holds my other hand in his as we move with the rhythm of the music. The mesmerizing pulse of the acoustic guitar, piano, and the occasional drumbeat puts us under a spell, and we may as well be the only two people on the dance floor.
Talent spins me around before pulling me back in, pressing his mouth against mine once I’m back in his arms. His lips taste like oak and rye, and it’s strong enough on his tongue to get drunk from. My dress sashays at my feet as we sway back and forth, light on the dancing and heavy on the touching, kissing, wanting.
“Thank you for bringing me tonight,” I say.
“I knew it was risky,” he replies. Talent’s hands rest on my lower back. “I wanted to show you that my family isn’t as perfect as we’re made out to be. We have our own secrets.”
“I’d say.” I laugh.
“Maybe now you’ll understand why I don’t care about your past. I wasn’t lying when I said I deal with people who do worse.”
“Are you going to explain to me how you’re involved with the Coppola family?”
“Yes.” Talent kisses my forehead and playfully adds, “but then I’ll have to kill you.”
Spinning around a second time, the bottom half of my gown sails midair before twisting around my body once I return to Talent. Time slows while we dance under a kaleidoscope of colors, engulfed in heat and lust and possibility. We’re slow kisses and slower touches, unable to break eye contact or change tempo when the song ends.
“Can we stay like this forever?” I ask, laying my cheek against his heartbeat to absorb the steady thud.
“No,” Talent answers. “I have so much more planned for us, baby.”
Two months ago, a future beyond Hush wasn’t tangible. I’d outsmarted the sentence Cricket bestowed upon me when she died, assuming I succeeded by doing everything on my own terms and demanding certain treatment. The last ten years of my life were spent outrunning her legacy, but realistically, I fulfilled it.
Talent changed that.
One chance encounter flipped my world upside down, and a future I don’t recognize becomes in focus the deeper in love I fall with him and myself. Who am I if not Cricket Montgomery’s daughter or Inez Ricci’s prized escort? What will I look like once I step from their shadows? Can I live a normal life after the trauma I’ve experienced?
Too afraid of the answers before, I now welcome the unfamiliar.
Appreciating value in a life outside the one I was born into is worth more than money. Falling in love with a man who looks at me like I can do no wrong gives me a solid foundation to jump from, but it’s up to me to figure out the rest. What I know so far is I like blended vanilla coffee with caramel drizzle, I’m a dog person, and I don’t want to be alone anymore. There’s so much beauty in my city, in the people who’ve inched their way into my life, and in the possibility of crafting a future for myself that doesn’t involve selling my body.
“Let’s go home,” I say.
“You’re reading my mind,” Talent says. He dips me like they do in old romance movies and kisses my throat.
Leaning my head back, I wish I could stretch out this perfect moment in time so it never ends. The feeling of being in love is unlike anything I’ve ever felt before, and I’d like to explore it more thoroughly. In bed. Only, the frozen lake finally cracks, and I break through the ice, plunge into the frigid waters before I can grab on to anything, and I drown.
That didn’t take long, I think to myself fleetingly as my veins run cold.
Talent doesn’t see Phillip and Naomi right away because Talent never takes his eyes off of me. I clutch his shirt and gasp his name, pulling myself upright from the dip. He knows right away something is wrong and follows my line of sight.
“Fuck,” he says, acting as a wall of protection between them and me.
Back at our table, David and Wilder are already on their feet. David refastens his suit jacket with a deadly expression, and Wilder rolls up the sleeves of his shirt.
“Lydia,” Talent says, standing in front of me. Suddenly sober, his eyes are piercing and begging. “Remember that you trust me, okay. Remember that.”
The rhythm of my heartbeat isn’t overcome by the pulse from the music vibrating through my entire body. The light show