But there was one man, standing in the corner, wearing all black. From head to toe. His mask was more like Zorro, bandit style, covering his eyes and most of his nose. His mouth was set into a grim line, his jaw square and arresting, even from where she stood across the room. He was big, broad shouldered, and he looked... Well, he looked kind of mean. He definitely didn’t look like he was excited to be there. But she found she couldn’t look away.
She imagined walking over to him. Imagined starting some kind of conversation. What would she even say?
Don’t imagine. You’re wearing a mask. You’re dressed up.
Yes. She was. And for a moment she stopped, tried to see if there was maybe someone else. Somebody a little less dangerous. Somebody maybe a little bit less...everything.
Why are you here? Anyway. There’s no guarantee anything will happen.But if it was going to... Why not make it a fantasy?
Yes. This was her chance to escape.
She didn’t know why, but this year the approaching holidays had felt like a noose tightening around her neck. Like the grief of everything—the loss of their parents back when they’d been kids—had only gotten worse, instead of better. Like the passage of time made her miss her mother more than she ever had before. Made her miss her father’s warmth and wisdom.
Their mother had been sick for several years before her death. Cancer that had just come back and back and back until she hadn’t been able to fight anymore.
It had been devastating, and to a small child, as shocking as anything, because she hadn’t fully been able to wrap her head around how sick her mother was. But the real shock had been her dad. Nine months later. A heart attack that had killed him right out where he was working on the ranch, and had killed him fairly instantly.
She felt like they had to be cursed. Like there had to be something wrong with them, because how could that happen to them?
They had been such a happy family. And it had been up to Levi to take care of all the kids in the aftermath. And her oldest brother had.
So she had never wanted to say anything to him about just how difficult this time of year was.
But it was what had driven her here. What had made it feel unbearable now. Maybe it was that all of them were finally adults. Maybe it was Camilla’s leaving to go to college. That probably wasn’t helping. She didn’t like endings. She didn’t like change. Because she had lived through too much of it.
And so she would be bold. Because she wasn’t here to be timid. At the end of all things, she was not here to be timid.
“Hi there,” she said, making her voice a little lower, a little huskier.
The man looked her over, and she couldn’t read his expression. His eyes were shaded by the black cowboy hat, his features obscured by the mask. The dark stubble of his beard made him look dangerous.
Her heart beat harder. Faster.
“Are you here all by yourself?” she asked.
His head tilted to the side. “Yes.” And then she noticed. Noticed the way he looked at her body. And she felt a little bit of a thrill. She didn’t think a man had ever looked at her body. Not like that. Slow and lazy, and interested. But then, she usually covered herself so that it wouldn’t happen. So she sort of made her own invisibility cloak with those T-shirts.
“You?”
“Yes. I came alone.”
“Surprising.”
“I figured it was best to come alone since I didn’t aim to leave alone.”
Her own words made her tremble. She’d tried to proposition a man one other time in her whole life and it had not gone well.
He had, in fact, disappeared after.
Not that his leaving town for two years was directly connected to her, but it felt like it.
And it stung.
She’d had one serious crush in all of her existence. A long, enduring,crushingcrush, fitting of the title because it made her feel like the air was being pressed from her body whenever he was around.
And when she thought of Damien Prince she... Well. It made her wish she were dead. Because she had wandered around mooning after him for most of her life. And he had never noticed her. Not once.
She’d checked.