The Kiss Plot by Nicole French

Nine

Iburst onto the street still buttoning my cashmere coat, my breath spilling into the chilly November air in bright white plumes. Eric, of course, was nowhere to be seen among the rush of cars and pedestrians on Park Avenue.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I muttered as I looked frantically up and down the street. This was the second time I had chased Eric out of this building just to have missed him. Living in this ridiculous, diamond-lit world was starting to feel like déjà vu.

“Ms. Jane?”

I whirled around to find Gracie, the doorman, watching me timidly.

“He went straight toward the park, miss,” he said, pointing a white glove westward.

I swore. Profusely. He must have received the same basic text that I had. Well, fine. I had a few choice words for Daddy Dearest myself. I was about done with him yanking me and Eric all over the fucking city like puppets on a string.

“Gracie,” I said, turning back around. “Can you tell me the quickest way to get to the old dairy?”

* * *

Twenty minutes later,I’d ruined a perfectly good pair of vintage Givenchy pumps tromping through Central Park. I’d walked around the Met after leaving Celeste’s building with the intent of making my way to the old dairy and waiting there for Eric and John Carson in the shelter of the Dutch-style building. My hair was a frizzy mess from the light drizzle, my gold cat-eye glasses were fogging up, and my toes were soaked from stepping in more than one deceptively deep puddle on the park paths.

But just as I passed the back end of the Met, the sky really opened up, and rain began to dump.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I said to the clouds. “Really? Now?”

The clouds, of course only responded by raining harder. I decided my best bet was to walk south to the transverse road crossing the park and grab a cab or bus to the West Side, where I could dry off in the safety of my own apartment.

But no sooner had I trotted down one of the south-running trails than I stumbled upon the statue of the Polish King Jagiello. And there, sitting on a bench, completely oblivious to the raindrops hanging off the end of his long, straight nose, was Eric. They were a funny pair—the bronze monarch on the horse, swords crossed above his head as he rode into battle; Eric, the despondent heir, head bowed while he twisted a wet brown leaf back and forth between his fingers like a forlorn schoolboy.

He hadn’t even bothered to put on an overcoat, instead soaking up the cold mid-November rain like a sponge in his Tom Ford. A shame, really. That suit was one of his favorites.

I paused, no longer caring that my clothes were also getting ruined. Across the path, raindrops bounced off Turtle Pond like bullets breaking skin. Eric, however, just stared moodily at his sad little leaf, completely unaware of my presence or the pounding rain.

For a moment, all of my anger returned. How could he just sit here like today hadn’t happened? Like the world wasn’t happening? It was the epitome of childish. Was this what he was going to do every time things got hard? Run away and sulk? Maybe it was better that we didn’t stay married. Maybe it was better if I just said hang the money and walked away from him and his completely.

I started to say just that, but something stopped me. His hand twisted around with the leaf, and in his palm, I caught the telltale glint of gold: the two-faced coin that had hung around his neck for the past several months.

All of this had something to do with Janus. This secret society. Eric wasn’t a coward by nature. Hell, he was the one who came to me asking for my participation in this charade. Hadn’t he stuck up for me, had my back through all of it?

Who had his now?

His hand stopped moving, and the leaf fell to the ground. He continued to stare at the coin, clenching and unclenching his fingers around the quarter-sized metal piece.

“Well,” I said, shooting for levity but hitting something closer to cynicism as I approached. “If it isn’t the errant heir himself.”

Eric looked up, seemingly unsurprised to see me. “Hey.”

I bowed. “How goeth it, my liege?”

He rolled his eyes. “Don’t call me that. You of all people…”

I sighed and sat down beside him. My dress and coat were already ruined, so who cared if I had a wet ass? “You’ve been running away from me for weeks, and now you’re going to give me a hard time for jokes?”

He just sighed and went back to playing with his coin, tipping it between one palm and the other.

I looked at the sky, which wasn’t letting up. Pieces of my hair were pasted to my cheeks like papier-mâché. Around us, the park was desolate. It felt like the whole city was mourning Celeste’s passing, not just us.

Absently, Eric pulled on his tie, first on the bottom, then up at the top, loosening its choke around his collar before he went back to playing with the coin and chain.

“Eric,” I said as kindly as I could, though I was fighting to snatch the thing out of his palm. “I think it’s time you tell me what’s going on. Before we see…him.”

At that, he finally looked up with a start. “What do you mean ‘we’?”

“I got a message just after you left. Pops requesting my presence at the dairy. I take it you got the same one, and that’s why you darted out of there?”

Eric swallowed. “You are not going anywhere near him, Jane.” His voice was quiet, but vehement—the first sign of anything besides despondence.

“Oh, really?” I said. “I get the feeling our reunion is unavoidable. The scion has been called home, so to speak.”

Eric shuddered. “You don’t want to know how close that is to the truth.”

I set a hand on his knee. He shook it off. I frowned.

“Then maybe you’d better tell me,” I said. “Because I have the sneaking suspicion that if I’d known about all this crap before, we might be in a better spot.”

“Jane,” Eric said quickly. “You have to know, I never knew who he was to you. I never—Jane, I swear to God, I never knew.”

Whatever I was expecting, that wasn’t it.

“I know,” I said. “I believe that, at least. You’ve kept a lot from me, but I can’t believe you’d keep a secret like my paternity. But now that the cat’s out of the bag, you might as well tell me the rest. Who is John Carson to you? Why does the thought of him make you look like you’re planning to dig a tunnel under this weird Polish statue and live there like a Ninja Turtle?”

Eric just shook his head vehemently. “The less you know, the better.”

“That is one hundred percent untrue.”

His eyes turned just a shade darker than the rain clouds above us. “Look. I have some money. My own, not my family’s. Your loans are paid off already, and it should be enough to—to get you started on something else. Whatever that’s going to be. Away from here, Jane. Do you understand? You have to leave.”

I shook my head stubbornly. “I’m not going anywhere. What is it about my…father”—I practically spit out the word—“that has you acting like a scared fucking rabbit?”

But instead of replying, or saying anything at all, Eric stood up suddenly and took off into the trees.

“Goddammit,” I muttered. “Not again.”

I jogged after him, trying my best to make him out clearly through my rain-smeared lenses as he dodged across the traverse, earning the ire of more than one cabbie in the rain. He walked briskly into the “Ramble,” the horde of trails crisscrossing several acres of the park with no apparent rhyme or reason. The asshole had the privilege of being in much better shape than I was, and he wasn’t wearing heels.

But apparently I was running on adrenaline.

“Eric!” I shouted as he turned another bend. I stumbled as one heel broke. “Fuck!” I cried.

He paused, having clearly heard me, but when he saw that all I suffered from was a broken shoe, he took off once more.

“You asshole!” I shouted as I kicked off the ruined footwear, picked them up, and started sprinting after him. Once he came into sight, I hurled one shoe at him, which glanced off his shoulder. I wasn’t much of a runner, but at least I could throw.

“Stop following me, Jane!” he shouted, even though he stumbled a bit.

“No!” I hurled the other shoe. This one hit the tree in front of him.

He whirled around. “Yes!”

“No!”

I leaped forward, and we both went hurtling into a pile of leaves at the base of a naked birch. We tumbled a good few feet together until both of us were covered with cold, wet leaves and mud. My shoes disappeared somewhere in the soggy refuse along with my glasses. The world around me grew blurry, but Eric, now close and personal, remained perfectly clear.

“Goddammit!” he shouted as he pushed me off him. “You never know when to leave well enough alone, do you?”

“That’s because if I didn’t, you’d just toss me to the wolves, you bastard!” I threw a handful of wet leaves, which hit his shoulder with a splat.

We were both a disaster now—Eric’s suit was soaked and smeared with dirt; my dress was basically just a mud flap. Why did it always have to come to this? Practically drowning before we could actually talk?

Eric sat up, his chest heaving.

“You need to get out of here,” he said in between tortured breaths. “Jane, you need to trust me. Don’t wait around to meet him. Don’t stay. I’ll deposit some money into your account or you can call Skylar and Brandon.”

“What about your family? What about your company?”

“I don’t care about any of that, Jane! You just need to go!”

Before I could protest more, Eric got up and started jogging back into the park, seemingly immune to the torrents of rain. Thunder clapped.

“What in the hell,” I muttered as I scrambled up and after him. My toes were starting to turn blue. “Eric, wait up!”

“Stay away from me!”

I took off, catching him just as he ducked under an arch. “Eric! Shit! Will you just wait?”

I caught his sleeve just before he could run out of reach. It wasn’t enough to hold me, though, and I fell to the pavement, only to be caught just before I slammed into the sidewalk.

Eric pulled me upright, and we stared at each other for three long seconds, hands cuffed around each other’s arms, caught in a warped circle of our own making. Streams of water flowed down his beautiful face, drops hanging off his nose, lips, chin, even his eyelashes.

He scanned my face in the same hungry way.

Then we both lunged.

His lips crashed into mine. Or maybe mine crashed into his. Either way, I was swept up in something that was simultaneously like fleeing and coming home. Mine, my subconscious screamed with every angry, hardened bite of his lips and thrash of my body.

Eric coiled around me, then shoved me against the arch’s stone wall so that his entire hard, wet body was flush against mine. My hips thrust against his, seeking contact, comfort, revenge. I wanted to punish him for his absence and welcome him back all at once. Never had I felt so confused.

“Why?” he breathed, sucking in air like he was drowning. “Why do you have to be so fucking stubborn?”

“Because it’s you, that’s why!”

I yanked him back, eager to feel his tongue twisting and turning with mine. The world was cold, but his mouth heated my core. He seemed to be fighting the connection, as frustrated as I was that neither of us could quite get close enough.

“I told you to go,” he gasped in between harsh kisses. “It’s for your own good. Why don’t you ever fucking listen?”

“You ran away.” I kissed him again, this time with more bite than lip. “You left me at the altar. How was that for my own good?”

“I was saving you, not leaving you,” he growled and shoved his erection violently into my hip. Both of us moaned into each other’s mouths.

I yanked at the back of his hair, forcing him to look at me. “Saving me from what?”

Eric’s stare focused on my swollen lips, and his pupils dilated like an animal’s. A slip of tongue emerged, and he licked at a reddened spot at the corner of his mouth—apparently, I had drawn blood. It was clear that he wanted to do a lot more to me than just kiss; hell, I was ready to lift my skirt for the man right there, no matter who might be walking down the path.

But then, his head fell to my shoulder, and he inhaled like he hadn’t breathed in minutes. “You’re not going to let it go, are you?”

“No,” I replied immediately. “No, I’m not.”

“Why?”

I pulled at his hair again, this time more gently, and when he lifted his head, I framed his sharp, chiseled face between my palms. His deep gray eyes were wells of sorrow and shame. He shuddered, but I didn’t think it was because of the cold.

“Because,” I said. “Because I love you, that’s why.”

The final admission was a punch to the gut—both of our guts, if his face was any indication. Because it was the truth: there was something about Eric, about us, that was special. It didn’t matter that I was still furious with him about Caitlyn. It didn’t matter that he had disappeared for almost two weeks. I couldn’t just walk away. Not now. Maybe not ever.

“You shouldn’t.”

“But I do.”

His forehead touched mine. “I know,” he said. “I love you too. Goddammit, I do.”

We stared at each other for what seemed like hours, gray eyes meeting hazel in a clash as intense as the storm around us. There was another smash of thunder, and the downpour intensified even more. Suddenly the fact that I was wrapped around Eric’s body like a vine didn’t mitigate the fact that it was forty-five degrees outside and pouring. A violent shiver traveled through me.

Eric stepped back and took my hand. “Come on,” he said in a voice that was more dejected than I was comfortable with.

“Where are we going?” I asked, though I followed him, barefoot, up the way we came.

He looked down at himself, then me. “Back.”

“To Celeste’s penthouse?” I cringed. The idea of leaving muddy footprints anywhere near the judgmental crowd we’d left behind made me want to live under this arch forever. I honestly thought Celeste might rise from the grave to snap about stains on her Oriental carpets.

Eric shook his head. “We’ll go home. And try to figure out how in the hell we’re going to survive Carson when he finds us.”