Free East Rising (Naive Mistakes #2) by Rachel Dunning

the elevator as I got
into it, Conall always by my side, guiding me by the small of my
back with a steady hand. I did notice the people that crowded into
that elevator after a second or two, pushing the two of us into the
back. They spoke in pompous British accents, greeted each other,
said "Good Morning" and "How do you do?"
    Conall held my hand.
    I squeezed it back.
    Dorian had never held my hand. He'd put his
fingers inside me, yes. He'd been kind and sweet...but he hadn't
held my hand.
    He would never hold it like Conall was
holding it now either.
    I was in that ocean, that boat. I felt the
undulating waves below me, swaying, back and forth, up and down,
dizzying, confusing.
    And Conall, still, squeezed my hand.
    Without willing it, my head dropped to his
triceps and I grabbed his upper arm with my other hand. Before the
final ding of the elevator, a tear broke from my eye. And when we
were alone, everyone else now having left, I mumbled into his
sleeve: "Conall, I hate you. I hate you so much."
    "You should, Leora. But, hopefully, after
this, you will at least understand."
    That final ding came. And then we were at
his suite. Only it wasn't empty when he opened the door.
    I didn't recognize the girl
who was sitting on the couch, in one of his shirts, without any
pants on. But there was a girl there.
    An attractive girl.
    And now I hated her, too.
-4-
    She stood up, didn't smile. Her eyes
surveyed me, up, then down, evaluating me. She was dirty-blonde,
tall, muscular. Her legs were well defined, tanned.
    Had they been tanning together?
    It was hard to place her age, because her
body looked fit, but the skin on her face looked leathery, beaten.
As I eyed her more closely, something didn't seem right. I saw the
gashing scar on the left side of her cheek. It wasn't particularly
unsightly, but it was noticeable. But that wasn't what wasn't
right. It was something else...
    And then I saw it: Her eyes were a little
squint, unnaturally so, as if she'd been beaten there and they'd
never returned to shape. Her lip, on the same side of the gash, was
a little looser. She was not ugly at all. In fact, the slight
deformities added a kind of appeal to her, as if her beauty had
been so much at one stage, so ravishing, that even these scars of
life — a clearly horrible life — could not take that beauty
away.
    Yet, still, she didn't smile. Not at me at
least.
    She looked at Conall (now all but ignoring
me), then finally back at me (more like scowled.) Finally, I guess
in some type of greeting, she said, "So you must be...Leora."
    There'd been a pause before "Leora" as if
she'd wanted to say "the notorious" or "the gold-digging" or some
other unpleasant adjective before my name.
    But the biggest insult came after, not as an
insult, not even as a slur. But as a name, and what she said
straight after telling me that name...
    Because the name she told
me, meant something, something to Conall. Once, at Teardrop Park , in New
York — when he'd shown me the poetry inscribed across his back,
from his shoulders all the way down, the poetry stating
" She is dead,"
" She was my North"
— on that day, he'd told me this same name. And how he'd felt about
its owner:
    So, to call her a 'friend' is a gross
misnomer, an injustice. A crime against humanity.
    She was my closest friend, my sister, my
lover, my soul.
    The woman in front of me extended her
hand.
    "I'm Alexandra," she said. "I know you've
heard of me."

CHAPTER SIX

-1-
    Crashing glass doesn't
explain it. An avalanche doesn't explain it. The chalk cliffs of
Seaford, down which people jump to commit suicide, does not come
even near to
explaining it. A tsunami does not explain it...
    "Uhm, s — sorry... W — what?"
    The floor disappeared. The Ritz had suddenly
been demolished. A bomb exploded in front of me.
    And I waited for an answer.
    You're supposed to
be...dead , was what I was thinking. But
this fact was surely obvious as the first thing to answer. I mean,
I at least expected that