The engineer quoted a six-figure price, and Damien pulled out his checkbook without the slightest hesitation. Less than an hour later, we were driving down the North Dallas Tollroad in the latest addition to Damien’s vehicular menagerie, and Damien’s giddy expression reminded me of a little boy on Christmas morning.
Now, he maneuvers the limo through Highland Park, the well-heeled neighborhood in which I grew up. Though my family’s net worth never came close to Damien’s, we were hardly scraping by. My grandfather had made a fortune in oil, and though much of that was lost in the recession—and later by my mother’s bad management—there’s no denying that I was a child of privilege, just like every other kid living in these massive, tony mansions.
I’d walked away from all that when I’d moved to Los Angeles, intent on escaping my past. I’d wanted a new life, a new Nikki. And I’d been determined to make it on my own without my mother’s baggage holding me down.
Now, I can’t help but smile as I look at Damien. At this car that cost more than most people earn in a year. It’s funny how things shift. I was wealthy in Dallas, but miserable. Now I’m filthy rich in Los Angeles, and happier than I could ever have imagined. Not because of the bank account, but because of the man.
“You’re smiling,” he says, sounding pleased, and I’m once again struck by the fact that he is as much on pins and needles as I am. Damien, however, isn’t worried about seeing my mother. Damien is worried about me.
“I was just thinking how happy I am,” I admit, and then tell him why.
“Because the money isn’t the heart of what we are to each other,” he says. “You’d love me even if I was destitute.”
“I would,” I admit, then flash an impish smile. “But I can’t deny that I like the perks.” I run my hand over the dashboard. “Of course, I’d like this particular perk better if Edward were here.”
“Not satisfied with just holding my hand, Mrs. Stark?”
Usually when we’re in a limo, Damien’s personal driver, Edward, acts as chauffeur. But Edward’s not with us on this trip, and even if he were, I know Damien would insist on driving his new toy.
“I’m fine with hand holding for now,” I say archly. “But later, I want more. Later, I want your hands on all of me.”
The glance he shoots me overflows with heat and promise. “I think that can be arranged.”
“Eyes on the road, driver,” I say, then point. “And turn here.”
He does, and immediately my mood downshifts again. Because now we’re on my actual street. Now, we’re a few blocks away from my childhood home.
I draw a breath. “Almost there. And I’m fine,” I add before he has a chance to ask. I’m not fine—not entirely—but I’m hoping that by saying it I’ll banish the hideous aching in my gut and the nausea that is starting to rise up inside me.
“Just tell me when.”
I nod, and for a moment I picture us driving past, just going on and on until we’re out of the neighborhood, back in Dallas proper and far, far away from the memories that are now washing over me like wave after wave crashing onto a sandy shore. Me locked in a pitch black room because little girls need their beauty sleep, and my sister Ashley whispering to me through the closed door, promising me that nothing is lurking in the dark to hurt me. A stylist tugging and pulling on my long golden hair, ignoring my tears and cries of pain as my mother stands by, telling me to control myself. That I’m embarrassing her. My mother gripping my arm as she tugs me up the walkway to register for my first pageant, my eyes still red from the sting of her hand on my kindergarten-age bottom, a reminder that beauty queens don’t complain and whine.
I think of a dinner plate with the tiniest portion of plain chicken and steamed vegetables while my mother and sister eat cheesy lasagna, and my mother telling me that if I want to be a pageant winner, I need to watch every calorie and think of carbohydrates as the devil. Then her mouth pursing in disapproval when I insist that I don’t care about being a pageant winner. That I just want to not be hungry.
I was never good enough. Too chunky, too slouchy, too lackluster. Even with an array of crowns and titles, I never met her expectations, and I don’t remember a time when she ever felt like mother or friend. Instead, she was the strict governess of stories. The wicked stepmother. The witch in the gingerbread house.
My older sister Ashley escaped her clutches by the simple act of not winning the pageants in which she entered. After several failures, my mother gave up. And though I tried to fail, too, I was cursed with crowns and titles.
For years, I’d thought that Ashley’d had the better end of the deal. It was only later, when she killed herself after her husband left her, that I understood how deep Ashley’s scars had run, too. Mine were physical, the self-inflicted scars of a girl who took a blade to her own skin, first to release the pressure and gain some control, then later to mar my pageant-perfect legs and end the madness of that horrific roller-coaster.