Scarlett
One. Two. Three. Four. I declare a blood war.
Ineedto scrub my eyes with bleach.
Everything is blending together now. One giant sea of color and blurry faces. Voices and pieces of conversation. The Nasdaq. Relentlessly chic restaurants and is the raw food craze really over? Nanny problems and wife problems and shoe sales and yoga classes and…
Jesus, there was a reason I left this behind.
I don’t get it.
Duke was supposed to be here, amongst all these faces, talking shop with a big fat cigar in his mouth. But I don’t see him, and he’s over an hour late now, and I’m the one with a big fat headache listening to this bullshit day in and day out.
I want to leave. To go home and do like the normal folk do. Crawl into my jammies and read a good book and watch something that’s trending on Twitter and then send out one of my own unique thoughts on the same thing everyone else is already talking about.
Because, pop culture.
There’s a woman next to me at the bar and she’s carrying on a revolting diatribe that reeks of self-importance to what I can only presume is her date.
She speaks six languages, she tells him.
And she’s traveled the world, and it’s just such a romantic notion and she wants everyone to know it as she regales him with the many countries that ‘feel like home’.
And it is obvious that she is indeed swept up in the fantasy of her own thoughts and words. And the love affair she has fallen prey to… is with herself.
I can’t stomach another moment of it.
But when I move to make my dash towards freedom, I’m struck by the presence of the man across the bar. In shadow, concealed in the dim, romantic light that people shell out small fortunes for.
His eyes are on me and there’s something about him that is familiar, even in the darkness. A shiver moves down my spine and I rub my arms, certain it’s the cold and not something else.
My instincts are telling me to go.
Only I can’t. Because I’m self-destructive. The mouse who craves the cheese in the trap and something doesn’t seem right but it moves for it, anyway.
It’s all so well-rehearsed, the way he steps out of the shadows and into the light. He’s been preparing for this grand entrance for a while now. It’s good. It’s perfect. And it’s terrifying, exactly the way he intended it to be.
My hands are clammy and my spine is steel and I’m trembling.
It’s happening.
The air in my lungs is gone and I can’t breathe and he isn’t even anywhere near me yet. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. It’s been too long. I’ve had years to stitch the broken parts of myself back together and now the thread feels weak and worn and tangled even as it wraps around my heart and squeezes.
There he stands. The nightmare within a nightmare. Polished and clean and all grown up. He’s different, but the same when he smiles. He likes my eyes on him and he always did love to be the center of attention.
Storm was right. Cop or not, Alexander has been looking for me.
All this time I’ve been hunting him. Plotting and planning and scheming behind the curtains, only to find out that I’m the one who is a fucking puppet. Surprise was supposed to be on my side. It was mine, and I made it mine, and none of this makes any fucking sense.
What else could he possibly want with me after all these years?
It isn’t atonement.
It isn’t regret that I see in those eyes either. The eyes that roam the curves of my body like he still owns that right.
You’d never guess that his family lost everything. He still dresses the part. Expensive trousers and a polo shirt he’ll probably only wear once. Loafers and a silver watch. He’s a walking, breathing cliché and his desperation stinks.
And that’s the thing. The trigger that slaps some sense back into me and reminds me who is in control here.
