Bound to You

Chapter 14

I pinned my hair up and then took it down again. I stared at myself in the mirror. I pinned my hair up. I took it down again.

"What do you think is going to happen tonight if your hair is just right?" Allie asked, and I rolled my eyes. "Oh, Lena, what gorgeous hair you have. Take off your clothes," she said in a fake English accent.

"I don't think anything is going to happen. I just want to look nice." It was almost the truth. It wasn't like I thought you were going to ravish me tonight. I wasn't dumb enough to ignore all the reasons there would never be anything between us.

But something had changed before you left. That night, in the dark, when you maybe forgot just for a minute all the barriers between us, when you looked at me like I saved your life. When you looked at me like your equal. I wanted that again.

"Let's just go, okay?"

Allie rolled her eyes. She'd insisted on coming to the party, not because she gave a shit that you were back from England but because she was hoping she could sneakily get drunk.

Downstairs, you were standing amongst a group of people I recognized from the hospital: doctors and nurses and one physical therapist. If it was possible, you were even more handsome than before. As I came down the stairs, your eyes caught mine, and they seemed to shine as you smiled at me.

My dad patted you on the shoulder, and your attention was pulled back to the group. Allie looped her arm through mine just as my dad tapped a knife against his glass and the room went silent.

"Thank you everyone for being here tonight," my dad boomed into the crowded room. "We're so very glad to have our good friend, John Warner, back in the States, even if his trip did somehow make his accent worse." Polite laughter scattered through the room, and you rocked back on your heels. "And even more than John's return, we want to celebrate his newest accolade, his engagement to Miss Marie DuBois."

I froze. My heart stopped. I vaguely felt Allie's nails digging into my arm, but it didn't hurt because my whole body had gone numb.

She was standing right next to you, an outrageously beautiful redhead, decked out in diamonds and a silk dress. I saw it all now, what I'd overlooked moments before: your hand curled around her waist, the proximity between your bodies, the ring on her left hand. I felt sick.

Everyone raised their glasses, toasting the happy couple, but I couldn't move. Engaged? How could that have happened in eight months?

I watched from the foot of the stairs as people approached you, offering hugs and handshakes and congratulations. And then, finally, your eyes wandered to me. I could only imagine what I looked like, my mouth hanging open like I was a fish out of water. My body was shaking, and somewhere beside me, Allie was still holding on to me.

"Lena?" she whispered, but you were already moving toward me, your fiance in tow.

"I'd like to introduce you," you said when you were close enough. "This is Marie DuBois. Marie, this is-"

"Lena!" Her smile was so big, I could crumple under the weight of it. She lurched forward and hugged me, and over her shoulder, I looked at you. You were smiling, but you had a strange pain in your eyes, and I could only imagine it was because I looked like I was about to cry.

Marie stepped back and held me at arm's length. "John never stops talking about you. You're his favorite person, he's always saying." She smiled huge, and my heart dropped. She said it like I was five years old. The way adults are "best friends" with little kids. Not like John couldn't live without me, and she was jealous.

"How-how did this...?"

John pulled Marie back beside him. "Marie and I were childhood sweethearts. We reconnected while I was in England."

Marie was grinning, and why not? If I was engaged to the most beautiful man in England, I'd be grinning too. "It all happened rather quickly," she said, flashing the ring at us and giggling. "As I'm sure you've figured out. John just needed a reason to get me over to the States, I'm sure."

My stomach turned. She was moving here. They would get married and have babies and grow old together, and I would have to watch it all happen in my living room. I swayed, and Allie gripped me tighter.

"I need to-" I didn't finish the thought because the end of it was get the hell out of here. I rushed away from them, dragging Allie behind me, until we were in Dad's office. She closed the door.

"Fuck," she said, but I didn't have words. I slumped down into the chair behind my dad's desk.

And then I started crying. The whole world blurred, and I put my face in my hands, unable to stop it. I cried so much, the tears ran from my open palms, down my arms, and onto my dad's desk.

"Lena," Allie whispered, wrapping her arms around me. "I'm sorry."

"I'm so fucking stupid," I hiccuped. "I can't believe I thought-" I couldn't believe I thought there was actually something between us. I couldn't believe I thought you might have been looking at me like you loved me. What was I thinking?

"I'm just a fucking kid to him."

Allie knelt in front of me, her hands on my bare knees. "Next year, you'll be at Yale and he'll be here with his idiot Brit wife, and it won't matter anymore."

I put my arms around her, wishing it could be true, even as I knew it wouldn't be. It would always matter.