Chapter Sixteen
When I catch my breath, I don’t waste my opportunity. I stand on wavery legs and head straight for the copper liquor cart. There are a large assortment of bottles and decanters, some of them with labels. Jack Daniels and Anejo Tequila.
The only alcohol I ever tasted is a few stolen sips of champagne at a society party. I can’t know that these bottles are expensive, except the rest of the house is expensive. And I suspect that a few of the bottles are made of actual gold and platinum, not just colored metal. There’s a crown of small diamonds on one of them. God, does he just throw this away when he’s drunk it all? The excess of the wealthy bothered me sometimes, but it seems almost cruel now that I’m broke.
Excess or not, I’m not going to drink his super expensive alcohol. For all I know he’d bill me for every thousand-dollar sip. He isn’t actually that petty, especially with the casual way he accepted the responsibility of a nurse for my father without argument. But I still would feel too strange even touching those bottles, like a small child playing with her mother’s jewelry.
Near the back of the cart, tucked behind some wine, I spot a plain-looking bottle of clear liquid. There’s a label, but it’s scrawled by hand, the blue ink faded. I squint and try to make out the words. The date’s about ten years ago—probably the newest alcohol on this cart. And definitely the cheapest. It’s almost full. He wouldn’t notice if I took a small shot. He wouldn’t care.
At least that’s what I tell myself when I rummage through the glasses for the smallest one. It’s small and square-shaped with a thick, heavy bottom. I twist open the top and pour a splash in. So small.
“Here’s to nothing,” I murmur before throwing back the shot the way I’ve seen in movies.
The liquid burns down my throat and then throughout my body, spreading like a flame, and I cough, struggling to breathe. Dear God, that tastes like rubbing alcohol. If rubbing alcohol were on fire. That can’t be how alcohol is supposed to taste, can it? No wonder he had this one shoved to the back.
I can’t deny that as the burn fades I feel a little more relaxed. I suppose that means it’s doing its job. If this is what alcohol does to people, no wonder they drink.
Liquid courage. That’s what it’s called, and I use the courage to pick up the silver phone. Look at that, the rotary circle actually turns. I don’t know the number to the night nurse who’s supposedly there. And our landline was one of the first expenses to go when things turned bad.
Instead I dial Justin, because he’s where I need him to be. It’s almost sweet, if he hadn’t turned his back on me when I needed him most.
“Hello?” His voice sounds the same. We might be meeting up for coffee on one of his visits in town. He might be greeting someone at a party while I smile from beside him.
A pang of regret hits my chest. “It’s me.”
“There you are. God, Avery, I’ve been calling you. What the hell is going on?”
I take another drink and find it doesn’t burn quite as hot this time. The pain is almost pleasant. “Are you still at my house? Did a nurse show up there?”
“Yeah, about the same time as I got here. She was dressed in scrubs or something, and she had a key, but she said I had to wait outside in my car.”
At least Gabriel was telling the truth about getting a nurse for my father. In fact if that timing is correct, the nurse actually showed up before the auction finished. Maybe that was Damon’s doing, preparing for what would surely follow. He wouldn’t have wanted anything to interfere with his percentage.
“I’m going to be gone for a little while. A month.”
“A month? What are you talking about, Avery? And where the hell are you?”
The exasperation in his voice makes me wince. At one time I would have bent backward to placate him, to reassure him that his needs came first. Now I take another drink. “It’s kind of a long story.”
“You sound funny. Are you… You aren’t drinking, are you?”
“It’s so good, Justin,” I whisper as if I’m letting him in on a secret. “So bad but so good.”
He swears, using words I’ve never heard him use. “Are you at an event?”
The museum donor event. A charity dinner that costs a thousand dollars a plate. That’s what he means, and I can’t help the giggle that bubbles up. It doesn’t even feel awful anymore, just kind of funny. “Everyone stopped talking to me around the time you did. We don’t get invited anymore, and even if we did, we couldn’t afford to go.”
I have this random picture in my head of pushing my dad’s hospital bed like it’s a wheelchair, smiling at everyone while we eat our fast-food burgers stashed in my purse. Whatever’s in this bottle tastes like battery acid, but it feels amazing.
“Avery, listen to me,” he says in this exasperated voice that means he’s had to repeat himself. Just for that I take another drink. “Tell me where you are and I’ll come get you.”
Would he really? I don’t even know where the limo drove us, but if he found Gabriel Miller’s address, would he come riding up on a white steed? I don’t know if I believe that he wanted to get back together, or that he still would once he sees inside my house. All those empty rooms. We could have one of those flash raves where they fill the room with soap suds and save on cleaning.
“Justin,” I say in what I hope is my serious voice. I make the n sound last a long time to be sure. “Would you have bid on me? Do you even have a million dollars?”
“What are you talking about?” he says, his voice getting louder.
As if I can’t hear him, which I totally can. I take another gulp, larger this time. That’s my new drinking game—a drink whenever he gets mad. If I’d done this at our last few appearances, I would have had a much better time.
And why did I never notice that he called our dates appearances?
“I’m talking about social climbing,” I say, examining the bottom of the cup. All gone. “You are a social climber. And I am a social faller.”
Then I collapse into a fit of giggles. Somehow the silver phone handle ends up dangling off the end table, Justin’s voice a cartoonish buzz. I picture him as a tiny little man on my shoulder, like when an angel and a devil appear to whisper advice in your ear. Would he be the angel? Candy would definitely be the devil.
The chandelier is so big. It must weigh like eight tons. I realize I’m lying on the floor, looking up at it. What if it fell on me right now? Game over. That’s what would happen. No maze, no sword. No sailing back with a white flag on my ship.
That was the agreement Theseus made with his father. If he was successful in killing the Minotaur, he would wave a white flag from his ship on return. Except in all the excitement he forgot. His father watched the ship approach with so much grief he killed himself.
That’s always been the saddest part of the story. It was all for nothing. I’ll wave the white flag, Daddy. And I’d never let him know what I did to save the house. I didn’t want him to die.
“Christ,” a voice says, low and rumbly. Not at all like the tiny angel Justin.
Gabriel’s face fills the space above my head, blocking the millions of lights from the chandelier.
“Oh, hi.”
He looks incredulous. “You’re drunk.”
“I can’t be drunk. I only had one glass. And don’t worry, I drank the cheap stuff.”
The empty glass must have rolled under the rug. He picks it up and sniffs. “You drank moonshine?” He makes a low growling sound. “This was the last bottle my dad made before he died.”
My mouth drops open. “Oh my God, the white flag.”
His gaze narrows on the phone. “Who did you call?” He doesn’t wait for me to answer but strides over to pick up the hanging shiny handset. “Who is this?”
“Don’t you like caller ID?” I ask curiously. The silver rotary phone is pretty, but it doesn’t seem practical. Then again he just paid one million dollars to have sex with me. Maybe practicality isn’t a priority for him.
He slams the phone down, vibrating with some kind of intense emotion. “Who. Did. You. Call?”
I grew up around important men. Powerful men. Angry men. I learned to speak softly, to tread lightly. To smile at them and touch their arm, as if everything I do is to placate them. It’s not because I think they’re better than me. It just makes life easier. Then I disappear into my books, into the myths that make up a fantastical world so far removed from my own.
Except somehow I’ve stepped into that world—a place of gods and monsters. My diplomacy might serve me well now, except the moonshine seems to have stripped it all away.
“I called my fiancé, Mr. Nosy Pants.”
His eyes darken. “He isn’t your fiancé anymore.”
“He said he wants to get back together.”
Gabriel comes to stand directly over me, his gaze intense. “That’s not happening. I bought you. You’re fucking mine. Got it?”
I giggle. “He’s going to be so mad once he finds out. Men are always so mad.”
“He can fucking deal with me if he has a problem with it.”
My fingers form a frame in front of me, and I look at him between them. “You’re handsome for a monster.”
“Thank you,” he says through gritted teeth. “Do you want to get up off the floor now?”
I manage to sit up, but then the world spins. “I’m thirsty. I need more of that moonshine.”
“No.”
“Are you saving it?” I whisper. “Since it’s the last moonshine your daddy made?”
“I was,” he says, his voice dry.
I nod. “I can drink the Crown Royal instead. Or the tequila. I’ve never had tequila.”
“No more drinks for you. It’s bedtime.”
“What? That’s so unfair.” I haven’t had a bedtime since I graduated from high school. And even though I usually went to bed by curfew at college, he doesn’t have to know that. “I’m not even sleepy.”
As the words leave my lips, a wave of tiredness washes over me. It feels like more than the normal amount of sleep that you feel at the end of the night. This feels like I’ve been walking through the desert for days. It weighs down my eyelids until I’m looking at Gabriel through half-mast.
He shakes his head. “Do not throw up on me.”
I don’t know what he means until his hands slide under my legs. Then behind my shoulders. And I’m in the air, held only by his strength. I curl myself against his linen shirt, breathing in the musky scent of him. “You smell good.”
“You smell like a distillery.”
He’s taking me somewhere upstairs, and I close my eyes. “It will hurt less like this.”
“It won’t hurt at all,” he says, softer now. “I’m putting you to bed.”
“Because you want to own a virgin,” I say, repeating him.
He doesn’t answer, nudging a door open. I glance around to see heavy brocade curtains and a high bed in the middle of the room. Lavender flowers adorn the thick down comforter, setting off the pale yellow vertical stripes on the wall. Pretty.
“Too pretty for you,” I murmured.
“You’re probably right about that,” he says, sounding amused.
“I’m going to kill you.”
“Is that right?” he says, sounding less amused.
“With a sword.”
“And where are you going to get a sword?” He lays me down on sheets that feel outrageously cool against my heated skin. Then he pulls up the blanket. I think it’s going to be too hot, but once they’re on top of me, they feel just right.
“I haven’t figured that out,” I say with a sigh. It’s a puzzle, that’s for sure. “But I don’t want to kill you. I just don’t want to die.”
He’s silent a moment, and I peek one eye open at him. He’s looking at me with a strange expression. I would almost describe it as tender if he didn’t have the head of a bull.
“Give me the jacket,” he says gently.
Only then do I remember the jacket that’s wrapped around me. It has been ever since the auction. I guess it’s his way of claiming me, of marking me. So why does he want it back? I know he won the auction, but the jacket feels like my trophy.
“Do I have to?”
“You’ll be more comfortable.”
“Everything feels so good. You should have some of that moonshine.”
“I’ll think about it,” he says roughly. “The jacket?”
“Don’t look,” I warn him.
After a moment he turns and faces the door. Only then do I shrug out of the big suit jacket. God, his shoulders must be massive to fit this. And his biceps. God. I can see them through his shirt, bulging. It looks obscene. Like if there was a Playboy magazine spread open on the bed, his muscled forearms would be more explicit.
I put the jacket on top of the bedspread and snuggle back under the blanket, all the way up to my neck. This is the softest bed I’ve ever lain in. “Ready.”
He turns around and picks up the jacket. Then he stands there looking at the fabric in his hands as if he can’t quite figure something out. As if he can’t quite figure me out, even though I’m so simple. Simple girl, simple dreams. College, marriage, kids. A family—a real family, not just a dad who works through dinner most days. He’s the mystery.
I glance at the other side of the bed. “Are you going to sleep…you know? Over there?”
He looks at the empty space on the bed, his expression brooding. “No.”
That makes sense, because this can’t be his room. It’s way too pretty. Way too feminine. He probably sleeps somewhere with glass and sleek black lines. With a TV set into the wall and real fur on the bed. Maybe there are animal horns nailed to the wall.
“Avery,” he says, still holding the jacket like it’s something precious.
I blink as sleep overtakes me. “Yes?”
“Be careful. I’m more dangerous than you know.”
The slightest awareness creeps back into me, along with a cold feeling. I shiver beneath the down blanket. I can sense how dangerous he is, but the knowledge doesn’t help me. I’m trapped here. I’m his. “Did you hurt my dad?”
“He deserved everything I did to him.”
My fists clench beneath the covers. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I don’t want you to die either.”
He looks at me for another moment before turning to leave. The lights go dark, and my mind blurs. I know this is important, that he told me something important, but the moonshine turned my brain to mush. Sleep is inky and dark, thick as it swallows me whole.
Be careful, he said, but even as I drift away, I can’t remember why.