Dance of Madness: Chapter 27

I don’t get stage fright.

Not when I perform, not at auditions. Oh, I sometimes get butterflies right before the curtain rises. But it’s the fun kind of excitement, a thrill teasing through your body that energizes and excites, not worries. So the nervous feeling I get as I hold different dresses against myself in the mirror is new to me.

I’m fretting about it all: the dress, my hair, if my nails are the right shade if I go with the blue dress I’m leaning toward instead of the white one.

The nick on my calf from shaving. The fact that I want to wear the freaking gorgeous shoes that Evie got me for my last birthday, but I only ever wear them at home with close friends since they’re open-toed and show off…ugh…my mangled dancer’s feet.

I scowl at myself in the mirror.

Get a fucking grip.

I don’t know where these fucking nerves are coming from. It’s not like this is a first date. I mean, we’re slightly past that. We must have had sex about two hundred times, and he’s chased me through the dark on dozens of occasions.

We’ve explored some super dark kinks together. So why the fuck am I nervous?

Then I catch my reflection in the glass, and the truth comes bubbling out.

This is a first date. Not in the sense that we are strangers looking to see if we have anything in common, but it’s the first time we’re going out as an us.

In public. To a restaurant. Where we’ll eat food, have some drinks, and smile politely. I won’t be screaming and whimpering as he chases me through the shadows and then rails the shit out of me.

I mean, that’s going to be happening tonight. Just, you know…

Not in the middle of dinner.

With another shaky breath, I turn and let my eyes settle on a book across the room. I walk over and pluck it from the shelf, my pulse thudding a little harder as I sit on the edge of my bed and run my fingers over the worn leather cover.

It’s a first edition of The Sorrows of Young Werther.

Really.

Papa found it for me for my birthday three years ago. Not, of course, that he knew its deeper significance, or about my pen pal and everything that came from that. But he did know it was a favorite book that helped me after mom died, and knew that I collected older editions of it.

So for my nineteenth birthday, he got me a first edition of the book, in German.

It’s one of my most treasured possessions. It’s also where I now keep the letters that my pen pal wrote me all those years ago.

Some of them, tragically, have been lost. But most of them are still here, tucked into the pages of the book that brought us together. Not the exact copy, obviously. But I feel this first edition does these notes justice as a resting place.

I open to where two of the notes are nestled between the pages. I don’t do this that often, but sometimes, if I’m stressed or worried, reading them can help.

I think tonight warrants a bit of a read.

I smile as I unfold the first one.

I grin as I reread it. It’s not just our faces we kept a secret from each other. We literally never exchanged names. It came up after probably the fourth letter. I asked if he wanted to use real names, or fake ones.

He said why bother with names at all—it was only us reading the letters. We knew who they were written to, and who they were from.

Honestly, he had a point.

So we’d always open with “Hey” or “Hey, friend”, and end with just “-Me.”

I scan the letter again, then move on to the next. They’re pretty much in order within the book, so when I do occasionally pick up our exchange, I can mostly follow along, even though my letters to him are, well, with him.

Or thrown away. Or lost to time.

I smile.

I used to love going to the NYPL and looking for our book to see if he’d responded to my last note yet. He always knew just what to say.

Whoever he was.

I put the book down for a second, then walk over to where I’ve draped the blue and the white dresses over a chair.

White it is.

I slip it on, checking myself in the mirror before I turn and head back to the bed.

Time for one more note, then I should leave.

I don’t read it over a second or third time. All I can do is stare at the last “-Me” like the letters might burst into flames.

What.

The.

Fuck.

“I think a tattoo that has to do with Krakatoa, maybe on a forearm or even my hand, would be cool as fuck.”

My pulse ticks slowly through my veins like syrup. My head spins, my eyes trying to focus on the words as a memory of just yesterday morning filters in through the fog.

“Why do you have that tattooed on your arm?”

“It’s inspirational to me.”

“Mayhem and destruction?”

“Maybe. Or because it was the loudest fucking thing on Earth. Maybe I just like to be heard.”

Be heard.

It all hits at once, a wave slamming into me and knocking the air from my lungs.

For years, I never knew who my pen pal was, even though we told each other everything, up to and including our deepest, darkest thoughts and fantasies.

Kinks. Desires. Needs.

We met, just once, masked, and he chased me through the shadows, pulled me to the ground, and took every part of me.

Then bullets shattered the night, and scattered whoever he was to the winds.

And for the last few weeks, I’ve been debating if it was Laz, or Nero.

They’re both the right age. They’ve both got dark hair and piercing green eyes. They both come from mafia families.

It could have been either of them.

There was only one I wanted it to be, though. And I just got my wish.

It’s him.

My pen pal, and the man from that night…

Is Nero.

The sheer force of the smile that spreads across my face sends me reeling. I’m grinning so hard it fucking hurts, my heart pounding in my chest as I whirl, giddy with excitement. Bursting with a thousand questions.

Buzzing with the need to look him dead in the eye and tell him everything.

That I’m me.

That we’ve picked up where we left off four years ago.

My pulse skips.

…That I love him.

I could say it’s silly. I could roll my eyes and tell myself to stop being ridiculous. But it’s not a sudden thought. It’s one that’s been building for some time, growing, even if I’ve been trying to ignore it for weeks.

I’m not doing that anymore.

My very skin is tingling as I walk in a daze toward the vanity. My fingers shake as I open my jewelry box, and a soft smile teases my lips as I pull out the pendant: a delicate silver chain with a single diamond hanging from it.

Well, not a pendant.

An earring.

I had this made three years ago from the single Louis Monte Noir diamond earring that remained in my possession after that night with him.

With Nero.

When the bullets flew, I managed to lose one—or maybe I lost it in our chase earlier in the evening. Either way, I only made it home with one. And months later, I had that remaining one turned into this pendant.

A soft smile curls the corners of my lips as I bring it to my neck. I don’t wear this often, but tonight it feels appropriate.

I’m still not sure what to think, just how I feel about all this: excited but grounded. Nervous but sure. Spinning out of control but headed right for him.

I’ve collected a few copies of Werther over the years. My most prized one is the first edition from my father, where I keep the notes. But the first runner up is another first edition.

I found this one in a vintage bookstore in London two years ago. It’s not in quite as good shape as Papa’s, but it’s still a stunning copy of a book I treasure dearly.

And I know what I’m doing with it tonight.

I sit at my desk and open the book with shaking hands. I have to breathe deeply so that my hand doesn’t tremble holding the pen. Then, with a grin practically splitting my face, I scrawl the words across the inside cover, then close it.

My pulse thuds. My skin tingles as I glance at the clock.

It’s time.

Time to finally meet, face to face. Without words, years, or masks between us.

And I can’t fucking wait.