“Did you have anyone in mind when you sculpted the face?” asked a stunning, blue-eyed woman with a brown chignon, the tips of her hair dyed lavender pink. She cradled a glass of red wine.
I turned to look at her and smiled. “What makes you ask that?”
“The cut of the cheekbones.” She motioned with the hand that held the wine in the statue’s direction. “The high brows, wide forehead, strong chin—it is symmetrical to a fault, more than King David. Almost godly in its beauty. I find it hard to believe a man like that exists.” She tapped her lips now, musing. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I would definitely remember if I’d met her before.
“Oh, he does,” I said, running a finger along the cold, metallic side of his face.
“I know.” She turned to me fully now, searching my eyes. “He’s my son.”
We both froze in our spots as I processed the information. My body prickled hotly, and my heart began to pound.
“Emilia?” I gasped.
She wrapped her arms around me, as if hugging were the most natural thing two strangers could do. I struggled to keep myself in check, knowing my tears were already planning their grand appearance. I had so much I wanted to ask her, yet somehow, I couldn’t find my voice.
Once we disconnected, she cupped my cheeks and smiled down at me. She had a lovely smile. Not only because it was aesthetically attractive, but because her goodness shone through it. I could see why Baron “Vicious” Spencer was so madly in love with her. Rumors about the way he worshipped her, how he’d built a cherry-blossom garden for her in their backyard, had traveled throughout higher society in Todos Santos. She had this quality about her that made people do crazy things to please her—an invisible hold.
“How are you?” she asked.
I couldn’t lie.
“Worried. Is he okay?” I dropped my voice so people around us couldn’t hear.
Some moved to other pieces in the exhibition, but most waited patiently for us to finish talking so they could speak to me. I found the situation bizarre. The entire point of making art was so I didn’t have to explain it.
She smiled, but said nothing. She pulled me behind the assemblage so we couldn’t be seen or heard.
“Lenora, you’re about to be showered with proposals from gallery owners in approximately two minutes, but I wanted to be the first to offer you a spot in my gallery in Los Angeles. You don’t have to answer now, of course, but I would be very excited to work with you. And I would like to take this opportunity to thank you again for all you did for Vaughn.”
I swallowed. “Is he going to be there? In Los Angeles, I mean?” I eyed her.
I hated that I was desperate, that I still cared. No. Scratch that. I hated that he was all I cared about. At this moment, I didn’t consider the merits of working in her gallery because it was prestigious or huge or offered a lot of work experience, God forbid.
Emilia shook her head. “I’m sorry, sweetie. Love is a trickster. It has a way of twisting you, doesn’t it?”
My head hung low. “Yeah.”
“The pain fades, eventually.”
“How do you know?”
“Once upon a time, I felt it, too.”
I squeezed her hand in mine. “All right. I’ll think about it. Thank you.”
She kissed my cheek and walked away.
The rest of the evening was a blur. I had business cards shoved into my hands, people asking for my number, my email, my price. By the time ten o’clock rolled around, my legs were trembling with exhaustion.
I leaned against Poppy for support, plucking a heel off for a moment and massaging my foot on a wince when she turned to me and said, “Papa called you a cab. Hurry up, now.”
“A cab?” I frowned. “Why?”
“He’s taking Pope for a drink to close up a deal.” She cocked her head toward the two of them, arching a meaningful brow. Dad and Pope were standing next to each other, shaking hands and laughing. I grinned. I was so happy Pope was going to stay close by, that we wouldn’t become glorified strangers who sent each other the occasional Christmas card. I looked back to her.
“What about you? Are you coming with?”
She scoffed. “Hard pass. After Pope has a drink with Papa, I intend to have something else with him, so I’m tagging along.”
“Are you serious?” My eyes widened.
“As a heart attack. Have you seen him? He is gorgeous, and he did a lot of growing up while we were in California. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Of course not, you slag.” I laughed.
She shrugged and strutted back to them. I shook my head. Rafferty and Poppy. Who would have thought?
In the cab, I let my mind wander to the fact that Pope had once touched me in a way I wasn’t sure Poppy was going to appreciate. I shot her a quick text saying there was something I needed to tell her, and perhaps she should hold off on the shagging session with my best friend.
Her reply came promptly.
Poppy: For God’s sake, don’t worry about us! Just go home.
Me: Pope and I did things. They meant nothing to either of us, but they still happened. I don’t want you to be blindsided.
Poppy: Buh-bye!
Upon arrival, I shoved the key in, pushed the door open, and locked it behind me. Sighing heavily, I shouldered out of my coat and hung it in the foyer, kicking my heels off once and for all.
“Argh, never doing the high-heel thing again,” I announced to the empty space.
After finding a glass of water, I went upstairs to my old childhood room, which barely reminded me of my younger years now. I identified that period of my life with Carlisle Castle more than anything else. I pushed the door open. As soon as I did, the glass slipped from my fingers, dropping noiselessly to the carpet.
A yelp escaped my throat.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” Vaughn said, perched on my bed, looking at me like nothing had happened at all.
Like he’d never left.
Like he hadn’t broken and entered into my house for the thousandth time.
Like there wasn’t a six hundred kilogram sculpture in the middle of my room—life-sized, gigantic, and absolutely gorgeous. I’d never seen anything like it. Violent shivers ran down my arms and back, and pure adrenaline dropped me to my knees as I tried to gulp a deep breath.
“It’s…”
“Us,” he said, standing from my bed and approaching me in measured, careful steps.
He looked good—healthy, tall, ripped, and still in his tattered black jeans and half-torn black shirt that couldn’t dim his brutally stunning features. He stopped in front of me, offering me his hand.
Tentatively, I took it.
I stood, stepped forward, and examined the statue.
It was the two of us, curled against each other as children, lying on a bed. We were twelve and thirteen and looked just the way we had the day I’d caught him and Harry. Only in the sculpture, he wasn’t standing above me, watching and threatening. Instead, we were entwined together, his face partly covered by my hair. I was breathing into his neck, my arms protectively circling his shoulders.
Everything had been realistically carved, to the point that it looked like a giant, living picture. I was sure if I put my fingers to our necks, I’d find a pulse. But when my gaze moved down to our stomachs, I noticed something weird. Our bottom parts were meshed together, mermaid-like, as if we were conjoined twins. We didn’t have legs. We couldn’t escape each other.
We were one.
The name of the sculpture was carved on its side:
Good Girl
Vaughn took me by the hand and walked me to my bed, where we slipped under my blanket, legs entwined, mimicking the statue—his face in my hair, my nose pressed against his neck. Home, I thought, and everything became clear.
That’s why Papa had taken Pope for an after-show drink. That’s why my sister had stayed behind. She had no interest at all in Rafferty. They wanted to give us our privacy.
Emilia knew, too. That’s why she didn’t tell me how Vaughn was doing.
It dawned on me that Vaughn and I had been ruthlessly patient with one another all those years. He’d waited for me to open up while I long-sufferingly watched as he crawled from behind the tall walls he’d built around himself.
“I started working on this statue before we were together. I started it before we’d even kissed. Before Jason. Before Arabella. Before everything, there was you,” he whispered into my hair. “You came before art. Before life. Definitely before hate.”
I shook with unrestrained tears. They were falling down my cheeks now, hot and furious and grateful. I pulled back reluctantly, catching his gaze.
“How could you think you are less than enough? How could you ever think that?” I asked, feeling my cheeks heating up with anger.
“I don’t think that anymore,” he said softly, caressing my hair. “Or if I am, I don’t care. I couldn’t go through with it. I couldn’t kill your uncle. I stood there with my weapon, and all I could think was what if he were right—if it was getting revenge or getting the girl…” He closed his magnificent blue eyes, taking a deep breath, opening them again. Determination zinged through them. “I’d rather have the girl.”
I hugged him to a point of suffocation, laugh-crying. When we disconnected again, I frowned. “So who did it?”
I still didn’t believe Uncle Harry had committed suicide.
Vaughn shrugged. “Perhaps another angry god.”
I nodded, catching his drift.
“Why did you leave if you hadn’t killed him? Where have you been all this time?” A pang of pain slashed through my heart. Those weeks apart felt like forever. They’d stretched longer than all the years I’d lived without him by my side.
“I stuck around, admiring you from afar—but never too far.” He took my chin between his thumb and index, bringing our lips together in a sweet, unhurried kiss. “Stayed at the cottage my parents rent downtown. I watched you walking into town with Rafferty, buying groceries, and hiking. I didn’t come close, because I knew that without me out of the way, you wouldn’t have your chance to display your work at Tate Modern. And frankly, you were far more deserving of this spot. I’ve been your shadow for so long, Lenora. I wanted you to bask in the sun a little.”
“My shadow?” I breathed.
He nodded. “Always there, following you, even when you didn’t see. Remember the day Arabella, Soren, and Alice crowded you in that locker room and a door slammed in the distance, making them leave? That was me. And they paid for what they did. I stole Soren’s Maserati and totaled it, causing his parents to almost disown him, and I planted cocaine in Alice and Arabella’s purses. Alice’s parents gave her so much shit they decided to send her to rehab instead of college. With Arabella, I got even better results. She got hooked.”
Silence.
“I’ve always loved you in my own fucked-up, destructive way.”
I closed my eyes, relishing the word as it rolled off his tongue. So fantastically rare, and forever mine.
“Say it again,” I whispered to his lips, cupping his cheeks.
“I love you,” he said, his tongue flicking my lips when he pronounced the L, opening them in the process. We kissed hungrily.
“Again,” I growled into his mouth, clutching his shirt, knowing it was wet because of my tears and not giving a damn.
“I.” He nuzzled his straight nose along my jawline.
“Love.” He flicked my ear with his tongue.
“You,” he finished, closing his mouth over mine in a passionate kiss that made my eyes roll in their sockets and took my breath away.
He moved on top of me, thrusting his groin into mine, pinning me down, and just like the sculpture, we became one again. He kicked his jeans off, I hoisted my dress, and a few minutes later, he was inside me, and we were perfectly tangled. He drove into me deeply, again and again and again, until I was delirious with pleasure and my heart soared and bloomed. I could feel my love-cells multiplying inside my chest. More. More. More.
This. This was what I wanted and needed. Vaughn Spencer, of all people. In my bed. Protecting me from my favorite monster.
Himself.