How nice. The dagger dug deeper. Like he was doing me a favor.
Just tell her.
The words itched, but cowardice was something else. It kept me locked in a box, tortured in the fear. I didn’t want things to change, to lose this new awesome life I had. I wanted her in it, and I wanted Ramses too.
Like stated, selfish.
Ramses wet his lips in front of me, smiling without words. He partook in some back and forth with his mom and James before Evie hugged me, and we all took our seats. Ramses and I did sit next to each other, but with his mom and James in the seats beside us, we kept our distance reasonable and our touches nonexistent. We were two acquaintances again.
Like we’d always been a lie.
The second half to the ballet proved to be just as awkward as intermission. Ramses and I did keep to ourselves, and after, Evie talked to me while Ramses entertained James. It appeared James was Evie’s date for the evening and the man she’d been talking to the day she’d left my office.
“I haven’t told Ramses yet,” she said, the men talking beneath the staircase after the show. Evie and I had left the theater in full banter, her talking and me just listening. My attention divided, I gauged it between chatting with her and trying not to look at Ramses.
Currently with James, he’d been doing the same thing, his hands in his pockets. He flicked a glance my way on occasion, and I hugged my arms, pretending not to notice. This was definitely not the precedent I wanted to set with his mom.
I mean, we were supposed to tell her soon.
Tonight’s interception would just be the prelude to more lies. We were already going to have to lie, but now, we really had to lie.
I chewed my lip while Evie went on. She said she planned to tell Ramses about James soon, but it was new just like I hinted to her.
“I’m surprised you didn’t just take Ramses’s tickets and go with your new friend.” She nudged me. “I’m sure Ramses would have sold them to you or even just given them to you, knowing him.”
I was sure he would have, my nod firm. Eventually, we all made it outside and in front of the busy theater.
Evie had hooked my arm, and it was all I could do to fight her on after-show drinks. She and James planned to go to a place downtown, and she pushed both me and Ramses to join them.
“I would, Ma, but Brielle has to get back,” he urged, kissing her cheek when she placed it out. “Long drive. You understand. And I have to be at the office first thing.”
“You work too much, darling.” She touched his cheek. “But I understand.” She waved a hand at me. “Bri, I’ll text you.”
I nodded, giving her a hug before letting her go. In a stiff stance, Ramses offered to head with them to the valet. He said I could wait where I was so I wouldn’t be in the rush of the traffic on the curb.
At this point, I just wanted to bury my face in my hands, and if I smoked, I would have done so then.
How had I fucked this up so bad?
Ramses appeared truly sick when he left me standing there, completely over all this, and I didn’t blame him.
After all, he lied for me.
He’d always wanted to tell the truth, and I placed him in this predicament. Hugging my arms, I wandered outside the theater in thought. A cluster of photographers were around, snapping shots of the theater and the high class clientele. I’d heard a few celebrities had attended the show tonight.
I started to pass them when I was grabbed by one.
“Hey. That’s Brielle Norrington!”
The flashes came first, bodies second as the majority of those photographers descended on me like locusts.
I was surrounded in a frenzy, people literally yelling at me in a fashion so familiar to my time in New York and Jersey, it churned my gut.
Flash.
“Brielle, what are you doing here?”
Another flash.
“Does Alec know? You’re a long way from Jersey, New York?”
Flash. Flash. Flash.
“What do you have to say about the more recent speculations?”
I had no idea what that last pap meant, too busy framing my eyes and fighting the crowds. I elbowed for an out, trying to find Ramses. I started to call for him before a pap grabbed my arm, jerking me back so hard I about fell on my ass. Actually, if it hadn’t been for all the paparazzi behind me, I would have fallen. They blocked the descent, and the pap whipped me around for a picture.
“Eh. Get your fucking hands off her!”
Ramses parted the crowd, a firm tower over a sea of heads. He got my arm too, but when that other pap tugged, he placed me behind him and shoved the guy. He bared teeth. “Back off.”
The guy just wanted a picture. They always did, and where Alec and I had learned how to combat that over the years, Ramses hadn’t. He engaged, and once he had, they did right back.
The pap’s shove came from behind his camera, which Ramses grabbed and shot toward the ground. It exploded and the shutters around us followed, more flashes.
My heart sunk. “Ramses!”
The pap launched at him, roaring but Ramses grappled the guy’s shoulders and slammed him into the pavement.
My breath stole.
Ramses loomed over the guy, wailing on him to keep him down. His fist knocked into him again and again, and my heart shot into my throat, the sweat cold and deadly on my brow. Shaking, I stumbled back which only landed me back into the sea of paparazzi.
“Is this your new boyfriend, Brielle?” They shoved. “The guy from the pictures?”
What… pictures?
I couldn’t ask, too busy watching my boyfriend actually beat the crap out of a guy in front of me. The display froze me in my heels, a deep tremble in my legs. Thoughts from my past triggered, and I couldn’t stop them.
Pain.
Alec’s fists coming out of nowhere, the blind rage in his eyes as he turned into someone I’d never seen.
But that’s not this. He’s not him.
He wasn’t, and I had to physically shake myself out of my head. The harsh severity of my past descended on me like storm clouds, and I grabbed my head, fighting the fear, and what my ex-husband had done. How he’d hurt me, hit me for something that wasn’t my fault.
Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.
“Brielle.”
I opened my eyes to find Ramses, Ramses easing me out of the fear, the pain. He lifted a hand toward me, but I could only see one thing.
His knuckles.
They’d split, an angry red. They bled from his work on the guy who was currently being dragged up by security. Security was pushing him away, all of them away. It seemed they’d seen what had happened and were controlling the situation.
A particularly large one in all back reached out to Ramses. “You okay, Mr. Mallick?”
I shouldn’t be surprised they knew who he was, and thank god, he probably wouldn’t see any repercussions from what he’d done. That should be what I was focusing on, that he was okay, and we were okay.
But all the blood.
His hand when he waved to the guy things were fine. He directed his attention toward me, speaking words I barely heard. I just kept seeing him hit that guy, over and over and…
“Brielle?”
I think he saw the fear in my eyes, how shaken I was. He called out for security assistance, and they kept the crowds back that had suddenly congregated on the sidewalk. It was a combination of more media and curious theater goers, all of which parted with the help of the theater’s security staff. They gave us the room to get to our car, get out of there. Somehow my old life had found me again, and hugging my arms, I wasn’t sure if I could get out of it this time.