Page 57 of When Hearts Collide

How will I last the entire year with her here?

Chapter 22

I watch the throngs of tourists walking on 5 th Avenue from my office at Fleur. They look like clusters of ants, eagerly heading to their destinations, whether it be the large expanse of greenery that is Central Park, the luxury shops in the likes of Louis Vuitton and Bergdorf Goodman, or the impressive facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The humid summer heat doesn’t appear to faze them, and I can practically feel the teeming energy radiating seventy stories up from street level.

I wish I could feel an iota of excitement. Instead, unease slithers inside me like a phantom itch.

My fingers fiddle with the pendant around my neck, smoothing over the cool edges, then the indentations of the gem-studded key within the lock, and a weathered memory edges to the forefront.

“This is your grandparents’ lock and key pendant,” Mom said when I asked her about the necklace always affixed around her neck. “Let me show you its secret.”

I leaned forward, my eyes widening. I loved secrets and as a first grader, adults would often say things like, “When you’re older, we’ll tell you,” whenever I asked questions they didn’t want to answer.

Never Mom though. She always treated us as though we could handle the information.

Mom fiddled with the pendant, and with a flick of her fingers, slowly detached the key embedded within the lock.

I gasped in wonder. I thought it was one necklace all along, but apparently it was really two pieces!

She whispered, “See? This is a pair that can be worn as one necklace or broken apart into two necklaces. You’re supposed to give the key to the person you love. It symbolizes eternal love.”

“Like forever?”

Mom laughed and pulled me toward her soft waist. I buried my face against her scent of roses. She made me feel like anything was possible. “Yes, my sweet boy. Forever.”

“Yuck. I don’t want to love girls. I only love you, Mom.”

She chuckled and pressed a kiss on my forehead. “Someday, you’ll want to give your heart to someone else. That’s what love is, you know? To have your heart live outside of you. It’s scary…but beautiful.”

That didn’t sound very good to me. Frowning, I stared at her. “Then why do you have both the lock and the key then? Shouldn’t Dad have one of them?”

Mommy stiffened, the corners of her eyes drooping slightly. She looked sad. Why was she sad? She rubbed my back, and I snuggled back into her arms, listening to her reassuring heartbeat. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. “It’s only for true love, honey. One day, you’ll understand.”

When she died the following year, Dad gave me her necklace.

He was wearing it around his neck then.

True love. I’ve always scoffed at the phrase. There’s no damn way I’ll put my heart in someone else’s hands. There’s no fucking way I’ll infect another person with my darkness, have them give up all of their dreams, and drag them into my gilded cage with me. It looks like half of this necklace won’t ever find its owner.

But then, an image of her appears in my mind. So fucking tempting. My heart skips a beat.

It’s physical, that’s all. That’s all there is to it.

Knock. Knock.

The sound at the door pulls me back to the present. I tuck the pendant back inside my pin-striped shirt and fix my sage-green tie. I walk over to the bookshelf next to the windows and peruse the volumes.

“Come in.”

Maxwell strides in, his quiet presence somewhat calming. He stands next to me and stares out the windows, at the world at our feet, the city our family wields considerate influence over. “You look troubled.”

“You think too much.”

“You really need to come up with something better. You say that whenever I’m right about something and you don’t want to admit it.”

He peers at me, the identical charcoal eyes contemplative. “Is this about the IPO? Or something else?” Maxwell steps back and muses, “Or someone else?”

Fucker. Damn twin-sense.

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