He mutters a curse under his breath. “You really fucked things up, Dimitri.”
“No kidding,” I say despondently. I don’t regret a single second of my time with Savina. I could die a happy man today knowing that I got to spend just one night with her. And who knows, maybe my father will kill me for my indiscretions. “What happens now?” I ask, desperately needing to know. Surely us being together has changed everything; has changed my father’s mind about the contract.
“Everything that happened here will be kept between us. I don’t want anyone breathing a word of this to Savina’s father. We’ll make up a story, if we have to,” my father says assuredly. “And the wedding will go on as planned,” he adds, completely flooring me.
“The fuck it will. I can’t allow that,” I protest, but he holds up a hand, stopping me.
“You can and youwill,” he says with finality. “So help me God, Dimitri, if you try to stop this wedding, I will fucking destroy you.”
He thinks that his threat will scare me, force me into compliance. And maybe at some point in my life, it would have. But I’m not a scared, little boy anymore, and his idle threats no longer intimidate me. He wants my brother to marry Savina? Over my dead fucking body.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Savina
IT’S BEENTWO days since Dimitri’s father and his guards barged into the cabin and forced me to come back home. The happy, glass bubble that Dimitri and I had created for ourselves cracked and shattered into a million little pieces, leaving me struggling to come to terms with my new reality. And it seems that my new reality is that, in the matter of only a few days, I lost the two most important people in my life, and I have never felt more alone and scared than I do right now.
Darby still hasn’t been found, even though everyone keeps promising me that they’re doing everything in their power to find her. And Dimitri has been MIA ever since I got back. I haven’t heard from him, and I can only assume his father is pulling the strings and forbidding him to contact me.
As I sit around my empty apartment, wallowing in self-pity and fearing the worst for my best friend, I try to clean to keep myselfbusy. It’s not working; however, since I can’t stop checking my phone every few seconds to see if there’s an update on Darby. What I would give to have her walk through this door right now.
I feel so much guilt and remorse that it’s almost crippling. If I wouldn’t have tried to run away, Darby wouldn’t have gone after me, and she would be safe right now.It’s all my fault.
Tears stream down my face, and I angrily wipe them away. Crying right now isn’t going to solve anything, but it seems like it’s the only thing I’m good at anymore.
My cell phone rings, and I practically leap across the room for it. But when I see it’s my stepmother calling, I immediately hitdeny. She’s been incessantly calling, trying to convince me to go for a final dress fitting, but I usually end up just screaming obscenities at her until she hangs up on me.
I can’t eventhinkabout doing anything remotely normal right now, like trying on my wedding dress. Even the thought of it makes me sick to my stomach. I’m barely functioning, barely eating, barely sleeping. Worry and anxiety constantly gnaw at me every second, every minute, every hour of the day.
Everyone thought I would feel relieved by the fact that the wedding date was pushed back by a couple of weeks, but the truth is it’s going to happen whether I’m ready for it or not. And I am definitely not ready. I just have to wonder what kind of bride I’ll be when I don’t have my best friend by my side or the man I truly love.
God, what a mess.
When my phone rings for a second time, and I see it’s Cosette once again, I go into my settings and block her number. What she can’t seem to understand is that I don’t want to evenseemy wedding dress, let alone try it on and act like everything is fine when it clearly isn’t. Nothing is okay. And I don’t know if it ever will be again.
Moving my finger over to my messages, I send out yet another text to Dimitri. But like every message before it, the words “not delivered” appear beneath it almost instantly. Clearly, my number has been blocked on his phone, but I know he’s not the one who did it.I’m sure all of this is cutting him just as deep, and we’re both going to be living with the scars for the rest of our lives.
I remember the look in his eyes when we made love for the first time.Dimitri loves me.Even if he never says the words out loud, I know it deep in my soul.
And now I have to marry his brother.
A sob tears from my throat, and I raise my hand to try to stop it. Breaking down isn’t going to help any of this. Staring up at the ceiling, I force my tears back. I need to be strong. For Dimitri. For Darby. For me.
Suddenly, I hear a soft knock at the front door. My heart practically leaps into my throat as I jump up from the couch and run to the foyer.
I don’t even check the peephole before I unlock the door and swing it wide open. Darby stands there in the hallway, looking worse for wear. But the moment she sees me, her face instantly lights up. “Oh, thank god you’re okay!” she exclaims before throwing her arms around me and crushing me against her in a painful hug.
“I was so worried about you!” the two of us shout at the same time, and then we’re both crying and laughing as we hold each other.
We stay in that embrace for a long time, afraid of letting the other one go. Unspoken words travel between us. Darby never discusses her feelings; she’s not that type of person, but I hope that she feels everything I’m trying to convey to her in that hug.
Eventually, Darby pulls away first, walking into the apartment and to the kitchen. She grabs a glass from one of the cupboards and gets some water from the tap. Then, I watch in awe as she chugs the whole thing in one long pull.
“Are…are you okay?” I finally ask.
“I will be,” she answers quietly before setting the empty glass down in the sink. “I just hope my business survived while I was gone,” she comments.
Leave it to Darby to worry about her damn bar instead ofher own wellbeing.“I’m sure everything was fine while you were gone. You have great employees,” I try to assure her.
