I smile and nod at everyone we pass as we make our way to the center of the dance floor, not seeing faces, not recognizing anyone, just blurs of hair and eyes and colorful expensive gowns as we move. I can’t think, I can’t focus, and I don’t want to be here, but I can’t make myself drop his hand and walk away, walk back to the safety of Landry and the security of what I know. I don’t know this man, gripping my hand so tightly I can feel my bones rubbing together under my skin. I don’t recognize this man who called me by a name he swore he never would again because he knew how much it hurt.

I close my eyes when he finally stops walking and turns to face me, still hearing that voice and those words from what seems like a lifetime ago. His words gave me wings back then. They made me feel like I could do anything I set my mind to when he whispered them as he kissed his way down my body.

“Open your eyes and dance with me, Princess.”

I feel that one word like a punch to the face and it’s impossible to hide the wince this time. I covered it up the first time he used it with a fake smile and an angry stare, but I’m not that strong. I’m not that person anymore who could fight her way out of any situation, argue until her point was made or give a damn about being hurt.

I deserve the hurt. I deserve the pain of his words and the smirk on his face while he stands here in front of me, watching me wrestle with my decision. He knows I won’t storm off in a huff in front of all these people. He knows I won’t tell him to go to hell. Not because I’m worried someone will hear me, because I know he’s already been there. The scars that mar his beautiful face and the hardness in his eyes are proof that he’s lived through torment I’ll never understand, so I let him have this moment. I let him call me Princess even though it breaks off one more piece of my heart and tosses it into the pile of shattered fragments. I let him tug me roughly to him and I let him dig his fingers into my lower back as he holds me close and we begin swaying to the music.

Glancing around us, I give a few more polite smiles to other couples as they dance their way around us. I crane my neck to look through the crowd and make sure my mother is occupied and not getting a front row seat to this…whatever this is. I know she’ll hear about it. One of her many minions will make sure to scurry over to her and whisper in her ear, wrongfully assuming I’m doing something good for the charity tonight and expect her to be grateful. Presume I instigated this dance, in front of all these people, to show our support for the military hero who finally came home. They don’t know how much it will anger her. They have no idea I’ll be paying for this moment later after everyone has gone home to their happy homes with their happy families.

“Was it worth it, Princess?”

My eyes move away from the distractions all around us and I finally tip my head back and look up at his face. He’s scowling at me, his eyebrows clenched together and a curl in his lip indicating his disgust at what I’m doing, how I’m dressed, and what I’ve become.

“Was what worth it?” I ask, hating the quiver in my voice that lets him know I am not comfortable with this situation or with his question.

“Giving up. I just want to know if it was worth it, letting go of everything you’d ever wanted just to be one of her little fucking sheep.”

You’re here, you’re breathing, and you’re alive. It will always be worth it.

I swallow past the lump in my throat and force myself to continue looking into his eyes that feel like laser beams, burning a hole into my flesh.

“Don’t make this more difficult than it already is,” I beg, my hand slipping from his shoulder to rest over his heart, hoping the thump of it under my palm will give me the strength I need to hold my head high and not collapse into his arms and beg him to forgive me.

He laughs, but the sound doesn’t match the anger in his eyes.

“Princess, you wouldn’t know difficult if it walked in here and smacked you across the face. While you were sitting here all nice and cozy in your fancy castle in your perfect, pathetic world, helping your mother toss her money around, I was fighting for my life. Fighting for one more fucking breath just so I could come back here to you. But there’s nothing left, is there?”

I bite down on the inside of my cheek before the sting of his words fills my eyes with tears. My eyes leave his to glance at my left hand, which is still resting against his chest, to stare at the watch on my wrist. I wish I could let go of his hand so I could run my fingers over the inside band. It’s my security, my reminder, and the only thing that keeps me grounded and stops me from losing my sanity. I try not to focus on what he said about fighting his way back to me. I can’t allow myself even a moment of weakness to believe that’s true. The hurt and anger over how he left me are the only things I have left. They’re the only things stopping me from wrapping my arms around him and telling him the truth.

“You’re right,” I finally say, my eyes still on my watch. “There’s nothing left. Maybe it wasn’t even there to begin with. I chose a different path because it was easier.”

There’s nothing left because you took it all with you. And now that you’re back, I can’t even reach out and grab it without ruining both of us.

“I have an easy life,” I lie, forcing my eyes away from my watch and back up to his furious ones. “I have a good man who makes it easy to love him and won’t leave me. I have a good job that’s easy to do. It’s all good and I’m happy.”

He scoffs and shakes his head at me, his arm tightening around my body until I realize we’re no longer dancing. We’re standing in place in the middle of the dance floor and I want to run. Dancing with him, even if it was just moving from side to side, brings back too many memories of other times we moved like that. Times when I laughed and loved and felt something, anything.

“You’re not happy, you’re miserable,” he growls, lowering his head closer to mine until I can feel his breath on my face. He smells like bourbon and peppermint and I want to drown in that smell until it washes everything away. “You’re sad and miserable and pathetic. I can’t believe I fought so hard to come back to this. I can’t believe you can stand here, supporting that woman, when you know what she did.”

He finally drops my hand, removes his arm from around me, and takes a step back as the band finishes their song and everyone claps for them. A chill of fear works its way up my spine, wondering what he means about knowing what my mother did. Does he know about the threats she’s held over my head? It doesn’t make sense. How could he? Why would he still be so angry with me if he knew?

I let his words of hate give me the strength I need to take my own step away from him. Everything inside me is screaming to deny what he said so he’ll look at me with love instead of hate, but I can’t do that. I can do nothing but let him have this moment and this anger that he so rightfully deserves and hope to God he doesn’t know about the bargains I’ve made with my mother to keep him safe. He’ll never be able to keep quiet if he knows, and she’ll stop at nothing to make sure he does.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I hope you can find your own happiness and move on, like I have.”

I see him clench his jaw before I turn and walk away, gently pushing my way through all the people as the band starts back up again. I hear people say my name but I don’t stop moving through the ballroom. I see Meredith out of the corner of my eye, her hands on her hips and fire in her eyes as I move quickly past her, out into the foyer and across the hall to a small office with the door closed. I just need a moment alone, to remember how to breathe and to remember how to push the hurt away so I can go back out there and do my job. Hold my head high with a smile on my face and pretend like dancing with Eli, being close to Eli, and letting him rain insults down on me, didn’t cut me in half.

As soon as I turn the handle and push open the office door, I feel something solid slam into me from behind, moving me faster into the dark room. I trip over my feet and an arm slides around my waist to steady me before whirling me around. I smell his soap and recognize his firm hold on me before the moonlight shining in the floor-to-ceiling windows behind me illuminates the shadow of his face, but that doesn’t stop the rapid thumping of my heart as the door is kicked shut with a slam and my body is turned and pushed roughly against the wall next to it. With the first touch of his hands, the first feel of the heat from his skin against me, I’m lost. I’m drowning in a pool of desire I’ve only ever felt with him, and I never want to come up for air. Every inch of my body is on fire, begging for more, needing everything I’ve been missing, but knowing everything about this moment is wrong. This can’t happen. I can’t want this and I certainly can’t act on what I’m feeling.

Before I can shove him away, shout at him, and tell him to let me go, his mouth is on mine. His chest pins my arms between us and I clutch a fistful of his dress shirt in my hands when my lips automatically part for him. His tongue quickly pushes into my mouth and I feel tears prickling behind my eyelids when I taste him, so familiar and so beautiful it breaks off yet another piece of my heart. One of his hands moves from around my waist and I feel the heat from his palm as it slides against the side of my neck to the back, his fingers gripping tightly to the hair at the base of my skull to hold my head in place. His kiss is punishing and hard and I can do nothing but hold tightly to the front of his shirt as our tongues battle together and I try to remember how to breathe.

His arm that holds me close loosens slightly until I feel his hand skim down my spine, clutch my ass, and pull the lower half of my body up and against his hips. His hardness presses into me and every nerve and cell in my body I thought had long since died suddenly fire back to life as I push myself into him, wanting to feel more, needing to feel everything as our tongues swirl together and push deeper.

This kiss is killing me.

This kiss is bringing me back to life.

His fingers dig into my ass as he moves me against him and his hand in my hair tightens, the pain immediately replaced by the pleasure only his mouth and his lips and his tongue can give me. My body loses all of its stiffness and I melt into him, molding my body to his from thigh to chest until I can’t tell where he ends and I begin. That’s how it always was with us when we came together and it’s no different now after years of being apart, no matter what kind of hurt lies between us. He makes me feel whole, he closes up wounds while at the same time ripping them wide open…and I never want it to stop.

I match the intensity of his kiss, sucking his tongue into my mouth after he does the same to me, biting his lower lip after he nips at my own, letting his breath with a hint of bourbon on it and his lips tasting faintly of peppermint breathe me back to life even though I know, somewhere in the back of my mind, that I’m not allowed to have this. I’m not allowed to be this person who loses herself in this man. As our tongues blend together and our heads move from one side to the other to get the best angle for the kiss, I feel myself getting wet for him, I feel my legs shaking with the need to wrap my thighs around his waist and let him sink inside me. It’s been so long since I’ve felt something like this, only with him and never with anyone else, that I can’t stop a gentle moan from floating out of my mouth and into his.

The muffled music and murmur of voices on the other side of the door feel like they’re a million miles away, and my soft moan sounds like an explosion in the quiet room, suddenly so loud and needy.

Eli immediately pulls his mouth away from mine, drops his hold on my hair and his hand from my ass, stumbling a few feet away from me, putting so much distance between us I feel like I’ll never be able to reach him. I have to lock my knees and press my back as hard as I can into the wall behind me just to stay upright and not collapse on the floor at his feet. I’m light-headed and I can’t stop my hands from shaking as I reach up and brush my hair out of my face that his quick departure caused.

My head thumps back against the wall and I wrap my arms around my body to try and hold myself together.

“It’s all good and you’re happy, huh? You want me to move on, just like you have?” Eli asks in a low, angry voice.

He moves back to me in a rush and I shrink away from him as much as the hard wall at my back will allow. Without his mouth on mine and his body pressed into me, all the reasons why I can’t let myself have him come rushing back, the coldness seeping into my pores and taking root in my heart.

His face is right in front of mine, our noses almost touching as his eyes search mine and I hold my breath.

“Bullshit,” he whispers. “Does your boyfriend who’s so easy to love make you moan like that when he fucks you? Does walking around with a stick up your ass acting like you’re better than everyone else just like your mother really make you happy? You acted like you’d rather be skinned alive than move around on that dance floor. And don’t try to tell me it was because of your dance partner when that goddamn kiss proves otherwise. I remember a woman whose entire face lit up as soon as she heard music. Who could lose herself in dancing and it was the most beautiful fucking thing I’d ever seen in my life. She came alive when she danced and those fucking legs of hers that went on for days defied the laws of gravity.”

He holds my stare for a few more seconds until he finally moves away and I can let out the breath I was holding. My bottom lip shakes with the need to scream and cry when he turns from me, grabs the handle of the door, and yanks it open so roughly it slams into the opposite wall.

“You’re not happy. Best thing about you right now is that at least you still have the most beautiful damn legs I’ve ever seen. Too bad you chose to stop using them.”

I watch him walk out into the brightly lit hallway and turn toward the double French doors that will lead him out of the house, my body sliding down the wall until my butt hits the ground. My bad leg is straight out in front of me and I bend my good leg, wrap my arms around it, and bury my face in the material of my dress that covers my knee. Eli’s parting shot hit its mark right in the center of my chest, breaking off the last remaining pieces of my heart as the memory of another night, one filled with thunder and tears and pain, crashes through my mind.