Falling for the Beast (A Modern Fairy Tale Duet 2)

Gritting his teeth, he took the elevator up to the seventh floor.

It had been a relief to leave for a little while. He’d driven Erin to her mother’s apartment so she could shower and pick up a few necessities. The apartment was small, modest. Erin’s room still held swaths of pink reminiscent of a happy and hopeful teenage girl.

It was the kitchen that had struck him most of all. His own kitchen was ridiculously large with an island and a wine fridge. This kitchen had been barely able to hold two people standing side by side. The small wedge of a countertop was covered with mail and keys and pens. There was no microwave. Whether in his family’s expensive home or in the bachelor pads of his Army buddies, there was always a microwave. Here there was simply no room for one.

No TV dinners. He imagined a teenaged Erin cooking something small and light on the stovetop—soup or noodles. Not a bad life, but it was a splash of cold water on his face to see how differently she’d grown up.

In the hallway, the ceiling was weighted down by something unknown, turned yellow and black. The toilet in the bathroom actually tilted at an angle. The whole apartment was falling down, in shambles, but his thoughts kept returning to that kitchen. An old magnetic picture frame held a picture of a childhood Erin with a huge grin and no front teeth. He imagined her pride in her home, her mother. He imagined someone ridiculing her, finding that weakness and using it to twist the knife.

He understood better why she had doubted them as a couple, what she’d doubted in him—and herself. She might judge you, Erin said about her mother, but what she’d really meant was that she herself had judged him. Ironically, his biggest fear, his face, his scars, had been nothing to her. Not even a hurdle. She’d been worried about status, about money, and he couldn’t care less. He’d rather give it away, give it to her, than let it stand between them. The barriers keeping her from him were crumbling now, slipping under their own weight.

After she’d had a chance to shower and change, they’d returned to the hospital, where she had rushed upstairs and he’d lingered downstairs to grab lunch. His footsteps slowed as he approached the hospital room. Nervous about something? he mocked himself. It appeared no matter how old he got, meeting the parents would always hold uncertainty.

And, he had to admit, these were hardly ideal circumstances.

Knocking shortly on the door, he pushed inside.

The woman who must be Erin’s mother struggled with a pillow, sitting up in her hospital bed. Her skin was dark with age spots, lined from smiling and frowning and living, but she looked so much like the woman he loved he felt sure he could have recognized the relation if he’d passed her on the street.

Erin w

as nowhere to be seen. After a moment’s hesitation, he set the food down and went to help her. Making a small soothing sound, he tucked the pillow behind her and helped her lean back. She calmed under his slight touch, and he withdrew quickly. Not quickly enough.

“I remember you,” she said without opening her eyes. Her voice was thick with exhaustion and probably pain. She was still alert enough to remember him.

Then again it was hard to forget his face.

Her hair was darker than Erin’s, her face more weathered, but he could see the resemblance in the shape of her nose and the set of her mouth. He could see the woman that Erin would become as the years passed like pages in a book.

“We met earlier. I’m Blake.” Erin had insisted on introducing him this morning, but her mother had been too drowsy from the medicine to register much.

“You’re her boyfriend. The one she didn’t tell me about.”

Boyfriend. Is that what he was? The word felt too youthful for how he felt about Erin. Too temporary, as if they might break up. Though isn’t that what happened? They had been apart for weeks because he wanted it that way. Because he wanted to do the right thing. Now he cursed himself for making them separate. “That’s me,” he said.

“Why didn’t she tell me?”

Oh, he had plenty of guesses and none that he would say out loud. Starting with the age difference between them and ending with the fact that he was the professor in her final summer semester. “We haven’t been seeing each other that long.”

“Long enough. I saw the way you looked at her. You love her.”

His chest panged. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Don’t ma’am me. You’re too old for that, and I’m not old enough.”

He allowed a small smile. The habit came from the military, not as any particular thought about her age or his. “Sorry.”

She peeked an eye open at him. “Why was she hiding you? There must be something wrong. And don’t tell me your scars. I wouldn’t even have known if she’d mentioned you over the phone. Are you married?”

“No.”

“A criminal?”

“Definitely not.”

She made a humph sound. “Your watch looks expensive.”

It had been a gift from his father, sent in the mail since they hardly saw each other. Especially since the accident. He had always looked like his dad. Not anymore. He cleared his throat. “Erin thought you wouldn’t like it that my family’s wealthy.”