Mack (King #4)(37)

Mia snapped her mouth shut and looked up at him, visibly fuming. Yes, I now wanted to know what happened to this man King had just spoken of, but I had bigger issues, and clearly it was pretty heinous if it could make this Mia woman stop talking. Still, I had to plead my case. I had to try.

“I don’t care if I ever see Mack again,” I lied. “I just want to get him back. I want to know that he’s all right. Please, just let me help.”

I guessed that King didn’t like that idea, because I felt something slam my body into the wall before I blacked out.

~~~

When I woke, still in that cabin, I felt like I had been dismembered by a taffy puller. Every fiber of my being ached and felt paper thin, unable to carry its own weight. I glanced over to the spot where Mack’s body had been.

Gone. So was the woman.

I groaned and rolled from my side onto my back, wishing I was dead, too. I missed Mack. I missed him so much that all I could think of was digging that hole King had mentioned.

Mack. Mack. Less than a week ago I had been a woman focused on her career. I’d lived a life that was colorless and absent of love. Now, I loved so much that I could hardly breathe. Yes, I barely knew this man. But my heart and soul knew him like the sound of my own voice. It was such a difficult thing to have such a profound connection with a person and not have the memories of how you got there—dates, a first kiss, making love for the first time.

And as I lay there, wheezing and trying to find the strength to get up and fight, one question circulated in my mind.

Why can’t I remember?

It seemed that my memories wanted to push through but couldn’t. Whoever had done this to me didn’t want me to learn about my past with Mack or find him. And I didn’t get the impression that King (or Mia) had anything to do with it.

So why? What was it they wanted to hide from me?

I started to sob, dripping with misery, drenched in agony. Fight, óolal. Fight. That bastard King can’t really hurt you, and he knows it. It was that voice inside me speaking. Me. Not me. Familiar and unfamiliar.

“How can I fight when I can’t even move?” I whispered.

Without reason or thought on the matter, I painfully edged my hands over my heart. I closed my eyes and stopped fighting the pain. Something inside told me to let it in.

I inhaled the hurt and consumed its heavy weight, like eating cement. Within seconds, I felt myself fading away to another place…

~~~

I am standing at the edge of a giant ballroom with white walls and gold trim, watching the other extravagantly dressed guests bow and twirl to the orchestra. I can’t believe I am here at yet another ball. I’m too old for this and have no desire to marry. At least not any man I’ve ever met. They all smell like perfumed poodles or speak only of my dowry. My friend and companion Lucida, on the other hand, lives for the day she is wed. Of course, she is proper wife material. I am not. I read incessantly—science, philosophy, religion, and politics. I argue with my father. I refuse to do as I am told. My heart is wild and untamable and always will be.

I glance over at the grandfather clock in the corner of the massive room crowded with people who are laughing and drinking and judging one and other. One more hour of this horseshit and I am free to go. My older cousin Robert will chaperone me, as my father is away on business and my mother is feeling a bit “under the weather.” Really, she loathes these social events as much as I do, but this is my last season before I will officially be declared a spinster. I cannot wait. There is great freedom in being an old maid—no husband to make demands, no children to discipline, no more balls to attend.

As I try not to fidget or tug at my cream-colored silk dress to relieve the pressure of the whalebone digging into my rib cage, I feel someone watching me from across the room.

Oh, glorious. Yet another man I will have to politely shoo away with an excuse about my worn-out feet. But when I look up, a stunning pair of blue, blue eyes meet mine, and I feel like the wind has been sucked from my lungs. I start to fall backward, unable to keep myself upright.

“Madam, are you unwell?” says a man to my side who had been chatting with my friend Lucinda about something trivial related to gardens.

I find my legs again and nod. “Yes, I am fine. My dress is a little tight.”

Lucinda, who is a petite-framed thing with golden locks—the exact opposite of me with my black hair and dark eyes—lets out a little laugh. “Evelyn, you really will go to any length to leave early. But I’m not having it. You made a promise to stay to the last dance.”

This is the point where I would normally begin begging her to leave, appealing to her love for me, as we’ve been lifelong friends, but this time I do not wish to go anywhere. At least, not with her.

I watch the stranger approach, weaving between an ocean of billowing ruffled skirts and men in black coats. He is a head taller than the rest and a thousand times more beautiful than any man I’ve ever laid eyes upon—shoulder-length sandy-blond hair, wide shoulders, and a pronounced jawline. The way he walks, with such confidence and ease, gives him an air of power. Or danger. I am unsure. Whatever the case, I cannot take my eyes away, and he cannot seem to remove his gaze from me.

I have seen him before. I know I have. Yet I cannot recall ever meeting him, and this was the sort of man no woman could ever forget.

The man finally reaches me and stares down, holding me in place with those stunning azure eyes.