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14
Compared to Los Angeles, Zodiac Island is damp and frigid. Instead of a temperate climate that brings sweater weather into style, we plunge into the harshness of winter. Rain pelts the ground in a relentless assault, and the bare trees shiver in the icy wind, their desolate branches starker than I recall.
And that wind carries a bite, chafing lips and setting teeth to chattering. I clench my jaw as Liam escorts me into the circular hell he has the nerve to call home.
This place will never feel like home without Sebastian’s presence, and no matter the familiarity of my old quarters in the House of Aries, returning to Liam’s floor unsettles me to my quaking bones, despite him embodying the role of protector, friend, companion.
On that first day back, he’s quiet, almost distant, using work as an excuse to avoid me. I’ve never felt so abandoned, especially in the dead of night when I wake up screaming and thrashing in the sheets, fighting off some faceless creature hovering over me in the darkness.
Since then, I’ve taken to sleeping with a light on, not that it helps much. The nightmares visit without fail, and it isn’t until the third night that I get a reprieve. Liam crawls into bed next to me, and I sleep, undisturbed for the first time since leaving Sebastian’s arms.
It’s become a habit, the chancellor claiming the right side of my bed, always there but never touching. Always the perfect gentlemen, safeguarding my virginity so he can steal it on my birthday.
The irony is more than I can stomach, but I’m not about to ask him to leave, since the steady rhythm of his breathing reminds me I’m not alone.
Because when I’m alone, my world falls dark and silent, transporting me to places I can’t handle. Terrifying places of blanketing suffocation and racing thoughts. Heart palpitations and trembling limbs.
Not remembering what happened at that party is driving me closer to a psychotic break, and work is the only thing keeping me on the side of sanity.
I throw myself into it with a vengeance, sketching my way through the trauma while Elise sits in my studio with me, one hand on her swollen belly as she flips through the pages of a romance novel. She deserves an award in patience for not pushing me to talk, but I sense her growing restlessness.
With a heavy sigh, she sets the book down.
I steel myself. This is it. No more small talk about the fashion show, or the new designs I’m blistering my fingers over because I can’t stop sketching.
“I’m worried about you,” she says, her pale blue gaze burning through my indifference. “So is Landon, and don’t get me started on how concerned the chancellor is.”
Or Sebastian.
We’ve talked on the phone every day, sometimes twice a day. It’s become our ritual, and I know when he does come home, and things go back to normal, losing that daily connection with him is going to devastate me.
But I can’t let myself think about that, and I can’t let him know how close I am to falling apart.
“Novalee?” she says, forcing my attention back to her.
“I’m fine.”
Sketch, sketch, sketch.
Fine is my new favorite word, one I mutter a lot lately—to Sebastian on the phone, to Liam and my brother, even to Ford, the one time I passed him in the hall on the way to my studio.
“How are you, baby girl?”
Fine, fine, fine.
I’ve mastered the art of dodging the stares, some sympathetic, some curious, some cruel. It’s all I do now, avoiding people and repeating my favorite word when they won’t let me.
Elise leans forward in her seat. “I said I was fine, too, after...” She swallows hard. “After Jerome.”
I know what it cost her to say that name, to let her thoughts return to a man she thought she could trust—a man who showed her how wrong she was.
Why did I accept that glass of champagne?
Why didn’t I leave the moment he cornered me in the foyer?
Why, why, why?
And why can’t I remember anything afterward?
