ROYAL (4 page)

As per usual.

I imagine him sitting in a bar somewhere, wearing that
disarming, dimpled smile that makes all the girls weak in the knees. I imagine
him buying some pretty blonde with fake tits up to her chin a fruity little
cocktail that matches her lipstick. I imagine he’s going to take her home
tonight, fuck her so hard that she thinks it actually means something, and then
tell her how sexy she is in the morning when she makes him breakfast in nothing
but his t-shirt.

In my mind,
that’s
the kind of man he’s become.

I bet he doesn’t have a care in the world. I bet he doesn’t
even think about me.

Truth is, I don’t know where he is tonight. All I know is .
. .

I still love him.

And I hate him.

I hate him, I hate him, I hate him.

Royal

I pull my cap down and duck behind my steering wheel when I
see the flash of her Subaru headlights barreling down the road. The car veers,
bouncing into the driveway and coming to a forced stop. In the dark and away
from any streetlights, I watch as Demi Rosewood storms out of her car with a
brown paper bag tucked under one arm.

My heart hammers the way it always does when I see her.

The twitch of my fingers threatens to lunge for the door
handle.

Maybe this time . . .

Hurried steps carry her to the front door.

In an instant, she’s gone.

I pull in a lungful of dry, November air and start my
engine. The seat beneath me vibrates and the heat kicks on.

Tonight is not the night.

Slinking back in my seat, I linger a little longer, watching
the lights snap on and off as she makes her way through her suburban mini
mansion. First the hall, then the kitchen, then an upstairs bedroom. Within
minutes, her house darkens again. Only the telltale flicker of a TV screen from
a bedroom window offers a cozy glow.

The tightness in my chest spreads, creeping up my neck. I
force myself to look away. My foot rests on the brake, and I shift out of park
and slam right back.

I can’t keep doing this.

For seven years, I’ve stayed away. For almost five years,
I’ve watched her from a distance, promising myself that as long as she was
happy, I would never intervene.

But she’s
alone
up
there now.

And it’s all because of me.

I have to fix this.

Demi

I chase four shots of cheap vodka with a glass of pulpy,
bitter orange juice. The shit hasn’t even hit my bloodstream and already I want
to puke. I’m a wine girl, but tonight called for something stronger, quicker. A
quick fix to bandage the parts of me that hurt.

This stuff is like rocket fuel, burning through my veins and
heating me from the inside out.

Damn. I knew it’d be quick, but not that quick.

Satisfied, I head up and change into an old t-shirt and
cotton pajama pants with ironic little pink hearts up and down the leg and
settle into my bed for some mind-numbing TV watching. I can’t fall asleep to
the sound of silence and my own thoughts tonight. Canned laughter should do the
trick.

Warmth blooms from my head and neck, spreading down my arms
in real time.

My body relaxes for the first time in days.

The jersey sheets on our bed are freezing. This time of
year, I usually insisted we switch to flannel, but Brooks always preferred
sleeping naked in a bed that felt like old t-shirts, and I never argued because
Mom always told me to pick my battles.

I hesitate before running my hand along Brooks’s side of the
bed. Three nights ago, everything was on track, the wheels of our future as
husband and wife set in motion.

Last weekend, he came home with a cookie dough ice cream
cake for no reason other than the fact that I’d casually mentioned craving one
the day before when a coupon came in the mail for my favorite ice cream shop in
Glidden. I didn’t care so much about the ice cream cake as I did about the fact
that he went out of his way for me.

 
And four
mornings ago, he made me a banana protein smoothie on his way out the door for
work because he knew my hair dryer went out and I was running late for work and
wouldn’t have time for breakfast.

How could he be so sweet and then change his mind about me?

I lie in bed, questioning whether or not things were ever
really that bad. I’m sure I have an entire stockpile of shitty things Brooks
has done over the year, all tucked away in the back of my mind, ready for the
plucking at just the right moment.

But I can’t seem to recall a single one right now.

It’s funny. The second someone’s taken from your life, you
only remember the good.

Fear or guilt or the threat of an ominous God watching my
every move keeps me from focusing on the bad.

If I sit here long enough, I could probably ruminate about
all the times he came home late from work without so much as a phone call, the
way he insisted on controlling our finances like I was some 1950s housewife.
The way his clothes took up three-fourths of our closet. His spoiled, only-child
temper when he didn’t get his way. His propensity for pretention at all the
wrong moments, like the time he volunteered at a soup kitchen dressed in head
to toe Armani and reeking of two-hundred-dollar cologne.

But if I dwell on those things too much, and Brooks leaves
this world, I’ll never forgive myself.

He’s not perfect, and neither am I.

And now is not the time for judgment.

I flip my pillow to a fresh, cool side and pull the covers
up to my chin. I’m artificially safe like this, all warm and burrowed. I’m
getting drunker by the minute. With each passing second, my mind quiets and my
body feels lighter. It’s temporary, but I’ll take it.

My lids weigh down as I struggle to stay awake to catch the
last five minutes of some handsome, late night comedian interviewing
celebrities, but it’s an uphill battle. Everything darkens around me, wrapping
me up in a world void of everything that could possibly hurt.

Ding-dong.

The ricochet of my heart into my throat brings me back to
life. No one rings my door this late at night.

Brooks.

I know it. I feel it. Someone’s come to tell me he passed. My
stomach sinks.

Knock, knock,
knock.

I grab a robe off the bathroom door and hold onto the wall
as I stumble toward the stairs. The ground beneath my feet sways and undulates.
Everything around me spins. It’s a miracle I make it to the front door without
throwing up all over the rug.

This is what I get for drinking on an empty stomach.

With one hand on the doorknob, I take a deep breath and
prepare myself for what’s about to happen next. My body is braced for a
hurricane, every muscle tensing until it aches. I can prepare my outside for
the delivery of bad news, but I have no idea how to prepare the inside.

Only all the cheap liquor in the world can’t prepare me for
what I see on the other side.

The contents of my stomach swirl, and this time, it’s not
the alcohol.

“Royal.” I say his name,
out
loud
, for the first time in
years
.

He clears his throat, his familiar stormy eyes narrowing. “Demi.”

I’m hallucinating.

This isn’t real.

The alcohol is fucking with me, and I’m having some trippy
dream.

Lightheadedness threatens to knock me off my feet. I lean
into the doorway, folding my arms to resist the instinctive urge to fix the
messy strands of unwashed hair that hang into my face.

I hate how good he looks. His shoulders are broader than
they used to be. The hint of stubble on his chiseled face. The hollows of his
cheekbones, deeper than ever. Full head of thick, dark hair, cut tight on the
sides and long on top. It’s messy, but in a sexy way. And his face has enough
of a five o’clock shadow to tell me either he doesn’t care, or he’s a man with
other priorities. I don’t know if I want to know what those are.

Royal’s hands are jammed into the front pockets of his pants,
but he doesn’t look nervous. If his heart is beating in his chest as hard as
mine is, he doesn’t show it.

“What are you doing here?” My voice is breathy. I suck in
air. “How’d you know where I live?”

I realize my second question is moronic in this day and age,
but I can hardly think when he’s standing there, looking at me like that. He
keeps his cool. I unravel before his very eyes.

A cool sweat glazes my palms before lacing across my
forehead. I need to fan myself, but I’m paralyzed. How can he just stand there,
acting like we just saw each other yesterday?

It hits me as my eyes lock in his. I clearly missed him more
than he missed me. Seeing me doesn’t faze him or excite him or get him worked
up.

“Can I come in?” He looks past my right shoulder. If he’s
done his research, he’ll know this house is solely in Brooks’s name. I don’t
own it. Maybe he’s looking for Brooks. He has to know that Brooks lives here
too.

Doesn’t matter. He’s not coming in.

Royal Lockhart doesn’t get to abandon me and then show up
like we’re suddenly old friends.

Not now, not ever.

“Nope.” I step back, my hand on the door, ready to slam it
in his face. He places his hand out to stop it, but it only serves to piss me
off even more. He’s lucky I don’t tell him exactly what I think of him.

And I would.

If my mind wasn’t going a thousand miles per hour. I can’t
make sense of any of my thoughts. They’re going this way. And that way. And
this way. And back. They’re racing in circles, some lapping others.

I want to slap him.

I want to kiss him.

I want to kick him and punch him, and then I want him to
wrap his big, strong, full-grown man arms around me and let him squeeze me
tight until I calm down. I want to feel the stubble on his chin scratch my
forehead as he kisses it, and I want to feel the heat of his breath on the top
of my head, because I’m convinced it’s the only thing that could prove he’s
really, truly standing before me.

Maybe it’s the adrenaline mixing with the alcohol, but my
course of action becomes clear, and I place a death grip on the doorknob, ready
to slam this thing in his face with all my might.

I catch a glimpse of his face in the milliseconds before the
door slams. He studies me, his chest rising and falling, and his lips straight,
almost sympathetic. A whiff of his cologne floats through the doorway, and I
don’t recognize it. It’s unfamiliar, and I’m irrationally pissed at him for it.
I bet some ex-girlfriend picked it out.

And she was probably pretty, because guys who look like
Royal can have any woman they want. I bet she wears Lululemon yoga pants and
her topknots are always perfect, and I bet she holds his hand when he takes her
shopping at the mall, and she smiles because she’s accessorizing her perfect
little outfit with the kind of man most other women could only ever dream of.

Next time I’m at Neiman’s, I am
not
walking down the cologne aisle and spritzing my wrist with his old
cologne for the hundredth time. Like a crazy person.

He doesn’t look the same, doesn’t smell the same. Despite
his obnoxiously effortless good looks, he doesn’t fit the image of the young
man I fell in love with as a hopeless teenager. He’s harder. His face wears
experience. His eyes are wiser, crinkly at the corners.

Sadder.

Or maybe he’s reacting to how utterly pathetic I look right
now, barely able to stand and refusing to brush the hair from my eyes.

“I don’t know you.” I grit my words. “You’re a stranger to
me.”

The door slams hard. Harder than I intended. I lock the
deadbolt and twist the lock button on the handle before pressing my ear against
the wood, waiting. Listening for footsteps crunching in the snow-covered front
steps.

Seven years has led to this.

A door in a face.

A thousand times I’d imagined this moment. It was grander.
More self-assured. I looked good. He looked awful. I walked away satiated. He
stood, tail tucked. There was closure involved. A realization that I was
finally over him. In my daydreams, I moved on with my life once and for all,
never giving Royal Lockhart a second thought.

I slink down the door and crumble to a defeated pile on the
ground, burying my face in my hands.

But I don’t cry. I’m too exhausted.

“Demi.” The voice of a man penetrates the wooden door. He
doesn’t even sound the same.

I guess I shouldn’t expect a twenty-six-year-old to sound
like a nineteen-year-old, but I wasn’t prepared for that.

“Go. Away.”

“I need to talk to you.”

I huff, throwing my hands in the air to an invisible
audience.

“What do you want now? After all this time?” I call out. My
hands fall against the front of my thighs.

It kills me that I want to know what he came here for.

Now.

After seven years of radio silence.

He doesn’t deserve a minute of my time, but I deserve
answers.

“Let me in,” he says. “You need me right now. Whether you
want to or not.”

My eyes roll to the back of my head. He doesn’t know shit
about what I need. And how
dare
he
demand I let him in.

“We’re strangers. You don’t know me anymore.” Being mean to
him makes me unreasonably happy. I peel myself off the cold floor. “And you
sure as hell don’t know a damn thing about what I need.”

“I heard about Brooks.”

I stumble backward two steps then lunge for the door.

How. The. Hell?

Without hesitation, I yank the door open, my left hand
flying to my hip. “What, you stalking me these days?”

He shrugs. “Not really. Read about it on the news. Your name
was mentioned.”

I slap the fakest grin I can muster across my mouth and
smack my hand against the doorway. “Look. I’m honored that you came all the way
here from wherever the hell you’ve been hiding to come and save the day, but
really, your services aren’t needed. I survived the last seven years without you.
I’m sure as hell going to survive the next.”

I want to slam the door in his face again, but I feel like
it might lose its effect. Instead I lift my brows, rise on my toes, and glance
at the vintage Challenger parked across the street—windows tinted so dark
you can’t see through them, all black with two white racing stripes, and
desperately in need of a paint job, yet still tragically sexy.

I recognize that car.

You don’t miss something like that in a neighborhood like
this. Brooks always commented on it, saying it made our street look trashy. He
wanted to call the neighborhood association about it, but I talked him out of
it. We always thought it belonged to the college-aged son of the neighbor in
the Tuscan McMansion across the street.

“That yours?” I ask.

He turns to glance at the Dodge; the only street-parked car
on the block right now, and glances back at me.

“You
have
been
stalking me,” I say.

His hand rakes along a smile he’s trying to hide, as if my
accusation humors him. “No. Not stalking . . .”