AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It was awkward as fuck for the first few minutes. I’m not gonna lie. I could barely look at any of them, and I desperately wanted to reach out and grip Harlow’s hand for support, but I didn’t want to drag her into this.
“So, that might have come out of nowhere,” I said at last. The hostess was busy getting us drinks and snacks for the hour-long flight, and the silence was killing me. “I didn’t think it was a big deal. I don’t even remember doing it.”
“Do you?” Alexander asked, leaning ahead to look at Luke. “Do you remember doing it before her accident?”
“I, uh, do,” he stammered, and then he added, “Look, I’m sorry, dude. She approached me out of the blue one day last year. It was weird, we’d never even shared a single word between us, and suddenly she wanted to talk.”
“Is that right?” Alexander asked, looking back at me. Harlow and Rome were looking at each other with deliberately neutral expressions, but I could see tension playing around the edges of their mouths, threatening to melt into smiles. This wasn’t funny, but it was. If you weren’t directly involved, it was hilarious, really.
“I guess it is,” I said and shrugged. “I seriously have no memory of it, but I trust Luke’s assessment.”
Something pinged inside me, though. I had a memory of moving in with Luke from my internal world last year in the fall. Probably September or so, and he asked me to marry him in October. We had a good life together. We were very close. Maybe my false memories were just drawing from real life, like me talking to Luke and then inviting him up to my room. It felt like a connection that was important to remember. I was excited that I might be onto something.
“And then what?” Alexander demanded. “Did you fuck her?”
“No!” Luke exclaimed. “We both agreed to save her body for you.”
“Save my body?” I exclaimed in disgust. “What kind of patriarchal bullshit is that about? Are you serious?”
“You should be a virgin on your wedding night,” Harlow explained. “That’s for Uppers and Lowers. I don’t know how this is news to you.”
“I don’t know how you’re okay with it,” I said. “Women are more than just bodies, you know. We’re much more than if we’ve had sex or not.”
“I’m not the one you need to fight,” Harlow replied and looked away, clearly backing down and not wanting to fight. I had to be okay with that, the whole virgin thing pissed me off, but my anxiety at Alexander’s jealousy was making me crazy.
“Can you guarantee you’re a virgin, little sparrow?” Alexander asked quietly, his words weighted and dangerous.
“Does it matter?” I asked, locking my eyes on his. “What would you do right now if I wasn’t?”
He was silent, but I could feel the heat radiating off his body as he went over his options in his head. My heart was pounding so hard in my chest that I could hear it in my ears and feel it throbbing in my fingers. I wondered briefly if I was going to have a heart attack or pass out again because nothing felt real as my entire world hung in the seconds it took Alexander to respond.
“We’ll talk about it later,” he said and looked out the window at the forest below. He refused to look at me again for the entire ride, even when the hostess came back with our sodas and even when I asked him questions directly. He was angry, and that terrified me, but beneath that anger was hurt. I’d wounded my fiancé, and for that, I was terribly sorry. Even if I didn’t remember it or feel like it had been something I actually did, I owed it to him to make it up to him.
We managed to make it through the rest of the ride, chatting about nonsensical school gossip, snacking on chips and a charcuterie board provided by the hostess, and talking about our plans for New Year’s Eve. Alexander seemed to relax a little, but when we got closer to his estate, his eyes drifted out the window again, and he didn’t engage.
I was going to lure him into a conversation when we hit the edge of the Remington grounds. I surpassed a gasp and craned my neck to stare down at the seemingly never-ending smooth green laws dotted with ponds, riding stables, a golf course, swimming pools, guest houses, and gardens. Both flower and vegetable. As we got closer to the main house, we flew over a hedge maze, and I tried to find the center of the labyrinth with no success.
We landed on a wide marble patio at the back of the biggest house I’d ever seen. It was bigger than Crimson Academy’s main hall, bigger by at least five times, I estimated. It was huge, with tall towering turrets and sharply angled black slate roofs set above shining white hand-carved white stone brick. It even had gargoyles carved along the edges of the gutters, and I thought I saw another hedge maze to the side of the house.
“It’s beautiful,” I exhaled slowly. “I think I’m going to get lost in there.”
“It’s okay,” Alexander said. “A little too ostentatious for my taste. You always hated it here and rarely came. I don’t know why you’re suddenly impressed with the pile of bricks.”
“I wasn’t impressed with this?” I laughed. “What a snotty bitch I used to be. Thank god I was knocked on the head. This place could fit five of mine inside of it.”
“You and I were going to buy a penthouse in the city,” he said without looking at me. “New York or Seattle, we were thinking. Maybe one in Paris, if they ever open it up again.”
“Was it ruined in the great wars?” I asked.
“No, the french closed their borders to foreign ownership. We can still visit whenever we want.”
“You said we. Does that mean there’s still an us?” I asked and slipped my hand into his as we stood to exit the helicopter.
He squeezed it once and let it drop, went stiff again, and said, “We’ll talk later like I said.”
I wanted to curse him out, tell him to fuck off with his little boy tantrum, but I had to remember the hurt. I’d damaged something inside of him, and I owed it to him to heal it.
When we got off the helicopter, we walked towards the mansion while house staff gathered our bags and brought them behind us. I walked next to Luke and behind Alexander, who strode ahead with Rome. Harlow was behind us, rubbernecking at the insanely beautiful house, so at least I didn’t feel like a solo rube in the presence of such opulence.
