“I’m sorry I said you were my servant last night,” I say.“I don’t know what came over me.”
I’ve wanted to say this to him all day, even imagined he’d accept my apology and then we could go back to how we were by his car before my father’s men dragged him away.But now the words are out and the darkness between us is just as black as it was.Maybe blacker.
“You were just calling it how it is,” he says.
We’ve reached one of the exits from the park and I take it, a last second decision, because I no longer feel safe in his presence.The impulse makes no sense, because he is, in fact, literally here to keep me safe.But alone with him in a dark park is not where I want to be right now.I think I just don’t feel safe with all my fantasies of him and me together.
“Where to now, Goldie?”he asks once we reach the sidewalk, and I very nearly stumble right off it.
He gave me a nickname?And it’s not even a terrible one.That’s straight out of some rom-com.I can’t mess this up any worse than I already have.
A few horse-drawn carriages are parked along the sidewalk here and I say it before I think it.“I want to go for a carriage ride.”
When I was younger, this whole curb was lined with horse drawn carriages, but they’re not so popular anymore, having been replaced by tuk-tuks and such.I prefer the old way.In almost everything.Except the arranged marriage thing, but I’ll only put myself in a worse mood if I think about that.
Saying I want to go for a carriage ride earned me the first truly spectacular look from him.All sunshine and heat, confused more than angry, light more than dark.
“You’re not fucking serious,” he says and even though someone should teach him not to curse at me, I’m not going to do it now.I’m still riding too high on having broken through his darkness, seeing the sun I knew was hiding just beneath the surface of it.
“I’m dead serious,” I say and resist the urge to grab his hand and pull him along to the first carriage.He follows like I knew he would.
“I’d like to go for a ride please,” I tell the man holding the reins.
He smiles down at me, the wrinkles around his bright blue eyes deepening.“A lovely ride for a lovely couple?”
“Yeah, not even close,” Matteo blurts out and I’m sure he didn’t mean to say it out loud.
I choose to ignore it, because at least he’s no longer this mound of darkness beside me, if he’s letting his thoughts slip.I’m hoping the ride will loosen him up even more, because really, who can stay in a foul mood on a carriage ride?It’s been ages since I’ve been on one, but my dad used to take my sisters and me on them all the time when we were younger.
The driver reaches back and opens the gilded gate on the side of the carriage, and I climb on and ensconce myself in the red velvet seat, getting absolutely no help from Matteo.Not that I need it.
“Not a gentleman then?”the driver asks once Matteo follows me into the carriage.“But, ay, that’s how it is with the modern men.”
The driver himself has a heavy Scottish accent and all that’s missing from making this scene romantic-comedy-set-in-the-UK picture perfect would be soft flakes of snow falling on us.But while a lot of weird things can and do happen in NYC, it probably won’t snow in the summer.
“Once around the park?”the driver asks, winking at me.
“Make it the full ride,” I say and I’m pretty sure I just heard Matteo groan.
“Oh, come on, what’s the last time you were in a carriage?It’ll be an adventure.”
“I’ve never been in a carriage,” he says, gripping the railing while the driver tuts at the horse to start moving and the whole carriage rattles as we leave the curb.
“Oh, you’re missing out,” I say, settling back into the swaying.“It’s even better than riding a horse.”
He shoots me another dark look.
“Oh, don’t tell me, you’ve never ridden a horse either,” I say.“Who are you and where did you come from?”
I hope that question sounded light and breezy, because the truth is, I really want to know and I kind of forced it.
Clearly not light and breezy, that’s what his dark eyes are saying to me now.How can green eyes look so dark, anyway?
“LA,” he says.“And yeah, I have ridden horses, but it was so long ago, I barely remember it.”
“You don’t look old enough to have memories you can’t remember anymore,” I blurt out and am rewarded by yet more pure darkness shooting from his eyes.
“I have a lot of memories I’d rather forget,” he says, casting his gaze forward, past the carriage driver and the horses, at the night.And that’s what’s in his voice too.Night.The endless, nightmare-filled kind.
