Chapter 86: My Dark Prince: Chapter 85

Age nineteen.

I made the fatal mistake of checking Oliver’s Instagram page. On the bench, between classes, beneath the blistering Texas heat, with a sandwich clamped between my teeth.

He finally updated his Instagram again, after a twenty-month hiatus, following that airport picture.

I ignored the notification for a blissful second, approved my scholarships and grants offers for next school year, and moved back to Insta like it had some sort of magnet pulling me in.

“Oh, fuck it.”

I clicked on the app, pulling up his profile and clicking on the picture.

A sprawling mansion with black iron wrought gates.

The caption read: Forget the imposters. There’s a new (dark) prince in town. This one is actual royalty. Time to spend Spring Break throwing some rad ass parties on DPR. Great things to come.

Was reverse image searching the mansion on Google a stalker move? Of course. Did I care? Absolutely not. Hear me out – maybe Oliver deserved a stalker for everything he’d done to me.

The result came in embarrassingly fast. I had the address pulled up in less than ten seconds. Potomac, Maryland. 88 Dark Prince Road. What happened to Oliver’s common sense, and did he leave it at that lake house with Lindsey? The Oliver I knew would never make such a dumb move.

I could get there cheap enough with a low-cost flight.

I could.

I had the stipend for it and a bit of savings.

A year had passed since our breakup, and yet, it felt like just yesterday when he carried me on his shoulder from a Parisian bar, broken and sobbing, and watched me sleep in a hotel room, even as his entire family pressured him to return home.

A wave of emotions crashed into me, drowning all logic in my head. I was sad, elated, angry, scared, desperate, and anxious all at the same time. More than anything, I knew I couldn’t leave us like this.

It was time to get some answers.

Exactly a week later, I stood in front of Oliver’s gate.

The sky rained down on me nonstop, as if Potomac hadn’t gotten the memo that we were deep into spring.

“You’re doing the right thing, Briar. That hundred bucks on that flight is a necessary expense. It’s necessary that you find out what happened between you and Ollie.”

Facts. For a year now, I’d told myself the searing, overwhelming pain he left in his wake would dull with time. It hadn’t at all. I just got better at pain management. I still lived, operated, existed for the sole purpose of meeting him again someday.

My peptalk worked. Kind of. My hand was just a little shaky when it jabbed the intercom. No answer. I waited for a few minutes before slapping it again, my teeth chattering in the rain.

This would not go down in history as one of my better ideas.

I hadn’t even come up with a plan, my backpack only held a few granola bars and a change of clothes, and I didn’t know where I would spend the night. It wasn’t like he’d open up, suddenly give me the time of day after an entire year and a half without contact, and beg for my forgiveness.

I just … needed to be here. Regardless of how it turned out.

The quiet intercom gave me all the answers I’d get. I knew it was working, too, because the touch screen flared to life each time I pressed it.

I tried calling his number, though I suspected he’d blocked me sometime early last year. I’d spent a lot of all-nighters leaving messages informing him how much I hated him for ruining my life.

The call went straight to voicemail, like I knew it would. I typed out a quick text message.

Briar Auer: It’s Briar. I am outside your gate. It’s raining. Open up.

It was just Briar now. I omitted the Rose from my name last summer, when Oliver had failed to show up with a blue rose. I’d hoped that if I took that part of my name off, I’d stop thinking about him.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The rain, which had started as a drizzle when I rented the piece of junk they called a car at the airport, intensified in the span of five seconds. It pounded on my face, body, and backpack. I growled, tipping my head back. Sweet raindrops slid into my mouth. A scream ripped past my lips.

When I straightened my head, I caught a flash of movement behind a glass window on the second floor. Someone was watching me from the shadows.

I held my breath and waited, but the curtain didn’t twitch again.

What a coward. What a goddamn wimp.

All the anger I’d bottled up in the last eighteen months exploded, gushing out of me in the form of an ear-piercing scream that even drowned out the pounding rain.

“Oliver.” I fisted the iron bars and shook them. “Why did you do it? Why did you disappear on me?”

My clothes clung to my body. It was cold, and wet, and miserable. I kept shaking the gate between yells, knowing I looked unhinged, knowing I was unhinged. I didn’t deserve this. Especially from him.

I don’t know how long I stood there, shaking the gate, demanding to be seen, getting pneumonia, probably. But at some point, maybe an hour after I’d showed up, two burly men dressed head-to-toe in black suits and matching dress shirts filed out of the main doors.

A bitter laugh shook my spine as they approached me.

“Oh, terrific.” I kept my fists around the bars. “He brought security to usher me out.”

One of them adjusted his earpiece. “You’re trespassing.”

“No, I’m not. I’m on the other side of the gate.”

“You’re touching this gate that belongs to Mr. von Bismarck.” He unlocked the gate and stepped forward, a human shield against me.

I backed up on instinct. Both men folded their arms over their chests and glared at me with expressions that screamed, or else.

“Now you’re sending big men to intimidate me?” I yelled past their shoulders, toward that window, knowing I had an audience. That he was listening. “How the mighty have fallen. I’m not sure what made you go from the best person I knew to a little bitch, but suffice to say, the transformation is complete.”

I imagined Oliver flinching, even though it was absurd to think he still cared after the past year and a half. But somehow, I knew he did.

“You ruined my life, you know.” I ignored the burly men and straightened my spine, standing taller, staring at that vacant window. A poisonous chuckle pushed out of my throat. “It’s amazing how I grew up thinking you would be in my epilogue when it turns out you’re nothing but a badly written prologue.”

“Miss.” The other security guard edged closer, not even an inch from me. “Time to go home.”

At least he was gentle about it. Even he, I suspected, knew his boss was a prick.

“I’m going, I’m going.” I waved a dismissive hand in his face, still laser-focused on that detail. “I just want to say one last thing, because I know he’s listening. You got what you wanted, Oliver. You are officially dead to me. I am never going to forgive you. I am never going to accept your apology, should you issue one. You ruined everything. Congratulations. You became as bad as Seb.”