AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m not any man.” He smirked. “I’m a King.”
He glanced at his watch.
“I have an early meeting, and I know you made it very clear that sleepovers and such weren’t part of the equation. I’m sure you can see your way out the same way you came in.”
Without a glance in my direction, he took the hallway to his bedroom, leaving me knowing there was no coming back from this.
Pushing back from the barstool, I took a deep breath and moved to the service elevator shaft. I opened the panel for the walkway to the back passages, stepped inside, and then moved in about twenty feet deep before I stopped, bracing my back against one of the brick walls.
I dropped my head back and closed my eyes.
I had to remember when this finished that I’d done it all for love.
A lump formed in my throat. Not once had I told Sam that I loved him.
Now, it would never happen.
Sliding to the floor, I wrapped my arms around my legs, and for the first time in a long time, I sobbed, letting all the pain I’d bottled up flow free.
10
Sam
I bracedmy arms on the granite counter in my bathroom, resisting the urge to find Devani and apologize for being a heartless asshole. The shattered look in her eyes as each of my words landed would remain etched in my mind forever.
She’d braced for it, expected it.
Part of me wanted her to hurt, to feel the pain. Then there was the side of me who understood her baggage and her need to fix the world, to put everything she wanted second, including me.
I gripped the back of my neck.
Life was so much easier before I let myself feel.
Idiot.
I focused on my face in the mirror. I may have that bastard’s features, but so much of me was Veda Kumari. If only she hadn’t passed down that ability to feel so fucking much that it took more energy than I wanted to pretend otherwise.
Leaning forward, I heard the trace echoes of crying.
That couldn’t be right.
No. It was there.
Devani?
She never fucking cried. A tear or two, maybe. Never sobs.
I rushed out of my room and into the kitchen, finding it empty. Then, moving to the passageway near the service elevator, I opened the panel she used to sneak into my place. That’s when I heard a hiccup followed by the faint shuffle of feet.
“Devani, come back.”
I made it in no more than fifteen feet before the area narrowed too much to let someone my size pass.
Hell, it could barely fit a person with Devani’s mass.
I never understood why she liked crawling into spaces like these. Using the light from my cellphone, I angled it in the direction she’d taken. In the dust on the floor were imprints of what I could assume were Devani’s feet and body as she’d sat on the ground. And the wall she’d had her back against was the main one of my bathroom.
If I wasn’t sure before, this confirmed what I’d started to suspect the other night at her place. I’d left my mark on the Queen of Diamonds in more ways than one.
