It hurt thinking he didn’t remember her. Didn’t see her. She saw him— all of him. It’d taken years to excise Hatter from her heart.
At twenty-four, she was okay with that and was ready to move on. To find a real love and a real man. To get married and have kids.
To live in the real world and not in the book.
And now this evil little fairy came and told her, he needs you. He doesn’t know it yet, but he needs you, Alice, and she wanted to cry. Because a part of her had always needed him. Hatter was her white knight, he was the hero of her every fantasy. When she’d dated at home, she’d always sought some aspect of him with guys and had found every last one of them wanting, because in the end, they weren’t him.
Only Hatter had those soulful eyes that made her melt, the full bottom lip that made her desperate for a taste. The shoulders, so strong, firm, offering reassurance when she’d fallen into total blackness. The Hatter she’d always pictured within the pages of her beloved book. Not the slapstick caricature of the cartoons, but a hero. A savior to a frightened little girl lying in a hospital bed.
How she’d tenderly rubbed her fingers over pages with any mention of him on it, her small heart swelling with an impossible feeling of love, tenderness, and a yearning for something she hadn’t been able to comprehend then.
In her way, she’d always loved Hatter. With a madness that had consumed her. A madness she wanted more than anything to embrace now.
But she knew if she took this plunge, if she chose to believe it was true again, that this was real, she’d never be able to forget. Never be able to pretend again. She’d be ruined for anyone else. She licked dry lips, pulse beating so hard she felt the echo of it in her head. But wasn’t she ruined already? She’d never been able to date a man for longer than two months before she was finding excuses to dump him.
The flood of emotions she’d bottled away for years, burst forth. She loved him and she could no longer pretend it wasn’t so.
She sighed, body warm and alive and filled with a desperate need to go to him-- the arrogant brutish jerk who couldn’t remember her. But she’d make him remember. No matter what and in the process she’d make him forget her great-grandmother. Alice was not her, and she’d make him see that.
She flattened a hand on her nervous belly. Somewhere in this crazy house he existed. “Three days to make him love me?” She glanced up and Danika nodded. “I want to break the curse.”
Danika’s smile was radiant.
“But I can’t stay, fairy. You have to understand. I can’t just bail out on my family. I have to go back. At least for a little while.”
Danika inhaled. “If it is meant to be, it will all work out in the end, Alice. You just wait and see. Trust in this, in him, make him love you, make him see you, and it will work itself out.”
A cold chill nipped at Alice’s nose. She shivered, startled to notice Danika beginning to turn amorphous. She hovered like a ghost surrounded by light.
“Love him, Alice. Only love him.” The ephemeral ball of light whispered before disappearing in a sun fire burst.
Alice hugged her knees to her chest and started rocking, staring at the door as if she’d divine an answer from it.
Three days.
She stood up and, before she could second-guess her decision, she went to the door, turned the knob and stepped out into the hall. Empty portraits stared back at her. Vines, not there before, crawled like green fingers through cracks, covering the wall in a living canvas. She walked; as she slid her hand along the wall, a trail of tiny purple flowers blossomed under her touch.
It’d only been a short walk from the living room earlier, but now she found herself walking through a maze of twists and turns.
“Hatter,” she called quietly. Afraid to speak too loudly, afraid she’d lose her nerve.
“Alice.” That deep voice, like a fiery caress, made her gasp and turn.
He leaned against a wall. The jacket he’d worn earlier was gone now. A white shirt, top three buttons undone, tapered to his body, outlined taut curves and gave her a tantalizing peek of tanned male flesh.
She licked her lips. I am woman, hear me roar, became a thunderous backdrop to the wild beating of her frantic heart.
“I... I wanted to...” She cleared her throat, realizing she was still staring at his sliver of nude flesh. Her fingers clenched.
He smiled with a wicked gleam in his eyes. He knew. She lifted her chin. So she found him attractive. She didn’t care if he knew. Three days, three days to stop being mousy, shy Alice. Three days.
“I wanted to see you. I missed you.”
He shoved off the wall and gave her a smile with no heat. “I’m assuming you’ve finished your cozy tête-à-tête with a certain fairy?” Disgust laced his words.