Page 11 of Samhain

This. This is why I’m here.

It wasn’t charity. It wasn’t out of the kindness of her heart. She’d married me in those woods, too, and I’d married her. She was my last link to Ivy and Lex until we saw them again, and together, we weren’t alone. They had each other, and all we had was us.

“Hey.” I closed the distance and wrapped my arms around her to pull her in close, and she linked her hands together at the small of my back. She smelled like flowers and sunshine and coconut lotion, feminine but so different from Ivy, who had always reminded me of vanilla and coffee and sugar cookies. “It’s okay, Juliet.”

She took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. “I know, Romeo. I know. Let me have some privacy, yeah?”

I couldn’t leave her to cry by herself, especially not when I was agonizing over the same thing. “You don’t have to be alone in this. I miss them, too.” I brushed hair behind her ear, and she lifted her honey-brown eyes to meet mine.

She’d always been so beautiful. I’d never deny that. And if I didn’t have such fucked-up feelings about them, I might have made a pass at the princess. But look at this opulence. Look at this twelve-million-dollar home in the heart of the most expensive place in the country. I could never compete with this.

I didn’t deserve Lex. I didn’t deserve Ivy. And I definitely didn’t deserve Miri.

She gave my cheek a comforting pat and wiped at her eyes, taking a step away from me. She yanked her princess mask up around her emotions so quickly, I nearly got whiplash. “Tonight, we settle in. Tomorrow, we get started.”

“Get started?”

“I’m not trying to be rude, darling, but if you want to get anywhere in this town, you’ve got to be fuckable.”

I tried not to be offended. “Uh, Juliet. I’m downright smoldering. Fourteen out of ten absolutely would bang.”

“Sure, in Chicago,” she said. “Out here? You’ve got to be hot and look like you cost a billion dollars.”

I swallowed down my pride. “That’s fair.”

“My cousins have some clothes in the closets upstairs. I’ll dig around to see what I can find,” she said. “Meanwhile, I’ve called my other cousin, Roxanna. She’s an agent who happens to be in town this week. She’s coming over for tea tomorrow evening.”

“Really?” Excitement rushed through me. “Wow, Miri. That’s quick.”

“It’s not a promise,” she said. “But it’s a start. We’ll see what happens.”

I smiled. “Thank you.”

She nodded. “Until the end.”

The vow we’d made in the woods. The vow we carried on our hands. I tried to put on a happy facade, even though it tore my insides to pieces when I said the words. “Until the end.”

She met me with a bashful stare before changing the subject. “Now, let’s call our spouses, huh? Let them know we’re here.”

I pulled out my phone and dialed Ivy’s number, only to get an error tone.

“The number you have dialed has been disconnected.”

“That’s weird.” I tried to send her a text, only for it to go undelivered.

Miri picked up her phone to do the same, but nothing on her end went through either.

“I’m having the same issue with Lex,” she said. Sure enough, I couldn’t get ahold of either one.

“Maybe it’s something weird on their end,” I said, ignoring the alarm blaring in the back of my mind. “They’ll reach out once it’s fixed.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” she said with a frown.

Roxanna Stuart was a force onto herself. Her grandfather had been brother to the current king and moved to America in the ’50s after a scandal involving a love child with another woman. Eventually, they reconciled with the royal family, but they stayed in the States. Now, Roxy was one of the most prolific agents in Hollywood. Her clients included multi-time award winners and the A-list of the A-list.

She was a short woman with pitch-black hair she kept in a professional updo. She wore slacks and a nice blouse and had this no-bullshit vibe about her that indicated just how long she’d been in the business. Meeting her the day after I moved to LA would not have been possible if it hadn’t been for Miri.

“This is him?” Roxy asked, sipping at her tea.

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