Page 25 of Twilight Echoes
“Well, that’s up to you,” her father said. “But I suspect it would be best if he stayed with you.”
Darrell covered his mouth, biting back a cough. While he’d like nothing more than to spend the night with Avery, he never expected her father to offer up her bedroom.
“You and Darrell are soulmates. You need to get reacquainted. It’s not like you’re the same little girl who lined your bedroom with his pictures and dreamed of being his?—”
“Dad,” she said with a stern voice. “Not only are you embarrassing as hell, but you’re making it worse because you’re on speaker.”
Darrell bit down on his tongue. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh, gasp, howl, or run for the hills.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I guess I shouldn’t have told Mom to get the box filled with all those things you used to have in your room because she kept?—”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“I love you, little girl.”
“Yeah, yeah, love you too, Dad.” She tossed her phone on the other chair and dropped her head back, covering her eyes with her arm. “I don’t know what is more embarrassing. The fact that my father just gave a perfect stranger permission to spend the night in my bedroom, or that he thought it funny to make sure you knew about my crush.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I have a box filled with pictures of you from ballet magazines and newspapers, and I even kept the DVR of your live performance last year.”
She lowered her arm, catching his gaze, sucker punching his heart. Everything about her made him breathless.
“That just makes you look like a stalker-creep. You’re a grown man. I was twelve.”
He let out a short laugh. “A grown man who admired a fellow dancer and knew he was destined to love you forever.”
Her mouth dropped open.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”
She cleared her throat. “Can I ask you a really crazy question?”
“Sure.” He shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t think any question could be wilder than what had happened so far.
“I’ve seen pictures and interviews with you and various girlfriends over the years. How does that work? I mean if I was your fated mate and you claimed me or whatever?” Her voice rose a notch.
He swallowed. “Are you asking me if I’ve had sex with other women?”
She nodded as her cheeks turned red. He found it adorable and endearing.
“I’m going to go out a limb and assume you’ve had sex with men, so I’m not sure how that would be any different.”
Her eyes narrowed to tiny slits. “You knew, or believed, we would end up together. I didn’t have that knowledge, so it’s absolutely one hundred percent different.”
“Why, Lady Avery Windsor. Are you jealous?”
“Damn fucking right I am.”
“Why is it when you swear it sounds like candy?”
“I have no idea, but answer the question, wolf.” She poked him in the arm.
“I told you I talked to my father about what had happened that day. As I got older, I brought it up a few times. I worried we might never cross paths again and he promised me it didn’t work that way. But he also told me that I needed to live my life. And that meant I needed to experience all the things that everyone else did. That meant dating. As time went on, and I became engrossed with my career, the imprinting feeling faded.”
“Are you saying you forgot? That’s convenient.”
“I didn’t forget. But I didn’t lay eyes on you again until you were seventeen and I was twenty-three. We locked gazes from across the auditorium foyer, but before I could come say hello, remember me, you scurried off. From that day on, I couldn’t think about anyone but you. Want to talk about creepy, stalker, old-man shit? The age difference means nothing now, but then, yeah, not sure your father would be offering to allow me to spend the night, even if he did believe in fated mates.” The feeling he’d had the day he’d dance with her had been intense, but it was nothing like how his heart pounded out of his chest when he’d seen her at the ballet. It had been his last performance and a week later, he was on a plane to Los Angeles and his first choreography job.
The next seven years had been torture.
