Page 34 of His Haunted Desire

I squeeze her hand. I haven’t removed it the whole time. It will be good for people to see us being so casually intimate together… but I like it too. That’s the unavoidable truth.

“You can tell me,” I say. “This is what the Retreat is all about. No judgment.”

She swallows, then mutters, “After my parents died, I felt trapped with Grandma. Not in a bad way. I love her. But she can be flaky and erratic, always has been, and I saw it as my duty to keep her level so that social services would let me stay with her.”

“You grew up fast. You put her story ahead of yours.”

She shrugs. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Losing your parents is damn hard,” I say. “I know the feeling. The void it leaves inside. The emptiness, the pain, the doubt about your identity.”

“I lost them in a car crash because of crappy driving conditions, but when I watch the crash scene inMisery, it doesn’t hurt me like it should.”

“The make-believe is easier to handle,” I say.

“The thing about writing someone else’s story is, it’s comfortable,” she mutters. “It meant, for a long time, I don’t have to think aboutmystory.”

She’s getting choked up. I squeeze her hand again, offering her comfort. “Aurora, you’re at fashion school. You’re kicking ass. Cut yourself some slack.”

She sniffles and nods. “Yeah, you’re right. Sorry.”

“There’s no need to apologize.”

“It’s good for us to share some stuff, anyway.” She pulls her hand away. “It makes all of this more convincing.”

A darkness clouds descends over me at her words, joined by a thick layer of doubt.

Does that mean all this was an act?

Perhaps she’s scared of getting too close. She’s already made it clear that this has a clear endpoint. She doesn’t want anything real.

I lean back in my chair. Whatever. I need to settle down. We chatted about a movie.

Big goddamn deal. It doesn’t mean anything.

CHAPTER 13

AURORA

We’re back in the ballroom, lingering near the edge. Raiden wraps his arm around my waist, but he seems detached and cold. At dinner, I made a point of reminding him what this is, and since then, he has been annoyed. Oh, he touches me, holds my hand. We dance together. But he hasn’t said much, grunting the minimum number of words. We’ve mingled with a few people, andthenhe lights up. I do the same. Playing my role. Wearing my mask.

It’s not as if I can resent it. This was the agreement.

“Soon, we can return to the room,” he says against my ear. It’s so he can be heard over the music, obviously, but that doesn’t stop his warm breath from making me tingle in unspeakable places.

“Okay.”

“I’ll take the couch,” he grunts.

He’s being petty, I’m sure of it. “Fine.”

“It’s not like we’re going to sleep in the same bed; you’ve made that clear.”

“I just said it’s fine, didn’t I?”

A man approaches us, almost as tall as Raiden, with silver hair, wearing a jet-black mask and what appear to be red contact lenses, unless he has some sort of condition.

“Always the same mask, Raiden,” he says.