Chapter 25 The Heart of the Storm
I didn't wait for the music to stop. The moment Nate’s hand left my waist, I turned and bolted through the sea of silk and judgment. I pushed past the Cole twins, ignored Scarlett’s concerned shout, and ducked through a set of heavy mahogany doors leading away from the ballroom. I didn't care where I was going; I just needed to be somewhere the air didn't taste like champagne and lies.
I found myself in a long, dimly lit corridor lined with portraits of Salvatores past—men with cold eyes and women with hard, porcelain smiles. My lungs burned. I reached for the handle of a side exit, desperate for the freezing night air, when a hand slammed against the wood beside my head.
I gasped, spinning around. Nate was there, leaning one hand against the door, effectively caging me in.
He looked different. The pristine "Heir" I’d seen earlier was gone. His tie was loosened, his hair was slightly disheveled, and there was a frantic, raw energy radiating off him. Up close, I could smell the sharp tang of expensive scotch on his breath. He wasn't stumbling, but he was raw—the ice had finally melted, revealing the jagged, dangerous rock beneath.
"Where are you going, Stone?" he rasped. His voice was a jagged edge. "The party isn't over. You haven't finished your performance."
"Move, Nate," I said, my voice shaking with a mixture of cold fury and genuine fear. "I'm going home. I’m done being the entertainment for people like you."
"Your home?" He let out a harsh, dry laugh that sounded like glass breaking under a boot. He stepped closer, crowding me into the door until the emerald silk of my dress pressed against the lapel of his tuxedo. "You think you can just go back to Brooklyn and pretend you didn't just light a match in the middle of this estate? You think you can dance with a Beaumont and expect the world to stay the same?"
"Then let me go!" I shouted, the frustration of the night finally boiling over. "If you hate me so much—if I’m such a stain on your family’s precious reputation—why did you cut in? Why did you make a scene? Theodore was the only person tonight who treated me like I actually belonged in this room!"
At the mention of Theodore’s name, Nate’s expression contorted into something animalistic. He gripped my shoulders, his fingers digging into the emerald fabric with a strength that was almost painful.
"Because I can't stand it!" he roared, the sound echoing off the high, vaulted ceilings of the silent hallway. "I can't stand the way you’re worming your way into my circle. I can't stand the way you look at him like he’s some kind of escape route from the life you chose. You’re a liability, Mila. You’re a constant, irritating reminder of the one moment in my life where I wasn't in control."
"Is that what this is about? Your ego?" I shoved his chest, but he didn't budge. He felt like a mountain, immovable and crushing. "You’re obsessed with the fact that I’m the one who saw you broken on that sidewalk! You hate that a 'nobody' like me holds a piece of your history that you can't buy back!"
"You think this is about the debt?" Nate’s face was inches from mine now. His eyes were wild, searching my face with a terrifying, hungry intensity that I couldn't understand. It wasn't the look of a man who loved me; it was the look of a hunter who couldn't find his prey. He looked at me with a loathing so deep it felt personal, as if my very presence were a physical ache he couldn't soothe.
He let go of my shoulders and slammed his fist into the wood behind me, the sound like a gunshot in the quiet corridor.
"Why does it have to be you?" he screamed, the words ripped from his throat with a desperation that shattered the last of his composure.
I froze, my breath hitching. "What?"
"Out of everyone in this city, why was it you?" He was shaking now, his voice dropping to a jagged, broken whisper. "Why do I have to deal with you every time I turn around? Why are you in my classrooms, in my peripheral vision, in my damn house? You’re like a ghost that won't stop haunting me, and I’m sick of it!"
I stared at him, my heart a frantic, wounded bird in my chest.
"You're drunk, Nate," I whispered, though my own body was traitorously humming, my skin tingling where he had touched me. "You don't know what you're saying."
"You're drunk, Nate," I whispered, though my own body was traitorously humming, my skin tingling where his grip had been. "You're acting like a child who can't have his way. If you want me gone so badly, just tell the board to pull my scholarship. End the 'haunting' and let us both move on."
"I can't," he choked out, his eyes squeezed shut as if the sight of me in that emerald dress were physically painful to him. "That’s the problem, isn't it? You’re stuck to me like a curse."
He leaned his forehead against the door, just inches from mine, his breath warm on my skin. He looked defeated, but it was a dark, dangerous kind of defeat. He wouldn't look at me, and I wouldn't look at him. I just stood there, trapped between the door and the man who seemed to hate the very air I breathed.
"Leave," he whispered, his voice sounding hollow and exhausted. "Get out of here, Mila. Before I do something that ruins us both."
I didn't wait for a second invitation. I pushed past him, my heels clicking frantically on the marble as I ran toward the side exit. I burst into the cold night air, the emerald dress shimmering under the moonlight like a warning, its heavy fabric catching against my legs as I stumbled toward the gates. My heart was racing as if I’d just survived a crash all over again, my pulse a frantic, irregular drumming in my ears.
As I reached the end of the driveway, his voice echoed in my mind, raw and jagged: “Why does it have to be you?” A sharp, sudden pang blossomed in my chest—a dull ache that had nothing to do with my healing ribs and everything to do with the look of utter ruin on his face. I didn't understand the gravity of his words, only the sheer, crushing weight of his resentment. He looked at me as if my very existence were a burden he was forced to carry, a mistake he couldn't erase no matter how much power he possessed. I gripped the straps of my bag until my knuckles turned white, the cold air biting at my lungs. Nate Salvatore didn't just want me gone; he hated that I was the one who had seen him at his weakest, and I knew, with a terrifying certainty, that he would never forgive me for being the girl on that curb.