Page 33 of Alliance

“Hi,” I finally whisper, the word coming out breathy and rough.

“Hi,” she responds. “How did you—Sam?”

“Yeah, Sam gave me the number,” I tell her. She sounds surprised, but the good kind of surprised. Like getting flowers for no occasion, not the unwanted but I’ll-fake-it kind reserved for surprise parties and unplanned pregnancies.

I don’t know what to talk about with her. I have no right to want to hear her voice. No right to take pleasure in her happiness and wallow in her grief.

She’s not mine and I’m not hers.

“Are you okay?” I ask. It’s the first thing I can think of, and something I need to know. The last time she was here, she was drunk. She was hovering over the edge, seconds from jumping. She needed me to numb her pain, make her feel anything else, and I happily obliged. Because I wanted the distraction too.

Is that all we are? Each other’s distraction?

“Yeah,” she breathes, and I can hear the crack of her breath as it hits the receiver. “No,” she adds. “I don’t know. Not really.” Her tone is unsure, her answers changing. I can feel the anxiety coming from her, the sincerity in her pain and confusion.

“Is it him?” I ask, and again I know I don’t deserve an answer, don’t deserve to know how he treats her or what he does to her. Because she’s not mine, and I know that. I know it with every fiber of my being. I can’t have the woman on the other end of this phone call.

But I want to know.

I want to know what he did to confuse her. What words he said that eat away at her brain. What he did to make her hate herself.

And then I want to fix it for her. I want to smooth over his wreckage, ease the aches that fill her body and soul. I want to whisper sweet words to erase his voice, press soft kisses along her body to cover up his touch.

I want to burn away every reminder of him until all she can feel is me.

“Yeah,” she whispers. “Him, my parents, everyone.”

“Can you get away?” I ask, the words escaping my lips in a moment of weakness. My heart takes over and utters the words my brain won’t let me say.

“Now?” she asks, surprise lacing her voice.

“Yeah, can you meet me?”

She’s silent on the other line but I can hear her breath, an easy flow of air. “Yeah,” she says and it’s fucking music to my ears. “I can meet you.”

Laughter looks good on her.

We’re in the outskirts of the French Quarter in a shitty dive bar, far enough fromfamigliaterritory, that I don’t think we’ll be spotted. Lana brings the plastic cup of vodka to her lips, taking a hearty sip of the clear liquid and scowling as it burns its way down her throat. “Ugh,” she groans, but then smiles softly when she turns to look at me, and it’s mesmerizing. Lana has this kind of pull that I can’t explain. It grasps me when she’s sad, tugging me toward her. But damn, when she smiles, my heart throbs, aching inside my chest cavity. If I was attracted to a sad Lana, happy Lana only increases that attraction.

I chuckle, taking a gulp from my own cup of amber liquid. “Are you even old enough to drink?”

A smile lifts the corners of her lips, she looks best like that, happy, not weighted down with obligations. “Nope,” she says with a pop. “Not for a few months.”

Age doesn’t matter much in a place like this, but my gut still clenches with her admission. There are so many things wrong about sitting at this bar next to her, the first being that she’s engaged.

I glance down to the rock that sits on her finger. It’s a large diamond, way more than I could ever afford to buy her. She catches my gaze and covers the ring with her other hand, plucking it from her finger and slipping it into her purse.

“Sorry—”

“No,” she cuts me off, “I should have taken it off at home, but my mom notices everything.” She shrugs and brings the cup of alcohol back up to her lips.

I want to toss that ring in the Mississippi River.

But I have no claim to the woman next to me, the ring only serves as a reminder of that.

If Damien saw me here sitting inches away from her, he would cut my balls off.

They ache just thinking about it, but then I glance over and see her swaying with the music, full pink lips mouthing the lyrics, and I can’t bring myself to leave her.

---