“No, really, Adam, you don’t have to—” I start, but he’s already disappeared into the kitchen. But he doesn’t come back with champagne or anything like that, just two glasses of ice water, one for Rachel and one for me.
It’s thoughtful and I actually am really thirsty, so I take a long, deep sip. “Thanks, Adam.”
“Here’s the suitcase with your clothes. You can change while we start packing.”
Wow. He’s actually being decent about this. I nod and roll the suitcase he pointed out to the guestroom. As I close the door, I hear him and Rachel start to make small talk.
Unzipping the suitcase, I sort through the clothes, frowning when I see all my underthings among the other clothes. Good gods, did he pack this? The brief image of him in my apartment, hands in my underwear drawer sends a creepy chill down the back of my neck.
But then I shake it off. That doesn’t seem like the kind of manual labor Adam Archer would be into. No doubt he had some assistant do it. Let’s just hope it was a female assistant.
Quickly I unzip my dress and step out of it, slipping on some yoga pants and a loose t-shirt instead.
Rachel and Adam’s voices immediately quiet as soon as I open the door again and come back out into the living room. Adam’s assembling a cardboard box and Rachel has plucked a couple of paintings off the wall that she knows are mine.
“I won’t be able to get it all tonight, obviously.” I look around. “And what did you do with my couch and my mattress?”
“Storage,” Adam says, looking up.
Son of a—
“Why would you do that without talking to me, Adam?”
He straightens up after taping the box. “I was trying to be romantic.”
I huff out an exasperated breath. Okay, so we’re going to finally have this out. “Romantic would have been talking to me. Planning an engagement party with me. Not going behind my back and doing all this stuff when I didn’t even want it.”
“It wasn’t behind your back. I would have done it with you. If you’d been here.”
“Ever think there was a reason I wasn’t here?” I retort before I can think better of it. But screw it. Why should I have to walk around on eggshells just to protect his fragile ego? This is bullshit.
I run a hand through my hair and sigh. “Look, I’m just saying that if two people aren’t communicating, then that’s a big red flag. You should have tried harder to talk to me before things went as far as they did.”
Adam’s mouth tightens. “I was worried about you.”
I’m about to balk but then he comes close. “What are you doing, Daphne? I was trying to give you a way forward to keep Belladonna. This is what you’ve wanted your whole life.”
I open my mouth, then frown. I mean, yes, Belladonna has been my life. But is it the life I chose?
Wasn’t I just thinking that I’d be willing to sacrifice anything if it meant moving forward in this new freedom?
What if…what if I let Belladonna go?
I freeze at the impossibility of the idea. The thought is like a huge chasm yawning before me. But a few ideas immediately take form. Even without Belladonna, I can still pursue research. I’d be leaving Rachel, but we could still be friends. We could hang out—gasp—outside of work! And I could get more friends. For the first time in my life, I could have a life.
No more board trying to dictate my actions.
No more of Logan’s second-guessing my motives. It hasn’t been about the patents for a long time for me but finally, he wouldn’t have to doubt that. It might remove the last barrier to him trusting me.
I could do what I love, which is being down in the lab doing research, not the grind and glad-handing of being CEO, all of which I hate.
If tonight’s proven anything, it’s that I’m a new Daphne. The old one doesn’t fit the mold anymore. That’s what I’ve been learning in my time with Logan—that there’s more to life, more to me, than just the quiet, obedient daughter who does what she’s supposed to.
It’s all on the tip of my tongue. I’m a new Daphne, I want to say. But I feel myself shrinking under Adam and Rachel’s stares.
Not to mention that the room is strangely blurry. I put a hand to my head. I haven’t taken out my contacts yet, but the shadows on the wall seem to stretch, swallowing everything up.
What was I just thinking about? Right, Belladonna. “I don’t know if I want that anymore.”
“Really? What would your father say?” Adam asks, brow still furrowed in concern. “Battleman’s was his life’s fight. For the sake of the gods’, Daphne, what would your mother say?”
His words hit me with the weight of a freight train and I stumble back a step.
“Adam, that’s not fair,” Rachel starts but he holds up a hand to quiet her.
“I’m serious. Daphne, you’ve fought your whole life to save others like her. Are you going to give up on everyone else who’s sick just because, what?” he scoffs. “You don’t feel like it anymore?”
I shake my head, but everything that was so clear only moment ago has started to become fuzzy. “No, I- That’s, I- I would never give up on Battleman’s—” I put a hand on my hand and blink hard.
And then, as I’m looking at him, suddenly the world swoops sideways as a wave of dizziness hits me out of nowhere.
I grab for the wall, only barely catching myself as Rachel rushes to my side. “Daphne, are you okay?” she cries.
I blink hard but when I look up, there are two of her, then three, all dancing around. The dizziness only gets worse the more I blink and try to get my bearings. “I don’t feel so good,” I mutter as she helps me to the couch.
“How much did she drink at the ball?” Adam asks, sounding appalled.
I open my mouth to say I barely drank two sips of champagne at the ball but no sound comes out. Everything’s gone so blurry and liquid around me.
“Here, help me get her to the guest bedroom,” Adam says. “She can sleep it off there.”
The world goes even crazier, dipping and swooping, as Adam lifts me up in his arms and Rachel hurries near, her voice murmuring low words I can’t quite make out.
Everything’s moving so slow but when I blink and look around, I think it’s a long while later, maybe even an hour or two.
Loud voices make me blink to alertness. I don’t think I was asleep exactly, more like just really, really out of it. Something’s wrong. Really wrong. When I try to sit up or move my arms, they don’t respond right.
It’s like I’ve…like I’ve been drugged.
Holy shit. Holy shit…
The thought should be scary. It means I could be in danger. But it feels really detached. Far away.
Rachel’s here. She won’t let anything bad happen to me.
The door of the bedroom bursts open and a giggling Rachel comes in, her arms wrapped around Adam’s neck. What?
I blink puffy eyes, sure what I’m seeing can’t be right. The only light is from the window and the hallway, casting long shadows.
“Come on,” Rachel says. “It’s enough that she’s spending the night. We don’t have to do anything more.”