by Celia Crown
“Wait, wait, wait!”
The girl with black hair barrels out of the kitchen, slamming into Vlad in the process and the man had to hold her steady or else she would have slid her face across the floor.
“You’re Dean.” Mavis points out, blue eyes narrowing in skepticism.
Her black hair curls around Vlad’s hand when he grips the base of her neck.
She packs a punch in her word, waiting for him to correct her. “Dean as in Dean?”
The blonde-haired girl follows out the kitchen door too as everyone is crammed into the small entrance. “What nonsense are you spewing out now?”
Mavis cries, denial echoing after her high-pitched shriek. “Oh my god, it’s that Dean!”
Honey blinks in perplexity.
“It’s Blacklist Dean!”
A stupid clarification on Mavis’ part, but Dean shoots a deadpanned expression to Vlad, the man shakes his head with the smallest movements. It’s a clear message telling Dean not to entertain a paranoid Mavis, she’ll spew out so many conspiracies and nonsense that Dean will have to shut her up.
“You have a blacklist?” Honey chimes in, curiosity flowing in her bright blue eyes.
Laura looks at them and then to Dean who meets her confused gaze, she begins to strip her thick coat as the temperatures in the bar and kitchen is becoming unbearable.
When Mavis and Honey talks, they forget there are other people around. Dean had been subjected to their torture on the first day he was released from prison and stopped by the bar before heading home to hibernate for an entire week.
Mavis states nonchalantly, shoulders shrugging momentarily. “A lot of people are on it. Sugarcane was on it too.”
“Don’t make a pun out of my fragolina and why was he on your list?” Honey says with a crooked accent.
There’s an emphasis on the foreign word that makes it hilarious to hear, Honey is the weirdest out of the pair of twins. There were times when Vlad and Kane would visit him in prison, they tell him about the changes in the club and about the two girls, saying they’re the highlights of their days.
His brothers are in love, Dean’s envious of that. Envious of them for having someone to go home to.
“That sounds like a new disease.” Mavis shudders.
“It’s little strawberry in French, you uncultured swine.”
Dean has never been fond of anyone; he likes his family of rowdy and argumentatively aggressive brothers, he likes Brenda for keeping those children on their best behavior, and he’s becoming extremely fond of the two bantering sisters.
Partly because they’re Laura’s family. Anyone she likes, he’ll do his best to tolerate them.
“He’s not little, he’s not a strawberry, and since when did you have time to learn French?”
Honey pouts and Kane taps her temple with his knuckles softly as a slight warning.
She ignores it, “Life is hard, but competition is harder, so you have to grasp new skills and swallow the challenges—”
“Honey.” Laura gasps, embarrassment flushing her pretty cheeks.
“Okay, sorry. I was curious about French.”
Mavis scoffs, rolling her blue eyes at the lame excuse, “Well, you better brush up your vocabulary. He’s a durian; prickly, stinky, and rotten on the inside.”
Honey opens her mouth, ready to defend Kane with more bullshit than Dean can handle. He clasps his hand around Laura’s and drags her away from the speechless girls and inquisitive brothers. A little stammering and weak questions about his sudden shift in mood.
“We need to talk,” Dean said, curling his hand tighter around hers to make her look up at him.
Laura’s amber eyes meet his melted chocolate hues in a captivating trap that lures her closer to him. Her heart thumps rapidly in her chest as her hands become sweaty and clammy.
“Okay,” she whispers.
His steps are confident, knowing he has her in his grasp means she can’t run away from him again. This time, he will get answers from her because whenever he thinks back to her confirmation of her not knowing him pisses him off.
A flash of white-hot anger pricks his skin. Laura is someone Dean has loved in the past; everything makes sense, from his body’s reaction to her closeness and the insane desire to keep the familiarity she gives him.
She had no right to lie to him, he deserves to know what they were and what they had. He deserves to know what made her flee from him when she could have talked to him and told him everything, they could have worked it out if she stayed at the hospital.
He needs to know what he can do to prevent the past from repeating so he doesn’t lose her again—so he can do better this time.
Taking her to the room upstairs is a wise choice when he hears the bar door open with loud voices from his other brothers filling in the space.
He turns her to him, forcing her eyes to his face as she takes a shuddering breath to calm her jittery nerves. She stays silent, waiting for him to say anything and she hardens her resolve for any bad news he would give her.
Instead, he lays his hand on the side of her face, caressing feathery strokes on her cheek and neck. Her amber eyes gloss over in overwhelming emotions that swarm her body with tremors. Dean steps closer, her hands wrapping around his thick wrist and whimpers.
He tips her head up and her sharp broken breath fans over his lips, Dean is bounded by minor details of her that nobody has picked up.
Her smell of old books, the inky smudges on the side of her palms, the fragile woman beneath the confident and intelligent lawyer. The longing behind her upset amber eyes, suffering from the hidden secret that feasts on the pain in her heart, and the struggle to pull his hand away. To pull away from him, but he’s never been the one to give up.
Dean slants his lips over hers, taking her by surprise as a little noise comes behind her throat. A burst of happiness and excitement throws a punch to his lungs as air leaves him, and time wipes the existence of anything else away from his mind. Only leaving her scent and soft lips moving against his.
Her quivering lips catches his attention, tearing his heart with the need to comfort her under his heavy arms.
“What were we?” he whispers on her lips, tracing her bottom lip with his tongue.
It surprises her, and she tries to pull back, but he holds her there with his lips attached to hers.
“Tell me, I need to know. I’m living in hell, I can’t figure out why you’re so important to me.”
“Nothing,” Laura whimpers, her voice cracking and hands trembling on his wrist.
“We were nothing.”
A mistake, he hears the unspoken words.
He notices but doesn’t call her out on it, not when her eyes are turning red. He knows his heart can’t take her tears, it’ll break him just like when he asks if he knew her.
He comes to that conclusion with her demeanor. She wants to cry but holds herself together like the strong woman she is. If he can just remember, then she won’t have to suffer by herself. Whatever happened between them, it’s still affecting her so much that she’s avoided him for years.
A fated chance for them to meet again, but a strong reminder of their broken relationship takes her back to reality. She jerks out of his grasp, folding her arms together as a shield between them. He can see the wheels in her mind churning and corrupting her thoughts, it can’t be a relationship if he doesn’t remember anything; not her or their time together.
“Why do you always look at me like that?”
“Like what?”
Dean buries the urge to kiss away the sadness latching onto her. He will fight her demons if he must, and he will prove to her that the Dean right now is the result of his old self.
He’s better now. Better for her, better for them.
“Like you want to cry.”
She doesn’t know how to answer that without him hearing the quivers in her voice, so she keeps silent.
Chapter Six
Laura
She left the room with Dean giving her the most painful rawness plastering on his face; lips pursing with grounding teeth, brown eyes darkening in resolve, and heaving chest straining in aggravated control.
She knows that look. It’s when he’s decided on something that’ll ultimately go his way no matter what anyone thinks or does. Laura is almost afraid of what’s on his mind, she feels the diminishing hope crackle back to life by his commitment to search for the truth.
Call her a coward, but she doesn’t know how to face his determination. Not when he’s hunting for the truth that has caused her so much heartache. She wants to take the burden off her chest and spill everything to him, however, Laura isn’t as brave as others think she is.
She’s terrified he would find out what split them apart in the first place.
Without a waste of another second, she forwarded a text to her sisters and her mother, saying she’ll go pick up the wedding dress. Mom had the dress earlier, but the fitting wasn’t right, so she shipped it to the shop to fix it with the correct measurements filled out on the form.
Due to the distance and inconvenience of going all the way to another state, mom opted to give her information to the dressmaker and prayed for the best. Laura knows her sisters had thrown a fit because it’s a big day and the dress needs to be the best.
So they canceled the dress, found a new and renown fashion designer to make the most beautiful dress the designer has made and they had the designer come to the bar to measure Brenda’s body.
The dress needs to be picked up from the designer’s office, she might as well utilize this opportunity to put as much distance between her and Dean as possible, while simultaneously planning a week on how to avoid the man without him actually knowing she’s actively avoiding him.
That’d be a difficult thing to do because Dean is a very resourceful man with a brain of brilliance. He may look like a handsome and sexy hooligan with no manners and the aura of a bad boy that’ll put someone in their place for speaking ill of him.
That’s not the man at all. Dean is a very considerate and patient man when they were together; he never raised his voice at her, he loved her unconditionally, and nothing she did would make him have that small crackle of irritation turning into raging violence.
The only time he was furious with her was the day everything went wrong.
Laura was so scared she’d lose Dean before she had a chance to explain herself to him, and when she heard he had been attacked by a bunch of men in prison, she almost stopped breathing.
When she got to the hospital, she realized that she already lost him.
She figured it was a sign telling her that their love was just not meant to be. He had no memories of her, of their time together, and no recollection of the misunderstanding that tore them apart.
Laura thought she did the right thing by leaving his life, and now she’s not so sure because seeing him again makes her realize she missed him more than her mind allowed her to comprehend. He may not be her Dean anymore, but this new man would go above and beyond to situate himself into her life.
She shakes herself out of her thoughts as she passes the green light. She made it out of Nevada and into California with her car humming soft music as she tries to distract her wandering mind about Dean.
The city where the dressmaker works is a bustling city with people dressed in chic and fashionable pieces of jewelry that are very big and very polished. She doesn’t have the time to admire their taste in fashion as she parks her car in the parking lot of a ginormous building.
Workers and customers filtering in and out with shopping bags, giggling girls crackling about their day and their non-fat soy latte swooshing in the cups. California girls are a species of their own; bomber jackets in sixty-degree weather, panicked tweets about sunny California having a thunderstorm, and flaunting showbusiness.
She takes the elevator up to the eleventh floor; the ride only has her as its passenger even when the building is filled with people. The door slides open, revealing a receptionist desk where a woman is addressing some issue over the phone.
Laura gets up to her just as she hangs up and asks what she can do for her, a tone of professionalism and courtesy. Pictures hanging on the wall of models and wedding photography, everything about the office space is beautiful and clean.
“I’m Laura Lewis, and I’m here to pick up an order for Brenda Lewis?” Laura takes out the receipt in her pocket and unfolds it.
The receptionist takes the paper and reads the words on it with rapid eye movements, she hands the paper back to Laura and gestures her down the hall to her right.
“Alesha will show you to our conference room.”
Another woman in a pink blouse and black pencil skirt smiles and motions her to follow, Laura nods her gratitude to the receptionist and proceeds to follow the other woman. Laura stops at the large double doors room as the woman pushes one door open, standing with her back to the door and uses her hand to gesture to go in.
“Thank you,” Laura said.
The woman replies with a formal smile, “No problem.”
She shuts the door behind her when she leaves, giving Laura time to scan the room. It’s not exactly a conference room that’s traditionally used in big corporations where there’s a large rectangular table with multiple chairs.
This room is split in half, representing two parts of a brain; the organized and clean work desk with neatly placed items while the other half of the room is messy with fabrics draping over mannequins.
“Miss Lewis!” a voice with a slight Armenian accent calls out from the untidy part of the room.
The designer holds out his hand for her to shake, she takes it and gives him a firm squeeze. He’s an attractive young man with sleek fashionable pieces on his body as the crystal earrings blind her at how refined they are under the lights.
“I’m Henry Mirzoyan, and I know you’re a busy woman. Being the best lawyer and all, so I won’t take up much of your time.”
Laura’s lips twitch and chuckle awkwardly, “You think too highly of me.”
“Oh,” he coos, a friendly smile coming on his lips. “You’re so modest.”
He sways as he walks to his work desk, flinging the scarf over his shoulder and gives little skips on the last two steps to the desk.
Henry takes the folder that sits on top of the meticulously neat desk and walks over to another large desk with a clear box on it.
“I can take it out and show you, and if there are any mistakes, I can make adjustments. However; I advise all my clients to inspect the dress through a sample size because refolding wedding dresses will cause more creases.”
Laura weights her options and takes the folder he offers, she opens it to a list of details about the dress; a photo of a woman that’s similar weight and height as her mother, the dress details are zoomed into larger pixels with one of the clearest photo enlargements she’s ever seen. The minor adjustments about the price and materials are on the next page.
“I’d like to see it,” Laura said, closing the folder.
Henry takes no offense to that and complies with a big smile as he delicately opens the box, there’s no smell that comes with it so Laura is a little more satisfied.
The dress is absolutely amazing; fitting top from the breast to thighs before it flares out in a very similar fashion as a mermaid dress, but the main difference is that the design gives a smoother descent from top to bottom. Lace wrapping around the entire dress with soft patterns that isn’t too eye-catching to steal away from the beauty of the bride.
“It’s gorgeous.” Laura breathes, amazement flashing in her amber eyes with admiration.
“Isn’t it?” Henry sighs heavenly, eyeing the white elegance with great pride.
He fits the dress back into the box with precision and a slight hand as to not damage to the material. A veil and heels come in a separate box, also gorgeous in their own designs. She can see the hard work put into the set and she thanks the man with deep a
ppreciation.
Her mom is and would be the most beautiful woman on earth, and no one can convince her otherwise. She can’t wait to see it in person, the ceremony would be just as breathtakingly gorgeous.
Laura lets her eyes trace the silk ribbons, her smile doesn’t match the sadness in her amber hues.
Once upon a time, she wanted to get married too. She dreamed of marrying a man with intense savagery and reckless abandon, she dreamed of marrying the man she loves.
“I’ll wait for you, you know.”
“For two years?”
“I’ll wait forever if I have to.”
“Good, I’m not letting you go. You’re mine.”
Now, she’s clinging onto that dream like a lifeline, the last hope of keeping Dean in her heart a little bit longer before she forces herself to give up. It’s not fair to him for her to make the decision to not tell him about their past love, but it’s the only option she has to save them both from future heartbreaks.
“You do beautiful work, Mr. Mirzoyan,” Laura said, tracing her finger on the edge of the white box.
“Henry is fine and thank you.” the man twirls and spins to pull silk ribbons out of another box he has on the shelves.
“Wedding dress business is harsh, but I love it. Ever since I was a child, I’ve known I wanted to become someone who can bring happiness to those who wishes to have a happily ever after.”
He lays the ribbons on the table in a crisscross pattern before setting the box gently on top of the materials. It’s a pastel pink color, a color that mom loves.
“Do you want a fairy tale?” Henry ties the first ribbon, there’s not a wrinkle on the smooth surface.
Laura folds her arms under her ribs and chuckles breathlessly, her heart giving a painful throb.
“I dream of it.”
“Everyone deserves their happy ending, and I want to be able to bring that dream of yours to life.”
He ties a perfect bow on top of the box and moves on to the one with the veil and shoes.
“It’s complicated.” Laura doesn’t elaborate any more.