Parsons had the heat running.He didn’t comment on my bare feet or the pine needles in my hair.Didn’t ask where I’d been or what I’d done.That was why I paid him three times what any other driver made.
“Home,” I said, and settled back into the leather seat.
The wolf was finally quiet, satisfied now that blood had been pumping and muscles had burned.Sometimes promises weren’t enough.The beast needed to run.
But underneath the calm, something that I didn’t want to name stirred to life.
She was supposed to be a pawn.A weapon.A means to an end.
She wasn’t supposed to make me want things I’d sworn I’d never want again.
I stared out the window as the hotel disappeared behind us.Somewhere in there, Lena Hughes was holding my business card, trying to decide if I was her salvation or her destruction.
The answer was both.
I was going to save her.And I was going to destroy her.
I just hadn’t decided which one I’d do first.
6
LENA
I couldn’t stop thinking about his hands.
Three days since the labyrinth.Three days since Raphael Antonov had cornered me in the dark and offered me a lifeline wrapped in thorns.Three days since he’d reached for my face and stopped an inch away, close enough that I could feel the heat of his skin.
I’d wanted him to touch me.That was the part I couldn’t forgive myself for.
Every night since, I’d lain awake replaying it.The way he’d moved through the hedges like he owned them.Like he owned everything.The low rasp of his voice when he said my name.The scent of him, something dark and expensive that I couldn’t identify but couldn’t forget either.
I kept telling myself I was scared of him.And I was.But fear didn’t make your breath catch.Fear didn’t make heat pool low in your belly when you remembered the way a man looked at you.
The business card sat on my nightstand like an accusation.Black cardstock.Silver lettering.I’d picked it up a hundred times, memorized the phone number, imagined dialing it.Then I’d put it back down, convinced I’d find another way.
There had to be another way.
I threw myself into work.Reviewed the books again, searching for expenses I could cut.Called vendors to renegotiate contracts we’d already renegotiated.Pitched a corporate retreat package to every company in a fifty-mile radius.
Nothing was enough.The numbers didn’t lie.We were bleeding money faster than I could staunch the wound, and the payment deadline was five days away.
The mail arrived on Thursday morning.I sorted through it at the front desk, separating bills from junk from the occasional guest inquiry.My hands stopped when I saw the envelope.
UofM.Office of the Bursar.
I knew what it was before I opened it.First semester tuition.I’d been so excited when I packed my bags back in the summer, tossing out my bikinis because Huntington Harbor’s beaches were all cold pebbles and frigid water.That girl was a stranger now.
I unfolded the statement.The number stared back at me.Forty-two thousand dollars.Room, board, tuition, fees.My father had always handled these things.I didn’t even know if he’d already paid it, or if this was a reminder, or if I was supposed to set up a payment plan.
I didn’t know anything anymore.
I folded the bill carefully and slipped it into my pocket.Couldn’t throw it away.Couldn’t deal with it either.Another impossible number to add to the pile.
I wouldn’t be going to Huntington Harbor.Wouldn’t be going anywhere.My future had narrowed to this hotel, this debt, this impossible situation my father had left me to clean up.
The worst part was I couldn’t even be angry at him anymore.He was lying in a hospital bed, suspended between life and death, and all I could do was watch everything he’d built crumble around me.
I was so tired of watching things crumble.
