Page 54 of Forbidden Dark Vows

My heart is soaring. It was an ‘I love you’ kiss, different to any other kiss we’ve shared, and I know that we’ll get through this. It’s only a hiccup. Graham will get better, we’ll plan our wedding, and one day soon, we will be Mr. and Mrs. Weiss.

Following Ruby with my gaze, I barely even register that Celia is still hanging around until she stands in front of me, her expression unfathomable. “I wouldn’t count on Ruby sticking around.” She keeps her voice low, for my ears only. “She only wanted you for your money and, well, that’s not going so great now, is it?”

19

RUBY

The flightback to Chicago is nothing like the flights with Harry.

I take the window seat, and Mom doesn’t object. Instead, she flicks through the magazines in the pouch attached to the back of the seat in front of her, keeping up a steady stream of chatter about perfume and makeup and exotic vacations.

“I always wanted to go to Fiji. Sounds so … I don’t know—” she peers up from the glossy pages on her lap “—glamorously tropical, doesn’t it? Your dad and I went to Puerto Vallarta once, before you were born. It was so colorful and vibrant and loud, but it doesn’t quite have the same ring to it as Fiji.”

I don’t even know how she can concentrate on the pictures in the magazine, let alone think about going on vacation. Is she so hardened by Dad’s first stroke that news of the second one has barely registered with her? Or is this all a façade, her brain incapable of dealing with the consequences of Dad getting sick again, incapable of considering our new reality?

She hasn’t even asked me about our trip to Scotland. It’s almost as if she has convinced herself that I’ve left Harry behind, and now she can keep it that way.

I study her profile, her eyelids fluttering across the pages of the magazine, her glossy lips smiling whenever she spots something that my future husband’s money will buy for her. She smiles sweetly at the stewardess, orders a gin and tonic, and pops the can with a soft hiss.

“Don’t look at me like that, Ruby,” she says, tipping the soda into a plastic cup. “It’ll calm my nerves.”

I turn back to the window and press my forehead against the cool glass. I watch the land below us fading in and out of view through the dense clouds and remember sleeping with my head on Harry’s chest when we flew to the UK.

We were humming with anticipation and excitement, riding high on the buzz of what we’d done, leaving the country without telling anyone, just the two of us. We were trying to figure out what the word ‘us’ would mean. How we would slot into each other’s lives, like two puzzle pieces finally coming together.

But more than anything, we were just enjoying that first-date feeling. I smile to myself, my breath creating a steamy donut on the window. Has there ever been a first date quite like ours in the history of time? What would Emily Brontë have to say about it?

My mom leans across me with a waft of Chanel No. 5 and peers out the window. “There wasn’t much to see on the way here. Honestly, I didn’t think I’d be flying back so soon.”

Because she thought she would have a fight on her hands to get me away from Harry?

I would give anything not to be traveling back home because of my dad. Maybe this is why I can’t look at her right now. She seems smug, like she won the fight and now she can sit back and reap the rewards of cutting short my little escapade.

When I think of Harry, I feel numb.

I believe him, I think. He couldn’t have faked the shock of finding out what his dad did to my dad, he’s not that good an actor. But I don’t know how we can ever make this relationship work, not when our families have such awful connections.

Why did it have to be Karl Weiss? Why couldn’t it have been someone else? Anyone else. Seven million people live in New York City, and our fathers had to go and find each other. Worse than that, they had to go and do fucking business together. I wish I knew what had happened between them, but wishing isn’t going to make it better.

“Stop grinding your teeth, it’s not a good look.” My mom shoots me a sideways glance and digs into a packet of peanuts with her scarlet talons.

My mom and Karl Weiss are never going to sit together at our wedding rehearsal dinner. They’re never going to join us in our first dance, or throw confetti, or smile at the camera for the obligatory wedding photos. Or if they do, they’re literally going to be stabbing each other with their pointed looks and jutting chins.

A sudden thought pops into my head, and I groan out loud, masking the sound with a fake cough so that I don’t disturb my mom’s enjoyment of her second gin and tonic, mostly gin.

I already know the extreme lengths my mom will go to in her misguided attempts to keep me away from Harry. I admit that Iknow nothing about Karl Weiss—Harry has barely spoken about him in the short time I’ve known him—but what if… And here is where my pulse gathers speed like a snowball rolling down a hill. What if they join forces to keep us apart?

I swallow hard, stare at my mom as if I can read what’s going on inside her head, until she turns to me with her perfectly manicured brows furrowed. “What is it? Do you want me to move?”

“No. It’s nothing.” I turn back to the window.

My mom wouldn’t do that, would she? From the way she spoke Karl Weiss’s name out loud, she hates the man. Losing the business affected her too, not just my dad, and I have to believe that she wouldn’t stoop that low.

I steer my thoughts back to my dad. I don’t know how serious this stroke has been or what side effects he might have to live with after, but guilt floods my chest in icy waves: what if this was all my fault? He told me to go with Harry, but that doesn’t mean that he wasn’t worried about me, and I wonder how much of my mom’s rage he had to deal with while we were gone.

Guilt doesn’t seem to be affecting her though. She’s now sniffing perfume samples and discussing the merits of YSL’s Obsession and Estee Lauder’s Beautiful with the passenger across the aisle.

I stare at the window without seeing anything beyond the glass. How can I tell my dad who Harry is now? What if he finds out and has another—potentially fatal—stroke? How could I ever live with myself?

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