He Was the One Who Saved Me

Julian stepped back warily, frowning.

“Felix, what are you doing?”

Felix looked at him with undisguised suspicion and distaste.

“I should ask you that. Why are you wearing Lucian’s cologne?”

I stared.

Julian was wearing the ambergris fragrance again. It was so uncommon that I hadn’t smelled anything like it on anyone else in two years.

How was it suddenly Lucian’s?

“I have no idea what you mean,” Julian said flatly.

Felix rolled his eyes.

“Seriously? You’re going to play dumb? I had a master perfumer create that scent for Lucian’s birthday. No wonder he suddenly stopped wearing it. I thought he didn’t love me anymore. Turns out he was sick of smelling it on a cheap imitation.”

Something exploded inside my head.

The reason I believed Julian had risked his life to rescue me two years ago was the scent I recognized on him afterward.

The scent of the man who shielded me from the kidnappers.

Two years had passed. Felix had no reason to invent this now.

If that cologne had been made exclusively for Lucian, the man who rescued me couldn’t have been Julian.

It had been Lucian.

The shock was so violent I thought it might tear me apart.

“Lucian!”

I forgot I was a ghost.

I rushed through the crowd, calling his name, desperate to make him stop.

At the door, he suddenly paused, as though he had sensed something.

It was dark outside.

A hard night wind cut toward us, sharp enough to strip flesh from bone.

Lucian looked up.

Only the moon hung in the cold sky.

He frowned.

“Why aren’t there any stars tonight?”

Felix, coming up beside him, stopped.

He gave the question a few seconds of serious thought.

“Probably the air quality. It’s been getting worse lately. I’ll get someone at the environmental agency to look into it.”

Lucian didn’t dignify that with an answer.

I stopped just behind him.

So close.

I closed my eyes and reached out, wanting to touch him again, as I had when I was blindfolded and trapped two years ago.

Before my hand reached him, his footsteps moved away.

I opened my eyes.

He was already walking into the darkness.

I tried to follow, but the invisible restraint held me where I was.

All I could do was watch him go.

Felix’s voice drifted back faintly.

“I just got close enough to check. Julian’s wearing your old cologne. When you got shot two years ago…”

I couldn’t hear the rest.

I had heard enough.

The scent.

Two years ago.

A gunshot wound.

Every piece fit.

That month Lucian disappeared, he had been recovering.

An entire month. He must have been badly hurt.

My throat tightened.

That lunatic had really risked his life for me.

But why?

I couldn’t understand it.

If he only wanted to hold a rescue over my head, why had he never mentioned it? Why let me spend two years believing Julian was my savior?

Unless…

An alarming thought entered my mind.

Did he like me?

I crushed it immediately.

Impossible.

Lucian had said in public, in his own words, that I was the woman he hated most.

Everyone in Fairhaven knew how much he despised me.

If someone photographed us going into a hotel together, people would assume we had booked a room to fight to the death.

I shook my head.

Perhaps only Lucian knew why he had saved me.

Whatever the reason, I could never repay him in this life.

I smiled sadly.

Lucian, if there’s another life, I promise I’ll repay you then.