Arresting. Not perfect. Not beautiful. The unforgiving mouth and stern features preclude beauty; the scar slashing across his cheek from a dig accident in Jordan makes him look cruel and ruthless, which he is.
I should know.
I’ve often wondered if there’s something wrong with me, some kind of masochistic sequence in my DNA that’s somehow managed to defy evolution and common sense and lead me right into the arms of a man who could eat my heart raw...and did.
Even now, after he cracked my soul open, poured petrol inside, and lit me on fire, I want him. Every cruel and terrible part of him. His brilliance and his disdain and his carnality hiding underneath it all. His rough voice and midnight eyes and the way his need for me always seemed to stun him, like he hadn’t planned on me but once he’d had me, there would be no getting enough, no possible satiation. I was his to consume and his hunger was infinite, like a god’s.
What would Attenborough say about that, I wonder? Are there animals in the wild who willingly snuggle up to the bigger animals who want to eat them? Are there bunnies that can’t help but hop after snarling foxes? Big-eyed deer that nuzzle against the throats of wolves?
No, of course not. There’s only museum-loving girls who fall obliviously and deliriously in love with their brutally depraved professors.
I hate him, of course, I’ll hate him forever for lying to me, for humiliating me, for shredding my heart in an unfamiliar narthex with only an event planner and my baby brother for comfort—but I could never hate him for that depravity. Or his indifference, or his arrogance. They were the things that made me fall in love with him, senseless bunny that I was, and even now as I’m watching him barely rein in his impatience with gala small talk, I can’t help but fall in love with him again, just a little bit. Just with that crisp tuxedo and with the way the reddish gala lighting makes his restless gaze a deep violet hue. Just with that mouth that used to mark sin and possession all over me in between murmured lectures about ancient religion.
It’s in this single moment of weakness, this one moment I’ve given myself infour yearsto remember how beautiful and daunting he is, that his eyes meet mine and he sees me.
He sees me.
His face goes from bored to stunned to avid to angry in the space of a heartbeat—in the space ofmyheartbeat, as my heart surges once in my chest and then begins frantically beating out a tattoo of fury and retreat. A message even my dumb bunny brain can understand.
Go.
Flee.
Before you kill him.
Church says something to his date and their conversant, and then begins pushing his way through the crowd toward me, determination carving his proud features into something equal parts sexy as hell and terrifying as fuck.
I see the moment his eyes rake over me completely, when he takes in the catering uniform and the empty tray in my hand. More shock ripples through him, followed by more determination, his mouth sharpening into a blade as he cuts toward me through the crowd.
Go, you stupid bunny,the Attenborough in my mind chides me, and I finally listen, unfreezing and darting towards the hallway, looking over my shoulder just once to see Church moving faster, walking with long, powerful strides.
“Charlotte,” I see him say. Growl. I know it’s a growl even though I can’t hear him over the music and the hobnobbing. His dark eyebrows are pulled together and his hands are flexing at his sides, like he’s itching to grab me and hoist me over his shoulder like he used to do before the wedding. I used to joke that studying primitive history had made him primitive indeed, and he’d simply smile back and dare,but tell me you don’t like it, little supplicant, and I never could tell him that, because I did, I did like it. I liked everything we ever did together until the day I had to ride the Tube home in my wedding dress, and then I liked nothing ever again.
The truth is that I’m a mean, tired, furious bunny—a little supplicant turned apostate and unbeliever—and I’m not hiding because I’m scared. I’m running from him because if he catches me, I will kill him.
I will scratch out his eyes while reciting passages from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, I will hum Latin hymns while I bite his heart out. I don’t care what kind of god he is, he is a dead god to me, and I will build a temple to bitterness out of his bones. He will be my burnt offering and I will send that smoke all the way to heaven. I will char the world with the pride he stole from me.
Stay away, Church.
Don’t you dare.
I duck down the hallway, but I know Church and I know he’ll follow me right back to the kitchens if he has to, and so I set my tray against the wall, accept the annoying possibility that Martin might upbraid me later, and then scurry through a narrow door that spits me back out into the Great Court. And then I jog into the exhibits, pushing past the scattered gala-goers in Egypt and Greece until I get to the empty stairs, and I can climb up to the deserted upper galleries to wait him out. There’s no one up here, and my footsteps echo loudly on the wood floors as I move from Ancient Levant to Ancient Mesopotamia.
I think I lost him.
Thank God; it would be extra awkward to explain to Martin why I abandoned my champagne-slinging duties and also murdered a guest. Hart would lose its catering contract with the museum for sure, and I’d probably be fired. You know, after the trial for homicide.
I stop in front of a case displaying a cuneiform tablet, and I allow myself to breathe all the breaths I couldn’t earlier. I stare blankly at my pale reflection in the glass, not bothering to absorb either the smudges under my eyes, or the tight, scraped-back ponytail I have to wear for the event, or even the clay tablet itself. I just breathe and will my heart to stop hammering against the walls of my chest.
I don’t have to kill Church. I don’t have to see him.
I don’t have to remember all over again why I fell in love with him.
Slowly, too slowly for comfort, my pulse begins to slow and the adrenaline begins to dissolve in my blood. Exhaustion takes its place, and tears sting pointlessly at the backs of my eyes. When will it end? When will I be free? I suddenly wish Ihadleft London four years ago like I made him think; I wish I’d fought harder to get Jax and me back to America so I’d never have to see or think orfeelabout Church Cason ever again.
Hot tears start rolling down my face, and I hate them, I hate the wet slide of them, I hate how I’m weak and angry and empty and it’s from the mere sight of him. The mere presence of him.
Dammit.