I wasn’t related to the Corbins, but they were like family. I’d always seen the twins as I did my sisters. Although if one of my sisters acted the way Saffron did, I’d lock her in the attic until she was thirty. The girl was exhausting.
Blaze had a crowd around him and what looked like a date of his own hooked on his right arm. Good luck with that, Saffron, I thought. Not that it would stop her. She would see the other girl as a challenge. The other girl would possibly lose. Depended on how this upper-crust worked and if Saffron could handle the different tax bracket.
“Come on, we’re going over to the table Woods said was reserved for us. We stay in here for drinks and mingling then the people from the production company will speak and so will Blaze before we exit to go to the theatre,” Bliss explained to me. I grabbed Saffron’s elbow to get her attention then nodded my head toward Nate and Bliss who were now walking to the far left of the room.
I didn’t wait for Saffron to follow me because she’d stall if I did. She was not going to want to move farther away from Blaze’s line of vision.
“Can you introduce me to him?” Saffron asked, falling into step beside me. Her heels added to her five-nine height putting her at my eye level. Which made it easier to talk to her and not need to lean down and get closer to her. I wasn’t here to get cozied up to Saffron. I knew the real reason I was here and avoiding the fact was pointless.
“Eventually,” I replied. “I need a drink and he appears busy at the moment.”
Saffron sighed a little too dramatically. “Fine. I need a drink too.”
“You’re not old enough to drink,” I replied. “She wasn’t going to get drunk at this event and leave me to deal with her.
“I’m almost twenty-one!” she said defensively.
“You’re not drinking.” The hard edge to my voice thankfully shut her up. For now at least. I knew she didn’t back down easy . . . or ever.
Nate stopped at a table and pulled out a chair for Bliss. Once Bliss was seated, I did the same for Saffron placing her beside Bliss. If anyone could put up with Saffron, it was Bliss. She had patience with Saffron. I had, once, before things had changed me. I’d lost that patience this past year. Saffron was a walking time bomb. Her father wasn’t going to be able to clean up the disaster she left in her wake forever. One day something would happen that she’d have to truly pay for. Regret would be a real word for her then. And only after she lived through that would she have the hope of changing.
“There’s Ophelia,” Bliss said cheerfully beside me.
Just her name and my spirits lifted. Fuck me. All the times I’d fought my urge to text her or call her. To show up at her place, and here I was willingly putting myself in her presence. For what? Torture possibly? I had given up on my resolve to not see her again. This opportunity gave me a chance and I took it.
I was going to look. I couldn’t not look. I was too damn weak not to look at her. Turning my head in the direction Bliss was looking, I saw her standing by the waterfall of what I thought was possibly champagne. A flute was in her hand as she smiled up at some man I didn’t know. That smile, her voice, and the way her pale blonde hair stood out like a halo against the black dress she was wearing, the combination would have any male spellbound.
Instead of the nightmares I’d endured the past six months since the night with Ophelia I’d had none. When I dreamed it was of her. Just like being in her presence soothed me, the thought of her did the same thing in my dreams. Her power over me was a weakness I couldn’t accept because I wasn’t good for her. My soul was too damaged.
Ophelia was nothing like Alice. She was honesty, light, and beauty. The darkness in Alice had been masked but not forever. By the time I saw the traces of what she was hiding underneath Alice’s outward appearance it was too late. I loved her. The darkness hadn’t been her fault. She’d suffered abuse as a young girl. It left a mark that I had stupidly thought I could heal. But the marks left on her life had made it impossible. I couldn’t save her from herself. Just like I hadn’t been able to save our child from her.
The deep sharp edge that felt like a blade ripping through my chest came with the memory. As it always did. I swallowed hard and forced my breathing to remain even. Here was not the time to think of that. But it was always there waiting to unleash its power over me. The horror that would forever haunt me. The reason why keeping my distance from Ophelia Finlay was important. I was irreparable and I knew it.