Denial (Careless Whispers #1)(51)

I grab the pad and paper sitting on the desk and write Gallo on it. Then I underline it. I’m not sure why. I just need to make my mind work. Then I write Niccolo. I underline it as well and wait for either name to really mean anything to me, but they just don’t. Niccolo can’t be him. I don’t know his name or his image. I start writing again and the name I end up with on the page is David.

“David?” I whisper. “Who the heck is David?” Images start to flicker in my mind and I see myself standing in a hotel. I write down Hotel and underline it. It feels important. I’m in a hotel, and this David person is there. He’s tall, blond, refined, and good looking, but he’s not him. I write that down: Not Him. I shut my eyes. I see him and his face clearly. I’m yelling at him. “We were supposed to elope and we can’t even legally get married here.”

My eyes pop open. Elope? My hand goes to my throat. How many men were in my life? I didn’t even love that man. I force myself to think, closing my eyes again. We keep fighting, but this time I can’t hear the words we’re speaking. I just see and feel the anger between us, my hands swiping in the air, his jabbing at his hips. He takes a call, as though it’s more important than our conversation, and he ends the call and leaves. Just . . . leaves. My mind tracks forward in time, and I have a sense of hours having passed. I’m pacing the room and he hasn’t returned. Something isn’t right. He’s not who he says he is.

I open my eyes and write that down. Not who he says he is. I stare at the paper. “He wasn’t who he said he was,” I whisper, and one certainty comes to me. David is how I ended up turning to him for help. I went from one evil to another. David left me. He betrayed me, but I don’t know how or why. I blink, and I’m drawing another butterfly. Why am I drawing another butterfly? It’s ridiculous. No wonder my head is starting to hurt, an unwelcome reminder that I need to go to my room and get my pills.

I push to my feet, closing my shirt around me, and exit the security hideaway to enter the bedroom. Pausing in the archway, I stare at the room that is as masculine as the man who owns it, replaying the way he’d touched me. The way he’d kissed me. The way he is somehow demanding and controlling, and yet gentle, even tender. What he makes me feel is the polar opposite of what the man in my flashbacks does, to the point where I don’t know how I could have ever considered them to be the same. I’m not sure I really did. The two of them create intense feelings in me. But David? No. I don’t understand how I let him into my life.

My eyes catch on my hoodie and I pull it on, zipping it up to hold my shirt shut. Next come my slippers, and I hurry to the door, eager to take my medicine before I end up in troubled waters again. I hurry to the door and crack it open, listening for any activity, disappointed to find only the same old moans and creaks, now becoming as familiar to me as Kayden has always been.

I step into the hallway, the chill of the castle touching my bare legs, urging me to double-step toward my room. Once I’m inside, I rush to the bathroom and grab my purse, opening it and staring at that damn gun again. “Glock 41 Gen4,” I whisper. “My father’s favorite handgun.” My hand presses to my forehead. He loves guns. Or he loved guns. I don’t know which for sure. He was—is?—a gun enthusiast, of that I know, and he expected me to be as well. He made me go to the gun range. I have a momentary flashback of myself at a target range, and him yelling at me for my horrible shooting. He got angry when I couldn’t hit the targets. Very angry, and so I got very, very good with a gun. A wave of nausea rushes over me and I double over, grabbing the edge of the sink. I start breathing hard, sucking in air with effort.

Angry at my weakness, and for other reasons I don’t understand, I straighten and open a drawer, shoving the gun inside, sealing it away, out of sight and I hope out of mind. I grab the bottle of pills and open it, popping one in my mouth and cupping water in my hand from the sink to swallow it. Then I shove the bottle into my pocket and enter the bedroom, where I grab my journal from the nightstand. I open it and stare down at the butterfly. I shut it again and set it back on the nightstand, frustrated by the games my mind is playing with me. That’s when it hits me that I’ve left the folder I’m supposed to study in the kitchen. That’s what I can use to consume my mind while I await Kayden’s return.

I’m at the archway to the living room before I remember making the decision to even leave the bedroom, which is pretty darn scary, but I am here now, and I cross to the kitchen, not bothering to brighten the lights, actually welcoming the shadows that fit my mood. I head for the table where the folder should be and stop dead in my tracks at the outline of someone sitting at the opposite end.

“Ella,” Kayden says, and this time I swear my name on his lips is blood bleeding from those wounds I’d felt in him early tonight.

My fingers dig into the chair I’d held onto before dinner and it hits me that he might be here because I was in his room and he couldn’t go there. “I can go to my room.”

“Come here.”

It’s an order, not a question, his tone low and rough, and I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. I don’t ask. I don’t care. I want to go to him and I do, rounding the table to join him. He pushes his chair back just enough to pull me in front of him, his hands branding my hips through the thin silk of my gown, my backside pressed to the table. He doesn’t look at me at first, but I feel him. Oh God, how I feel him. I am tingling all over, aware of this man in every part of me, in a way that reaches far beyond the physical. Finally, his head lifts and our gazes collide, cutting through the darkness and the connection we share, shaking me to the core, leaving me vulnerable and exposed, but not afraid as I am in my flashbacks.