Black Lace (Complete)

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐘-𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑

Chapter Thirty-Four

When I was little, Mother had always told me that I looked best with my hair up in a knot.

"It always falls out, mama," I'd insist, fingers clenching around my skirts as she wrung yet another tie around my hair.

"It'll stay eventually, dear." She'd kiss the back of my head and begin trying it again. But it never stayed. Every new try was another forgotten ribbon fallen to the floor.

I looked down at the assortment of ribbons laid out on the bureau before me, pausing to look back up at myself in the mirror. The dark coffee brew of my eyes stared back, ringed by a stripe of black. My dark brows curved around my eyes, giving them a very wide, doe-eyed look, curving out the slants of my lashes and the peculiar dip my nose made to the side.

Fingers dropping whatever ribbon I'd held, my finger reached up and pressed against the side of my nose. I pressed until it hurt, until it felt like it might break, but the uneven curve of my bone did not change. I did not change. A frown came to my lips.

Why even put your hair up to look nice, Romina, if it does nothing to distract from the blemishes on your face? My eyes fell back to the bureau. I singled out a baby blue ribbon and lifted it, finger running over the silk texture. Again, I lifted my arms and tried to tie my hair up in a knot. When my arms fell, the tie fell, and my hair fell back around my shoulders in heavy sheets of dark brown.

"Don't you want to look nice?" I asked myself quietly, speaking to the wide-eyed girl in the mirror with a crooked nose and downturned lips.

So unwomanly, I could almost hear Mother's words in my head. I had to close my eyes and pinch myself to distract from it. Smile.

I could not.

"Aziel won't want an ugly girl." I traced a finger down my jaw, noting how some of my skin was dotted from acne. Fingers dropped to my pulse along my neck, feeling the quick pace of the blood in my veins. Tie your hair up.

I kneeled and tried to pick up the fallen baby blue ribbon, but the sound of the hotel's door opening froze me in place.

"Romina?" Aziel called out, shutting the door behind him with a huff.

It was well past midnight, and the sun had yet to rise, leaving the room in an uncertain state of darkness and artificial light coming from the lamp in the corner.

"I'm here," I replied, standing. My hands swiped across the bureau, knocking all the ties to the floor so he wouldn't see them as he rounded the corner. When the man came into view, my eyes couldn't help but take in every detail.

The slight twitch of his Adam's apple as he gulped; his eyes, tired, darkened underneath, swelled from restless nights. It almost seemed as if the darkness from his pupils was slowly spreading down. Like a parasite. He slugged off his suit jacket, tossing it onto a nearby chair. "Have you eaten?"

Food was the last thing on my mind right now. Shaking my head, I walked up to him, fingers hesitant as they fiddled with the collar of his shirt. It was wrinkled and out of place, so I smoothed it. Before I could draw my hands away they fell to his outstretched arm, pulling at the cuffs of his sleeves.

"You're gonna tear the lining," I scolded him, brushing his hand away as I calmly unbuttoned it myself. When I looked back up to meet his stare, he was smiling down at me with a grin, muted only by the intensity of his stare.

"Aren't you a little wife?" He teased, brushing past me, a smile still on his face. He didn't know, but the words struck a nerve within me. Yes, a little wife. I struggled to breathe in as I pictured a wedding scene: the groom stood at the front next to the officiator...all eyes on him, but no bride would come through the doors. That was my place. The image I'd always had in my head since I was a child—white, blurred pastels; light pink petals flying around; the bride in the hands of her groom as he dipped down to capture her lips in a marital seal...I had to blink away tears.