
I step into the hall and look both ways down the long, dark passage. I have no idea where he went. I’m turning left when a loud crash of glass has me turning right. I run down the hall. Muffled, but loud voices spill into the dark around me.
“You can’t keep doing this, Dare,” Hayes says.
My hand freezes on the door knob. This is his younger brother. The one Poppy mentioned earlier.
“I didn’t realize I couldn’t come to my own family’s home,” the other man slurs.
“I didn’t say that. I just wish you would lay off the alcohol and only God knows what else you’re putting into your body,” Hayes says, his voice tight with restrained anger. “Confidence is here, and I’m trying like fuck to make sure she wants to come back.” I know he’s been on edge about my visit. But it’s jarring to hear the anxiety so clearly in his voice.
“Well from what you told me, sounds like she lives in some shit hole mobile home in the middle of nowhere.” I’m startled by how much he sounds like Hayes. The drunken slurring of his words is the only way I can tell the difference. That, and the ugly insult in his tone.
“Shut up,” Hayes snaps.
“I’m sure she got one look at this place and realized she hit pay dirt. She isn’t going anywhere. Trust me,” he says.
The words and the ease with which he flings them feels like a lash across my heart. Is that what everyone thinks?
“Dare,” Hayes says, the warning in his voice making the hairs on the back of my neck stands up. I’m caught between wanting to go in and needing to hear how Hayes will respond.
“Oops, I forgot. You fucked her and forget you begged me to run a background check on your little gold digger” Those words hit me like scalding water. I cover my mouth to muffle my gasp of pain.
“Dare, don’t say another fucking word—”
“What? Only you can say she’s good enough to fuck but not good enough to bring home,—” he starts before his voice abruptly cuts off and the sickening sound of crunching bone fills the air.
“You broke my nose, you asshole!” the drunken voice screams before more glass crashes to the ground. And the telltale sounds of a tussle—grunts, curses, furniture scraping the floor, glass shattering—fill the air. I open the door and see two men, both big and tall, on the ground in a hopelessly well-matched tussle.
I know I should call for help, or step in to stop the fracas. Yet, I do neither of those things. Instead, I just watch the two men fight. My eyes remain on Hayes, the man I love. He still looks exactly the same, but at the same time, so different.
I can’t move.
I can’t breathe
He ordered a background check? He knows every ugly thing about me. Anger, betrayal, and fear whirl. My head spins as those thoughts mingle with the sounds of chaos. The sounds of my childhood. Of furniture breaking, grunts of pain, the crunch of fists, the slap of skin on skin. I’m caught between the devil and hell—I don’t know which direction in this house of horrors to turn. But somehow, I manage to run until I get to our room. I sit on my bed and try to figure out what the hell I’m going to do.
I’ve just started to drift off when our bedroom door opens. My eyes snap open and I stare unseeingly at the wall as I wait for him to say something. He slides into bed with me. I can smell sweat, blood and liquor on him. His body is cool, the stubble on his face is slightly damp as he presses his cheek to mine and wraps his arms around me. A fraught and angry energy emanates from him. And like the fool I am, all I want is to soothe him. I lift his knuckles to my lips and kissed the joints that are sore, stiff, and red.
He turns me around, and without saying a word, kisses me.
&nb
sp; We make love for an hour, maybe more. We find a calm that always exists in the sanctity of our bodies’ communion. When we are together like this, it’s easy to forget that anything else matters
We roll out of bed and shower at 2:00 a.m. I kiss his bruises without asking how he got them. He accepts my kisses without offering any explanations. We go back to bed and do it all over again. I fall asleep on him, sated but dreading the reckoning the sunrise will bring with it.
PRIDE
CONFIDENCE
My phone beeps with a new email and I look over at my window and see the first hints of sunlight peeking through my curtain. Hayes stirs beside me and I decide to ignore my phone. I snuggle into him. “Good morning,” I whisper into the back of his warm, muscled shoulder.
“Morning,” he mumbles sleepily, his arm snaking behind him to pull me closer. “I need to tell you about last night.” His voice is partially muffled in his pillow, and he turns to face me. His eyes are clear, and I realize he’s been awake longer than I realized.
My heart falls. I’m dreading what I know I must say. What I must do.
“I already know,” I confess.
His muscles tense. “What do you know?”
I gaze at him.
I love him.
But I can’t be with someone who thinks those things about me.
I push out of his grasp and sit up and pull the covers over my chest. I stare at my fingers, twirling the rings the way he does all the time.
“You know why I wrote that thesis?”
“Huh?” he frowns, his brow furrows at the abrupt turn in our conversation.
“I wrote it because, I love the river. But I wanted to protect my people from the destruction it always causes,” I choke on a sob.
“Hey … baby.” He starts to sit up and put his arm around me. I shake my head and climb out of bed, taking the sheets with me. I sit on the large window seat, and a tear splashes on the blue gray fabric I’m cocooned in. The tiny moist spot bleeds to form a quarter-sized stain. I wipe at my eyes with a brutal pass of my hands.
I take a shuddering breath and stare at my hands while I try to collect myself. Growing up, I watched year after year as the river banks swelled when the rain overwhelmed it. And its lazy, tranquil flow would transform into a beast. It laid waste to every single plan, hope, home, heart that was in its path. When it receded, it would leave everything covered in mud and dirt. Some things would never recover. Like me. Now, I look back at him. He’s watching me with a perplexed expression on his face.
“I know rivers, but you made me forget the danger. I forgot to cage my love for you. And now, I’m drowning in it,” I whisper.
“Confidence, you need to stop speaking code. Tell me what the fuck is going on?” He raises his voice in frustration. “Why are you crying? And why can’t I touch you?” he asks, his voice even louder, and he sounds as angry as I feel. I glance at him and it pisses me off that he doesn’t look panicked or worried.
“You’ve ruined everything!” I shout, suddenly overwhelmed with anger, sadness, disillusionment, despair.
“You need—”
“I don’t need to do anything,” I say in defiance.
“Yes, you fucking do,” he snarls.
I cross my arms over my chest. “I’m not saying I thought this was going to be forever. But over the last couple of months, I’d let myself imagine the possibility …” I say while I throw my charger, laptop, phone, and books into my shoulder bag.
“Okay.” He shrugs. “What’s changed since you fell asleep on my cock six hours ago?”
Of course. It’s always about sex with him. I shake my head and slip my feet into my shoes. I can’t even look at him.
Queen.
I love you.
Respect you.
All lies.
“You ordered a background check on me?”
His face pales. My stomach falls.
“Because I’m ‘hot enough to fuck, but not good enough to bring home’?” my lip curls in a sneer
“Who told you that?” he asks and my heart sinks.
“Well, at least you’re not denying it.” Fatigue makes my sadness heavy and suffocating.
“I didn’t mean—”
“I can’t believe you talked about me like that,” I say, my traitorous voice breaking. The warmth of his hand resting on my shoulder suddenly feels like a branding heat.
I step away. “Don’t you fucking touch me,” I snarl.
“Confidence, what the fuck?” he demands.
My stomach cramps and I hug my arms around my middle.
My heart is sick.
I’m sick.
How in the world could I have fallen for this shit again?
I tattooed this motherfucker’s name on my body.
I square my shoulders, drop my hands and straighten up so I can look him square in the eye. “I heard you last night. I followed you when you left because I thought maybe you needed me,” I tell him and watch his face fall.
He groans and for the first time since I’ve known him, I see fear in his eyes. My own fear feeds on it. The ache in my stomach sharpens. Things are about to get worse and I’m scared by how viscerally I feel the loss already. I’ve fallen so thoroughly and irredeemably in love with him. Just in time for him to break my fucking heart.
“No,” he says sternly. “You’ve got all of that wrong. I ordered it before we were together in Italy. Weeks later when it showed up, I couldn’t remember why I thought I needed it. I never opened it.”
“You didn’t?” I ask and I feel a flicker of hope that maybe I misunderstood.
“No,” he sighs. “I decided I could overlook everything that was wrong about us. Your lack of money, your lack of a name. I already knew about the scandal surrounding your career,” he says.
I pale. But I set my jaw and narrow my eyes at him.
“You’ve overlooked them?” I ask, almost daring him to repeat himself.
“Yes. I decided it didn’t matter,” he says like he’s being a benevolent ruler. Like he’s looking down his nose at me.
My hackles shoot straight up. “I didn’t ask you to overlook anything,” I hiss.
He comes to stand in front of me and reaches for me. “No,” I say quietly.
“Let me explain.” His voice is thick and gruff. Angry.
Fuck him.
I won’t look at him. I can’t.
The heaviness in my body is only outmatched by the ton of pain in my heart.
I turn to face him.
“I may not have a name. Maybe I didn’t know where Positano is or what some random Latin words mean … or whatever.” I narrow my eyes at him and stab the air with my finger. “But, I’ll tell you what. My mother worked her way up to manager at a small plant in Tennessee at a time when it was really hard for women to do that. While she lived with a husband who treated her like a punching bag and a son she was afraid of. And she put up with that shit for me. She worked a second job to help pay tuition to put me,” I say, pointing at my chest, “through college. And law school. Because she looked at me and saw what you and the rest of your stuck-up friends fail to see. All of my potential.”
I wave my hands in the air around my head, my fingers pointing down to my body. His expression is one of pure shock.
“I was raised to treat everyone with respect,” I continue. “I was raised to be proud of my integrity, my loyalty and my kindness. My name means something because I’ve made it mean something.”
“Confidence,” he growls.
“You don’t have the right to say my name,” I snap and his eyes widen. “I’m not going to let you or anyone else look down on me because I don’t have money and my last name isn’t on a stadium or museums or a hospital somewhere.”
“Fucking hell, Confidence,” he grinds out.
I ignore him.
“You’ve had everything handed to you. And yet, here we are.” I fling my arms wide in a sweeping flourish that covers the whole room. “In the same plac
e. At the very same time. Who’s slumming?” I sneer. “And who’s leveled up?” I give him a hard, challenging look. “Who should be looking down on who?”
“I don’t look down on—”
“The one who’s here because she worked, scraped, and beat back the crabs trying to pull her back into the barrel?” I take a step closer to him. “Or the person who’s here because he was lucky enough to be pushed out of a gold lined pussy?” I give him a disdainful head-to-toe assessment.
His eyes narrow, his jaw flexes and he rears back. “What did you just say to me?” he hisses.
“Did you let the pretty dresses, law degree and good table manners fool you?” I ask. “I grew up with a trucker hat turned to the back, jeans tucked into my muddy hiking boots, a hunting rifle slung across my back and a bowie knife tucked into my waist. I’ve been thrown to the wolves and I have killed every. Single. One. Of them.” I am aflame with indignation.
“You need to calm down,” he says and has the nerve to reach for me.
“No,” I huff and grit my teeth. “We’re done. You are never going to insult me again. You don’t deserve me.”
I shake my head in frustration and then stand up. He moves fast and grabs me by the forearms. He presses his forehead to mine, our noses touch, our breath mingles between us and his eyes burn into mine with possessiveness and determination.
“You’re right. I don’t.” He pins me in place with his eyes “I know it. You know it. And yet, here we are. In the same place at the same fucking time,” he says, throwing my words back at me. “You take everything I give you. Even when it hurts because you know I’m going to make you come so hard you can’t breathe. You sleep next to me with your fingers linked with mine because you love me. We are not even close to done,” he grits out and I try to pull myself loose.
Right now, I’m caught between wanting to sob in his arms and wanting to kick him in the balls.
“Let go of me,” I growl.
“Never. You will not walk away from me because of some bullshit like this.”
“It’s not bullshit. I have spent the entire weekend with your crazy ass family and their friends,” I shout back at him and shake myself loose. This time, he lets me go. “Are these really the people you want to surround yourself with? You talked about your family doing good. What good does it do to get dressed up for a six-course meal just because it’s Friday? I mean, it’s like fucking Versailles. Your city is drowning and you’re dressed up because it’s Friday.”
The Rivals Page 16