and slowly exhaled the brine. When that didn’t work, I started to fidget, adjusting the wig I wore that was long, layered, black with blue ombre, and had side bangs covering my right eye.
Going with the flow, I’d lined my eyes heavily with black liner and clipped the faux silver piercings to my nose and lip. I completed the look picked out for me with fishnet stockings, black jeans with holes in the knees, and a cropped tee.
Seeing my reflection now in one of the seventeen large mirrors made from three hundred and fifty smaller mirrors, I knew without a doubt who’d left the disguise.
The handwritten note asking to meet here and at this time made it clear too. I’d woken up this morning to both waiting for me inside my hotel suite at the foot of my bed that I’d slept in alone.
And now I waited with butterflies in my stomach for him to arrive.
It’s been two weeks since Berlin.
Two guilt-ridden weeks since the club and the sex that I wouldn’t allow myself to think about, but somehow, I always managed to think only about it. Houston and Loren had shamelessly poured their frustration into me while Jericho watched. They made me not just see but feel how much they needed me. I needed them too, but it wasn’t the same.
This wasn’t hiding fear and apprehension behind cruelty like before.
They’d lied to me.
How do we come back from that? How do I learn to trust them again? I keep waiting for some sign that may never come. And if it didn’t, what did that mean?
I was afraid to know the answer.
I wasn’t ready to accept the truth if it meant being without them.
When my phone pinged, I looked at the screen and frowned at the Twitter notification.
@Em_Anon: You’re going to die bitch
I rolled my eyes.
Death threats weren’t new to me anymore. I just wished they were more creative. Maybe describe how you plan to kill me?
I don’t know.
Just make it worth the tweet.
Peering around the crowded room from my spot inside the arched alcove, I searched for a distraction that shouldn’t have been hard to find. Perhaps in the vaulted ceiling painted to depict the history of Louis XIV? Or the chandeliers spanning the two hundred and forty feet length of the hall? There was a lot to marvel at and appreciate inside the famed Hall of Mirrors, the most notable room in the Château de Versailles.
It was kind of annoying. I’d dreamt of seeing this place ever since watching the TV show that had sucked me in only to cancel after three seasons, and now that I was here, my nerves kept me from enjoying it.
It wasn’t a coincidence that he’d chosen this place.
I’d made him watch reruns of the show with me after seeing the rants online a couple of months ago regarding rumors of it ending. Any excuse to close the distance he’d put between us at the time.
And now I knew why.
I just needed to understand the rest.
The crowd parted, and as if he’d heard my silent plea, Jericho appeared.
Unlike me, he wasn’t wearing a disguise, but everyone was too enraptured by the gilded hall to look past the hood of the sweatshirt shielding the drummer’s face and hair from view and the dark shades covering silver eyes. Jericho’s mouth set in a grim line, and the ring piercing his bottom lip drew my attention. I didn’t have to see his eyes to know that they were haunted.
Longer than I’d known him, he’d never been anything else.
My heart wept for him, even as I kept my expression neutral.
“Hey,” he greeted low when he finally reached me. His teeth toyed with his lip ring. Something he only did when he was nervous or deep in thought. At the moment, I was sure it was both. Together, we stood inside the alcove as everyone passed us by. It was a daring move when he removed his shades. I could see his eyes now, and he could stare deeply into mine. “Can we talk now?”
While many emotions assailed me at once, there was only one answer in my mind and heart. It was the one I let fall from my lips. “Sure.”
I watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard and then looked away to search for words in the garden just outside the window.
“Do you still love her?” I blurted when I couldn’t take the silence any longer. The answer to that burning question plagued me