Take Me: A Stark E-Novella

“Don’t even think about it, mister. You’ll see it on Saturday.”


“Saturday,” he murmurs, the hint of a smile playing around his mouth. “Seems like there’s something I’m supposed to be doing on Saturday.”

I laugh, and fly out of the chair to smack him playfully on the chest. He pulls me into his arms and kisses me, gently at first and then with increasing fervency. “I reached for you,” he says. “You weren’t there.”

The words are matter-of-fact, but to me they seem thick with meaning. I lean back so that I can see his face more clearly. “What’s wrong?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” he says, deflecting my words but not my worry. There is something on Damien’s mind. He tucks my hair behind my ear. “Tell me what’s keeping you awake.”

“Bourbon,” I say. “Bridal jitters.”

“Not your mother?”

“That, too,” I admit.

“Whatever you want to do, you know that I support it. All I ask is that you remember this is your wedding, and it’s the only wedding you’re going to have.” He strokes my cheek, the touch melting me as much as the words. “Consider that when you decide how to handle your mother.”

I nod. “You’re right.” I take his hand. “And you? Is it wedding jitters that are bothering you? Is something going on at work?”

He turns, looking out toward the rows of polished bookshelves now standing like sentries in the dark. He doesn’t answer right away, and I’m starting to suspect he isn’t going to answer me at all. Then he says, “It’s Sofia.”

I try not to react, but I have no control over the quickening pace of my heart, and I’m certain that my eyes have gone unnaturally wide. “What about her?” I ask carefully. Sofia is so far off my list of favorite people, it isn’t even funny. Still, she was important to Damien when he was growing up, and despite a lot of recent shit, I know that she’s still important to him.

“I got an email from her. I saw it right after we got home. She wants to come to the wedding. She thinks that it could be arranged.”

The words hang in the air, like one of those cartoon anvils that is defying the laws of gravity and simply hovering, waiting for the moment when it will drop and crush the hapless coyote.

I open my mouth, close it, then try again. “Oh,” is all I can manage.

“That pretty much sums it up,” he says. He’s wearing pajama bottoms tied loosely around his waist, and he slides one hand into a pocket. With the other he massages his forehead with his thumb and finger.

“Do you want her to come?” I finally ask.

He lifts his head, looking at me as if I’ve gone insane. “No.”

A moment passes, and then he lets out a soft curse. “No,” he repeats, “and the not wanting makes me sad.” He meets my eyes. “But I meant what I said in the limo, about our choices and the people in our lives leading us to this point. To each other.” He steps closer to me. “It saddens me—hell, it angers me—but I have no regrets.”

“I don’t, either,” I say, thinking of my mother. Of who she is, what she’s done, and what I want. It’s all a turmoil inside me. A storm. I know what I should do, what I want to do. But I’m not certain it’s what I can do.

And though he hides it better than I do, I know that a similar storm is raging within Damien. How can it not be? He thrives on control. It is his lifeblood, his sustenance, and yet just the mention of Sofia’s name conjures the specter of everything that spun out of control, cutting a path of destruction through his life as effectively as a spinning propeller breaking loose from its axle.

“Damien,” I say, and I hear both longing and helplessness in my voice.

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