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Was her.
The woman who had captivated me from across the crowd, who had lured me in with flushed cheeks and bright eyes, and then?
Had disappeared.
I wasn’t ready to share her with everyone, not yet. Margaret knew, of course, and I was sure she would have known, somehow–omega magic, or feminine intuition, or whatever the fuck you want to call it–even if I hadn’t pointed her out at the gala. I couldn’t bear to think of Jack, though, looking at me with that quiet pride, congratulating me with that stupid face of his, the face that so resembled my own.
Shit. I needed to vacate this bathroom before I got even more maudlin. Besides, any longer and everyone would start to think I ate too many canapes or something. I scrubbed my hands over my wet face, then dried myself off carefully with the hand towel. I smiled at myself in the mirror.
I would find her.
First I had to get through a weekend with my brothers.
* * *
I slept late the next day, waking to sun streaming in the window of the room that had once been mine and was now, I guessed, mine again, or at least that strange creature: “Charlie’s guest room.” Notnotmy room, but not quitemineeither. Everyone else was already downstairs, having finished breakfast–I could tell by the smell of food–but I still took my time showering, getting dressed, and heading downstairs for a cup of coffee.
She had been in my thoughts last night. I had dreamt of her face, her eyes, and then woken up hot and sweaty, thankful for the blast of cold water that came out of the temperamental faucet in my shower stall. I was feeling more like myself by the time I saw the bottom of my coffee cup and ate some lunch.
And then.
Fucking Jack.
He had to go and drop to one knee in front of Asterid, who was blushing and covering her smile.
“Do you mind repeating that a little louder, for your audience?” I said, as she mumbled yes, yes! into his neck, and I knew.
It was really fucking stupid of me to even think that I could not tell my family that I had found her. Lara. I didn’t have to tell them who she was, but, well, these people were my family. They would be with me no matter what. Even if they did make me want to drive my car off a cliff sometimes, I loved them, and they loved me, in their own annoying ways.
Besides, Lara and me? We weretrue fucking mates. The whole thing was that we were fated to be together, that it would all work out, that even if she had pretty much ghosted me, we were meant to be. I didn’t always put as much faith in the quote-unquote Hallowed Old Ways as Jack did, with his family business and house and name, but true mates were real. I had seen it. With Philip. With Richard, and now with Jack.
So I waited a respectable, oh, about five hours, after our celebratory dinner had been prepared and devoured and cleared away, before stealing his thunder and announcing over dessert, a fuckingsinfulchocolate mousse:
“I met my mate last night.”
While everyone screeched and yelled and clapped and generally just lost it, I caught Margaret’s eye across the table, and she smiled at me, just a small, quiet smile. I looked down into my empty bowl of mousse, my face feeling hot, but I couldn’t help it. I was smiling, too.
* * *
It wasn’t until Monday morning that I learnedjusthow badly I had fucked up. Philip came into the living room, where we were all messing around, dressed for work in dark pants and a buttoned shirt, the collar unbuttoned to show he was doing something sort of casual, in a Philip way. Even Rose had been relaxing–reading a novel for once, instead of writing one–and Margaret was kicking my ass at chess, as she always did, when he announced, “I’ll be going, now. I have my quarterly meeting atCityStyle, and I’ll go home from there.”
Jack looked up and nodded, but my heart had stopped in my chest.
“You have a meeting atCityStyle?” I blurted out.
“Yeah, about my column. Just talking about upcoming topics. Next month there’s some festival or something I’m trying to get out of going to, but apparently–”
“Who are you meeting with?” I cut him off. I didn’t give a shit about wine. I usually tuned him out when Philip got into it on the subject, and I hadn’t even made the connection that his annoying wine column was at theCityStyle.
“Editor Stevens. Since when do you care?”
I stood, fast enough to tip over a few chessmen as I had to catch my balance on the edge of the table. “I’ll come back with you. I’ll, uh–” my eyes lit on Margaret. “Margaret can take my car back, that way.”
“She was going to get Daniel to take her,” Rose butted in, not taking her eyes from her page. “I already offered–”
“It’s fine,” Margaret said, righting the chess pieces. “Go ahead, Charles. I can get your things for you, if you want.”
“Margaret,” I said, “You’re a queen among Princes.” She rolled her eyes.
