Page 45 of Scorned Queen

Another message pings, and this one is from my father:Every beast has horns and talons.Do you really want to see mine?Last chance to make this right.Cash out and walk away.Or else.

Anger bubbles inside me.He’s fucking threatening Alana, and I’m at my limit.I reply with:You think she makes me weak.You’re wrong.The wrath I will regin down on you if you touch her is unfathomable.Anything you think I will hold back, I will not.

Ah, son,he replies.When you talk like that, you make me proud, but there is a softness inside you that neither of us can deny.You are no match for me.

As the famous saying goes,I reply,arrogance is the surest path to failure.

And because he can’t allow me the last word, he concludes with:We’ll see.

Seconds tick by, adrenaline pouring through my veins, before I pull up Caleb’s number and text:I need to see you.

He answers immediately:When?

This weekend.I’ll let you know, but acting on my father’s behalf is not in your best interest.

I’ll wait to hear from you on all points, he replies, and I slide my phone back in my pocket to find Alana staring at me, her eyes wide and worried.

“What just happened?”she asks softly.

“Nothing that matters tonight.”

“But it matters?”she presses.

“Maybe,” I say, not willing to be pushed into saying more—not here and now, at least.I need to think about where I’m headed with that message to Caleb and just how dirty I’m willing to get.

The vehicle pulls up at the rear of my apartment, which I assume means the front is a mass of reporters.“We’re clear for entry,” Adam informs me as if reading my mind.He exits the rear door, does whatever he does, and then leans inside again.“Let’s move.”

I kiss Alana’s hand.“Home sweet home, baby.”I soften my voice.“Let’s go upstairs.”I don’t give her the chance to argue.I exit the vehicle and take her with me with no intent of allowing my father to ruin the first night Alana calls my home her home.

Chapter thirty-seven

Alana

Thetripinsidethebuilding that is my new home is as easy as a summer breeze offering relief from the burning hot sun—or, in our case, the press.But there is little to offer relief from the battle raging around us.I don’t know who Damion was texting with on the ride here, but I know the hard set of his jaw and the sharpness of his eyes well enough to be certain the content was about his father.

The control freak in me that studied into the wee hours to ensure I had perfect grades craves information and wants to demand he spill the goods.But as he folds his arm around me and ushers me into the elevator, the warmth of his touch is a welcome distraction from the world outside.I’m not sure I want to risk cooling the heat between us for what will most certainly strike a foreboding tone.

Once we’re inside the car, Adam joins us, and it’s him, not Damion, who punches in our destination.Damion and I face forward, but there’s a thick layer of awareness between us, an intimacy that isn’t about sex as much as it is about me going home with him, and not to his home, but ours.I am warm inside and out and a tad bit nervous, which is really quite ridiculous.This is Damion, who I have known all my life and who I love more than life.Why would I be nervous about the launch of our life together?Especially when I believe the root of who we are began decades before this night.

My mind travels to that kiss in the closet when we were seven, then the kiss at my front door before he left for college, and somehow, I detour to my mother.Of course, after her explosion in my apartment, it’s really no surprise, but the way she treated Damion and the things she said don’t even align with the way she’s felt about him most of our lives.Even after I’d cried that day he’d kissed me on my porch, after I’d declared the end of me and Damion, my mother had defended him.She’d told me we were young, and if it was meant to be, we’d find each other again.And we have, and that matters.It matters so very much, and yet she didn’t share my joy with me today.She tried to destroy the man I love, tried to destroyus, me and Damion, and for what?Or rather, who?

His father?Who she’s having an affair with?

My mind flashes back to the past…

Damion and I had both been seventeen, or maybe he’d just turned eighteen.We’d hit the movies together and saw the new Hunger Games movie, an easy thing to do when my mother and his girlfriend had been out with friends, separately, of course, while my father was working late.Damion’s parents never really questioned where he was or what he was doing, and I swear my mother fretted over him more than they did.

She was good to him then but she was horrible to him tonight.

I return to the memory.

We’d had fun that night, but then we always did, laughing together and trying to catch popcorn in our mouths, but I’d been acutely aware of how soon he’d leave for college.So was he.It was there between us, a living, breathing temptation, and a few times I think he’d been close to kissing me, but hehad a girlfriend.Another reality I’d been acutely aware of pretty much every second I was with him.

We’d stopped by a diner on the way home, and to our shock, we’d found my mother and his father together.I’d wanted to approach the table, but Damion had caught my arm.I sink back into that moment, reliving it:

“No,” he insists.“We don’t know what this is.”He captures my hand and all but drags me out of the joint.

The instant we’re outside, out of view of the diner windows, I whirl on him, “What are you suggesting is going on between them?”

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