Ten years ago, on my birthday, I had worked until well past midnight. When I finally stepped outside, there was a ring-toss booth set up in front of the building. The vendor was someone in a big brown bear suit.
I tossed ten rings. Missed every single one.
Then the bear pulled off its head.
Bertram's hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat. His usually stern face was flushed pink from the heat.
Under the moonlight, those eyes, brimming with love and bright as stars, made my heart skip a beat.
I would never forget the way he caught his breath, teasing me with a voice that was careful and tender all at once: "How about you just take me home instead?"
I found out later that he had stood in that sweltering costume under the blazing sun for five hours, all to surprise me on my birthday.
The memory hit me, and the heart I thought had gone numb stirred again, aching with something I couldn't name.
Then a hand seized my arm and yanked me back.
"Do you have to humiliate me like this?"
"Humiliate you?" My eyes burned red as my palm cracked across his face. "Do you even know the meaning of the word?"
Bertram clearly hadn't expected that kind of reaction. His expression froze.
I seized the stunned silence and walked out without looking back. Another second in that place and I swore it would shave years off my life.
But the man recovered fast. He caught up to me at the corner.
His eyes were dark and dangerous. He seized my arms and pinned me against the wall, every word dropping from his lips like shards of ice. "Prudence, what the hell is wrong with you?"
His grip hurt enough to make me wince.
Before I could speak, my gaze caught something on his neck. A flush of red just above his collar.
A fresh kiss mark. It drove into my eyes like a thousand blades.
The cheap perfume clinging to him was unmistakably Alexis's. I thrashed harder.
"Don't touch me. You're filthy."
The words were barely out before I regretted them.
Bertram's already cold expression turned black as ink, radiating the kind of chill that cut through skin and settled in bone.
After a beat, he looked at me and let out a derisive laugh. "You want to talk to me about filthy, Prudence?"
What he said next plunged my heart into an abyss.
"If you're so clean, why did you throw yourself at me when you were nineteen?"