Soul and Blade (5 page)

And I doubt that reason is entirely his upbringing.

There’s more and I don’t care what it is. He doesn’t ask to see my issues, even though I know he wants to, and I won’t ask to see his. I would rather not see mine, so adding in anyone else’s is scary.

“Do you want to eat now?” he asks, snapping me out of my thoughts.

“Yes, please.” I put Binx down, smiling when he sprints from the room, from my needy mood, his least favorite.

Dash walks to me, lifting me up and hugging me tightly. “Let it go. It doesn’t matter now anyway,” he whispers and carries me from the room. He hasn’t started heating up the chicken, but I swear I can already smell it.

We eat. We shower. He tries to touch me and I cower like a rape victim. We each go to bed dissatisfied and annoyed.

It’s not the evening the chicken Parm deserved. It deserved wine and kisses and maybe a soak in a deep tub followed by a massage.

But it isn’t what I get.

I get heartburn and heartache and memories that aren’t real about things that have scarred me.

5. S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y NIGHT!

Y
a ready for this?” Angie nudges me, grinning from ear to ear. Since Dash and I picked her up at the airport in New York for the blessed weekend with Dash’s family, she’s been grinning. I’m almost scared she’s forcing it, even if she flew all the way here from Scotland.

I frown but nod, making her laugh. “Ya can be excited, Jane. Yer about to marry the best man in the world. A girl should be excited on the day she tries on her wedding dress.” Maybe she is genuinely happy for me and not faking it at all. Maybe I’ll be alone in the faking it. Lord knows I had to fake it the entire drive up to New York from DC.

I swallow, but my mouth is dry and my throat is oddly sore. Even the walls of the town car feel like they’re closing in around me.

She rolls her wide eyes. “Just get it out then, ya awkward wee weirdo.”

“I’m sorry. I know it isn’t mine to be sorry for. I know I didn’t do anything. But I feel sick all the time when I think about it.”

She winces, her eyes glossing over for half a second. But she shakes her head, swallows, and squeezes her eyes shut until the tears are gone again. “He doesn’t deserve a single moment more of me time or me energy. Not a minute of it. He was a wanker and a scumbag, and he was never mine. I see that now. I was a means to an end.” She opens her eyes and smiles through the pain. “I am better off. I’ve joined a dating site and I have three hundred hits.”

“A dating site?” The skeptical agent inside me screams this is a bad idea. I always assume the worst, which in the case of dating sites is abduction and possibly being made into a skin suit.

“Och, ya don’t expect me to spend the rest of me days pining after some Irishman? Bah, never happen. From now on I only date Scots, and I only accept men with beards.”

My nose wrinkles involuntarily. I don’t like the idea and I can’t hide it.

“Don’t make that face. Ya don’t know.” She leans in so close I can smell her coffee breath. “Ya have never actually lived until a man has rubbed his beard on your cunny.”

I lean back, horrified and unsure if I should mention the article I saw about the germs in beards.

She closes her eyes and relives something naughty before sighing and nodding. “Tell Dash to give it a try. Even a wee beard is some kind of special on the girlie bits.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

She nudges me again. “Yer so awkward. Just show him a picture and point and say, ‘Jane likey. Jane want.’ And then grunt. He’ll get the point.”

I finally laugh at that—the kind of healing laughter I haven’t had in ages.

“Ya missed me, didn’t ya, Janey?”

“I did. But I understood too.” I nod and lean into her, still laughing. She is exactly the comic relief I need at this moment.

“How weird is this going to be with Dash’s mom, since ya basically put her golden Henry in jail?”

“More awkward than before, which was unbearably awkward. So I’d assume, more awkward than any single thing you could compare awkwardness to. He’s Dash’s brother. And she loves him the best. It’ll be bad.”

Angie looks like she might try to calm me down, but the car pulls up to the shop, and she smiles. I don’t smile. Instead, my insides tighten and I feel a little nauseated.

Through my partially open window, I can see the arrogance and snobbery flowing from the bridal shop. I am nearly crawling backward to escape it when Angie sighs and makes an “och” sound as she grabs my hand and drags me from the car.

Now I’m leaning against the car, wondering what my chances are like if I run and wishing I had a paper bag to blow in.

But I change my mind the moment I see it.

It
isn’t a white dress and it isn’t the frilly shit in the window.

Instead my gaze snags on a suit with a top hat on the mannequin in the window. I pause when I see him. The doll has a slighter build than Dash, but the general idea is pretty clear.

I want to see that on him. I lift a finger and point at it. “Jane likey.
Jane want.” I offer my best grunt as Angie laughs and drags me to the shop.

“Dash will be dressed to the nines. It’s your tomboy ass we have to worry about. He probably already owns a top hat.” Angie misses seeing an evil sneer when we walk in.

But I don’t.

Dash’s mom, Lady Townshend, laughs. “Of course Benjamin has top hats. He has plenty of them. How lovely to see you both are on time.”

Angie stops and smiles. “Lady Townshend, how are you?”

“Very well, thank you. Lovely to see you, Angela.” Dash’s mom steps to Angie, fake-hugging and fake-kissing, but her eyes stay on me the entire time. “Have you gained some weight since I saw you last, Jane?”

I hate that her greeting is what I expected. I wish I could find a greeting card that says, “Sorry I’m the white trash marrying your rich son. Oh, and double sorry I locked your other son up.”

But I can’t.

And as punishment for never finding that greeting card, I see Dash’s ex, Melody, standing in the corner of the room. The unknown I hadn’t planned for. I shake my head as if to clear it and his mother takes that for an answer.

“Well, perhaps ease up on the salt for the next eight months so the dress remains perfect.” His mother fake-hugs me, oozing fake love all over me. “No one wants to spend thirty thousand dollars on a dress and come out with a bride looking like a stuffed sausage.”

I would strangle her, but the way she says
sausage
tickles me. I love her British accent and wish Dash would actually use his for more than angry and drunken moments.

Angie knows them well enough. She cocks an eyebrow, offering me some silent support. To add insult to injury, I feel like I’m in a forest surrounded by tall trees. They’re all in huge heels, but even in flats they would be towering over me.

“How are you?” I ask with an extremely polite smile for Melody Astor, the mother-ex of all exes.

“I am doing well. How are you and Dash?” She beams with rosy cheeks complemented by her pin-straight blonde hair and bright-blue eyes. Her little accent is perfect, just like the rest of her.

Lady Townshend wrinkles her nose. “I do wish you would all call him Benjamin. This Dash business is a remnant of his childhood and I dislike it.”

Melody gives me a sparkly-eyed smile. She doesn’t seem fazed by the comment.

We don’t have a chance to correct ourselves, because a woman enters in a very intense dress for a Saturday afternoon—she’s too shiny, too polished, and too made up. Her forceful smile precedes her through the arched doorway into the main room.

Still, even Angie has lipstick on and some blush and her unruly red hair is locked up tight in a beautiful bun.

I look homeless compared with them all.

“You must be the bride.” The intense lady strides toward Melody, arms outstretched. Melody smiles and lets the woman take her hands before she corrects her with a nod in my direction. “No. Jane is the lucky girl,” she says with a hint of bitterness.

To quash my urge to flee, I conjure the look on Dash’s face when I forgot about the stupid dress altogether.

The shop lady looks at me and musters as much courage as she can before coming over, her smile at half wattage. “How lovely.” She turns and points at the doorway she has just walked through and the hallway behind it. “We are ready for you now.”

Where are we going? The room we are in is filled with beautiful dresses in glass cases. If this is simply the foyer, then it’s impressive.

“Just follow me,” she says and turns, clicking with hip-swaying strides back down the long hallway.

I swallow and Angie clears her throat as she takes my hand, squeezing.

But as we turn the corner and clear the doorway to the right, the room before us explodes in lace, silk, and taffeta. Mannequin princesses extend as far as the eye can see in gowns of a thousand colors.

“Now Lady Townshend has told me the theme is actually lavender and lace, which I feel is just divine for a proper English wedding.”

I don’t know what “theme” means in this case, but I’m not completely clueless. “I am leaving all the details up to her. She’s just telling me what to wear and when to be there.” I laugh, alone.

The shop lady looks affronted, but Lady Townshend steps forward with her best unintentional Julie Andrews impression. “We are very pleased with the dresses Georges has found for her.”

The dress bitch with the obvious hate-on for me gives Lady Townshend a slight bow. “And he is over the moon about being the designer chosen for this. It will be the event of the season.”

My stomach turns.

“Quite.” Dash’s mom nods and turns, giving me a look that tells me throwing up on the Tiffany-blue rug would be a very poor choice.

“Would the lady follow me, please? We will put you in with the dressers and start the show!” She nearly sings the last couple of words. Angie’s grip tightens as she subtly forces me forward.

Three girls stand in a giant dressing room that’s the size of my first apartment. They are all brunette and all tall, slim, and pretty, but unlike the women I’m with or the shop owner, these girls look polite. Or at least they can fake it better.

In my mind I am repeating the ways I could incapacitate all three of them as the doors close, the ways in which I am trained to escape a moment like this one. I could knock them all out, and everyone in that room, and be down the block before I even got winded.

“I’m Jenny, this is Sasha, and that is Margolis,” the brightest of the three beauties offers.

“Jane.” A whisper creeps up my skin, not liking that her name is Jenny. I don’t like that name anymore.

“So lovely to meet you, Miss Jane.” They curtsy, of course, making me glower.

“Shall we prepare, then?” Margolis asks with a slight hint of an accent—Romanian, if I’m not mistaken.

I nod, removing my coat, but they grab for hangers with lingerie. Straightaway, I start to sweat. “Is there a bathroom? Is that stuff used?”

“Of course not. It is the lingerie you will wear under your dress. After you’ve tried it all on, we will have it dry-cleaned and put with your gown.” Jenny points to the door behind her. “This is a bathroom here.”

I rush past them, closing the door the moment I am in the small space. Flashes of being in the bathroom on my hands and knees, fishing the box out from under the vanity, haunt me. The smell of the dank cell lingers, even in here. It fights the lavender scent pervading the room.

I can’t escape the feel of the concrete and the swaying light. I drop to my knees on the marble, breathing hard and deep.

It passes.

But only because I hold my arms close to me and take deep breaths with the image of Binxy in my grip. He isn’t struggling or scratching or meowing. He just lies and lets me love him. The images of him bring Dash’s face. His smile, his perfect features, his laugh—they encircle me, comfortingly. I pull my phone from my pocket and press his name.

“Hello?”

I sigh, breathing into the phone. “Your mom brought Melody as her special guest.”

“Fuck.” He sighs. “I’m so sorry, Jane. I will speak—”

“No! Don’t! I’m stronger than that. I have to stop being such a pussy about your mom hating me. I don’t know why I care so much.” I’m still out of breath.

He chuckles with a sound that feels like delicately placed kisses on the back of my neck. “I love that you do, though. You never show your vulnerabilities about things, and it’s so sexy.”

“Meet me.” The words come out before I even think them through.

“Two hours and I will be at the door to that shop.” He hangs up before I can change my mind.

I don’t want to, but I think I might change it. I don’t want to be intimate and I can tell from Dash’s tone he does.

I’m still trapped in that concrete room in a lot of ways. And the caves with the girls in the cells.

Rory’s got a hold over me that is unlike anything I have ever experienced.

I force myself up to stare at my reflection. The difference in my eyes stands out today. The light one sparkles like it has a funny story to tell. The dark eye is the exact opposite. It appears to have secrets and deceptions, things it hides from me.

I splash cold water on my face and dry it with what I will forever recall as the softest towel I have ever used.

I push Dash to the forefront of my brain and turn to the door. I lived in an alley once, eating stolen food and pretending to be an urchin, all for the right moment to assassinate three men walking from a restaurant in Belize.

If I can do that, I can be dressed and fluffed and made to feel pretty. It’s a different role to play for a different mark. I just happen to love this one.

The moment I leave the bathroom, it starts.

“Please, remove your shirt so we can get the appropriate items for underneath.”

All the strength I have just mustered vanishes. I relent, taking the weird corset thingy they’re holding and drag it back into the bathroom. I rip my shirt off, catching a glimpse of my scars, and pull on the corset, wincing when I drag it across my nipples. With my hair down and the corset on, most of the bad stuff is covered.

I go back out and let them take off my pants and hand me things I don’t recognize as clothing—stripper apparel at best. For each item my only response is a wrinkled nose. They laugh and attempt to put me at ease, but I have seen it before, when people catch a glimpse of the horrors under my clothes. It’s always the same, pity and worry. They never think military. They never think I am stronger because of every scar.