I bow my head and take in calming breaths. Peeking under my arm, my chest feels tight as I see the small bed and a steel bedside table.
This isn’t real. I need to wake up. This is too much.
The blood roars in my ears as a large sound bounces around further down the hall. My face is glued to the bars as I try to see, but the lights don’t continue the whole way down. I try to listen beyond my pounding heart.
“Hello.” My voice sounds hoarse. No one answers. Sweat soaks my hands and I release the bars. The image of a furry rat banging into a tin can has all my nerve endings on fire. I still can’t turn around and face this reality. If I stay by the door, someone will open it. They can’t leave me down here. I swallow the emotion that bubbles up my throat. A sob erupts from me when I think of Lucas. He had arrived, helped me up, and at the moment, I had been weak with relief. I really thought he would make it all disappear, that Henry’s outburst would be stopped.
The wooden door has been repainted too many times. Bubbles of paint are rough under my palm. I trail my finger the whole way to the keyhole. One turn and it would end this madness. I didn’t deserve this fate.
My heart pangs when I think of Hannah and Jessie. I think everyone heard what I had done. Henry roared from the gardens and all the way through the house as he dragged me to his father. It was a walk of shame.
Humiliating.
I swear I hear footsteps. I grip the bars and try to see as my heart pounds in my chest. I see a shadow and move back as it continues to move towards me. Black hair and inky eyes, his sculpted face is normally filled with an unshakable confidence. I hate the look of devastation in Lucas’s eyes.
This is bad.
Him being here brings so much to the surface. Everything in me is fighting and scrambling to get to the top.
“Please, let me out,” I whisper as my lips tug down and I try not to cry. I don’t want to speak too loud, but I need him to get me out.
“Ella.”
The way he says my name has me stepping back away from the door. Away from him. “You can’t, can you?”
He’s shaking his head.
I turn and stare at the space that feels smaller. Covering my heart with my hand, I beg it to stay in my chest. “I'm going to die?”
I can’t face Lucas.
“I won’t let that happen.” His words sound fierce-and if he keeps fighting-then I need to keep fighting as well.
“What’s going to happen to me?”
There is a lull before he speaks. “Please look at me.”
My stomach roils and I’m terrified in case I throw up. I turn and meet his dark eyes.
“I’m going to fix this.” His large hands grip the bars as he begs me to believe him.
I can’t answer him.
“I was never going to marry Sandra, you have to believe me.”
I bite the inside of my jaw until a metallic taste fills my mouth.
“I thought if I pushed you away, I would keep you safe.” He holds my stare.
I release my jaw from between my teeth and swallow my blood.
“I didn’t know that you could be punished like this.” His knuckles are white as he grips the bars. “Ella, please say something.”
“I’m standing in a cell, in a white summer dress as I wait for my fate.” My lip trembles again. I’ve never felt so naked.
“I’m going to make this right. I just need time.”
My head snaps up and I’m shaking it. I’m moving, my hands wrapping around his. “You can’t leave me down here.”
A surge of panic rips through me. To hear that’s it, not just this moment that I’m down here, that it could be longer, raises another layer of this reality.
“I will make sure you have everything you need.”
A hiccup of tears has me bowing my head until my forehead rests on my hands.
“All I wanted was to marry you.” I’m thinking of that moment in the car. Larry was driving and my mother was beside me. The smell of polish from the car's recent cleaning was heavy in the air along with my mother’s perfume.
“All I wanted was you.” I look up at him now as tears stream down my face. “Then I met you and you were so horrible.” Salty tears escape into my mouth. I half smile. “All the stories at bedtime were lies and it hurt.”
“Ella.” Lucas' voice is haunted with pain.
“Then you kissed me and each kiss healed everything in me and I got more than some story. I was living it.” I take a breath as I control the wave of emotions.
“I don’t regret it, Lucas. I don’t regret you.” No matter the outcome. I don’t say it out loud, but it lingers between the bars and hovers over our joined hands.
“You caught my attention on the first day. It was your eyes. You reminded me of a deer. You had stood so still staring at me. I might not have known it at that moment, but you captured me.” Lucas presses his lips against my fingers and a kink in my armor, that’s barely hanging on, snaps.
“I really thought you hated me and the more you pushed the more I wanted you. Did I tell you you’re sexy when you’re angry?” His smile has my laugh mingling with my tears.
“Yes.” I swallow more tears as he places another kiss on my hands.
“You, Ella O’ Leary have dismantled all my walls…” He’s staring at me and I see them, the gold flecks floating in a mass of space. I’m rooting for their survival.
“I’m going to climb the tower and rescue you.” He’s smiling, but the heaviness in his eyes have me crying again.
“No, that was meant to make you smile.”
I laugh into our hands. “You don’t even know what story that is from,” I say looking up into his stunning eyes that are chasing the cold away. Forcing it into dark corners to give way to his light.
“Cinderella?”
I half laugh. “It’s Rapunzel and I’ve never really liked that story.”
“Which one is your favorite?”
I swallow tears as I think of all the bedtime stories. I’m smiling before I even say it. “Beauty and the Beast.”
He laughs, the sound warms my heart. “What a fitting story for us.”
Us, I like the sound of that.
“You are hardly a beast.” I smile now.
“A beast who has fallen in love with his beauty.”
My nerves are flooded with signals that have my mind pausing and needing to take in what he just said again. My stomach erupts and I can’t look away from his dark eyes. Oxygen grows thin and my hands grip his tighter.
“I love you, Ella.”
Tears come quick and I take in a lungful of air.
“Please don’t be upset.”
I look back up from him and shake my head, like it might shake the overwhelming feeling away. “I’m not, I’m just happy.”
He raises both eyebrows and I laugh.
“It’s just …” I swallow. I could keep saying it, but I don’t think Lucas would understand that I had dreamed of this moment since I was a little girl. I wasn’t standing in a cell when my prince declared his love for me, I was in a ballroom filled with spectators who couldn’t get over my beauty, when the prince declared me his, and told me I had his heart. But the real Lucas wasn’t some paper version of what I had built in my head. He was layered and confusing and I loved him for each fiber that made him up.