RUSH (City Lights, #3)(93)

She smelled wrong. She tasted wrong. Everything about her felt wrong and yet completely familiar at the same time. But I was moving in slow motion. I went to take hold of her wrists, to thrust her from me, when her fingers in my hair found the ridged scars.

She gave a little cry and flinched back. Charlotte never flinches, I thought blearily. She never does…

“Val, no.” I tried to push her away but I felt wrung out, boneless. I leaned against the wall and just held her hands until they sank onto my chest. “You have to go. Leave me. Before Charlotte sees…”

“Charlotte?” Valentina stood away from me; I felt the weight of her body lift. “Deacon told me she was your assistant only.” A pause. “He lied?”

“Yeah, he lied.” I closed my eyes, but it made no difference. “Do you see her?” God, did she see that kiss? Did Deacon set me up?

“She is not here.”

Not now. But she may have seen and run off and left me, and I can’t blame her. I shook my head, tried to think. “It’s Deacon. He’s f*cking with me.”

“I think you’re right,” Valentina said quietly. “He told me you wanted to see me. That you missed me. That you…wanted to try again.”

Lies. All lies. “What else did he tell you? Where is he?” An ugly, knotted feeling tightened my guts. I felt guilty for the pain in Val’s voice but something close to real fear for Charlotte was making me panic. I cursed myself for drinking so much. I needed a clear head and I couldn’t think, couldn’t imagine what Deacon was up to. Don’t leave me alone with him, Charlotte had made me promise.

“Christ, help me, Val. Help me find Charlotte. Something’s not right.”

“Yes. Here.”

I took the crook of her arm. It was bony where Charlotte’s was soft. Valentina walked almost too fast for my drunken state, taking me across the deck, but not fast enough.

In the quiet of the elevator I felt the weight of Valentina’s crushed hopes. She had always wanted more from me when we were together and I was always with one foot out the door.

“Val, I know I ended things…badly.”

“You didn’t end them at all,” she said. No accusation, but her voice sounded bruised with old pain. “You just…stopped talking to me. And then Acapulco.”

God, was that how it was? Did I do that to her? Like what Keith did to Charlotte. The sick feeling ratcheted up. I’d never felt so lost, cast adrift in the black nothing, without Charlotte to hold on to.

“I’m sorry, Val. I am—”

“It’s okay,” she said and I heard a smile. “This is not the best circumstance, but it’s nice to see that you love someone.”

I do, God help me, I do. I love Charlotte and I never told her…

The doors finally opened and Valentina took me back through the ballroom. “She’s not here,” she said.

“Deacon?”

“I don’t see him either.”

Oh, Christ. “Downstairs,” I said. “Maybe Charlotte left.” I hoped she did. I hoped to God she was safely tucked in the back of a cab, hating me but safe. Please, I prayed as Val led me back to the elevators. Anything. I’ll do anything so long as she’s okay.

I thought it was taking an eternity for the elevator to arrive and Val said, “Looks like one elevator is stuck.”

An alarm went off; a loud ringing, over and over, from the elevator shafts. My blood turned to ice in my veins.

“Charlotte.”





Chapter Thirty-Two


Charlotte

“No, no, no!” I shrieked. “This is not going to happen, Deacon. It’s not.”

“Charlotte, calm down,” Deacon said. He’d hit the emergency stop button and was holding out his hands in a calming manner, as if trapping a woman in an elevator was perfectly normal and I was crazy to be upset about it. “I just want to talk to you. That’s it.”

“Liar,” I said. My heart was pounding so hard I thought it would burst from my chest. “You could’ve talked to me out there. You don’t follow someone…you don’t corner them…”

Deacon towered over me, as most people did, blocking the door. And he was drunk. Much drunker than I’d noticed before. His cheeks were ruddy and his eyes shining but dull at the same time. For the first time since I’d met him, his loose laugh and smug smile were gone. He looked desperate. Almost panicked.

“You wouldn’t talk to me out there,” Deacon said. “But this is better. Quieter. Away from everyone.”

He stepped forward, and I stepped away and my back hit the elevator wall. “There are security cameras,” I said, clutching my little purse to my chest as if it were some sort of shield. My voice trembled as badly as my hands. “People are watching. They have to be.”

“Let them watch,” Deacon said, moving closer. “We’re just talking. That’s all I want. To talk.”

“I have nothing to say to you, except that if you were ever Noah’s friend, you will open those doors right now. Right now.”

“Noah’s friend,” he snorted. “That was my title: Noah’s Friend. It may as well have been my name, and you want me to go back to that? Fuck no, sweet Charlotte. Not going to happen.”