She remained still, listening as he dressed, rebuilt their fire, and prepared to hunt for their breakfast. He leaned over and kissed her softly before he stalked off to find food.
Meg remained perfectly still as she forced herself to count to one hundred before tossing on her clothes. She pulled on the boots last. She retrieved the small saddle bag Dante had given her the day before. She briefly looked through it. There was food and a canteen, and what looked like a first aid kit. He’d also slipped his business card in. It declared him Head of the Green Sales Unit. She shook her head. Used car salesman to the core. There were a few other things she didn’t recognize, but she threw the bag over her shoulder and wondered which way to go. She decided on south, since she could make it back to the market. Perhaps there would be someone on the road who would help her.
As she began to walk, she wondered how Beck would take her leaving. Her heart hurt when she thought of him. How could she get so close to someone in so little time? She was smart enough to know that he was a heartbreak waiting to happen. He couldn’t accept himself. How was he ever going to accept her? The endless forest seemed to fly by as she walked briskly, unable to get her mind off the faery prince.
He was a victim of his own success. He had proven to her, once and for all, what she wanted in a relationship. Then he’d turned around and told her he wouldn’t give it to her. She had suspected for a while that she preferred to be submissive during sex. She wasn’t sure how she felt about submission outside of the bedroom, and that was the reality that gave her pause when she thought about the lifestyle. It was probably asking far too much to get what she wanted in the bedroom and still remain autonomous outside of it.
She had been walking for a good half an hour when she felt the panic attack threatening her. What the hell was she doing? Her blood pressure was rising. She could feel her heart beating a hundred miles a minute. She was lost. She turned, but everywhere she looked was exactly the same. Hadn’t she passed that tree before? She was sure she had. It leaned the same way as the other one. Which way was she supposed to go?
Oh, why had she ever left the comfort of their bed?
It was stupid decisions like this that always got her in trouble. She was impetuous. She had never been out of Texas, but she thought she could navigate on an entirely different plane of existence? She should have waited until she made it to a village. Maybe there, she could have hired a guide or something. What the hell was she doing walking through the woods alone?
“Can I help you, miss?”
Meg started and spun on her heels. She barely missed clocking the little man with her twirling bag. She ended up on her ass in the dirt, looking up at the strangest thing she had ever seen. Given her recent travails, that was saying something.
He was small, no more than four feet tall, with a stocky body. He was barrel-chested with squat legs. His torso was the longest part of him. His face was dominated by a large, doughy nose, and his skin had splotches of yellow across it. He needed to get his liver checked, she thought as she silently stared.
The suit was the most disconcerting thing about him, though. It was a brilliant, vibrant red. From the top hat on his head to the socks and shoes on his small feet, everything was red. The small man brushed invisible lint off his coat and shook the tails out. They trailed along the dirt. He looked down at her and waited for a response.
“I’m lost,” was the only thing Meg could think to say.
The red man cocked a bushy eyebrow. His accent was even heavier than Beck’s. “Are you, now? And here I was thinking you were out for a pleasant walk in the woods.”
Meg shook her head. “I need to get back to the marketplace.”
The red man frowned. “And why would you need to do that? See, I was thinking a girl like you would prefer to go home to the Earth plane.”
On that announcement, the red man turned and began walking down the path. Meg scrambled to her feet to chase after him.
“How did you know that?” she asked breathlessly.
He winked a dark eye her way. “I know everything, little human. I know you couldn’t possibly want to stay here. Your home is waiting for you.”
“Yes.” Even though he was a good foot and several inches shorter than her, he moved quickly. Megan had to jog to keep up with the little man. “I was taken from my home, and then they sold me at some tournament thingy and apparently now I’m married, but I didn’t say, ‘I do,’ so I don’t think I am. I just want to get home.”
Yes, she should hurry. She needed to get home to her fantastic life on the Earth plane. She needed to get back to work, so she could go back to her dreary apartment at the end of a long day and microwave something she didn’t really want to eat and watch television. She didn’t want to stay and explore this strange place. She didn’t want to give that gorgeous hunk of a man a chance. She certainly didn’t want to meet the other, possibly even hotter, half of him. No, she wanted to go back to a place that probably wouldn’t even realize she had gone.
She was an idiot.
Meg stopped in the middle of the little trail. A vision of Beck swamped her senses, and she was stunned by how much she felt for him. Oh god, I’m in love with him.
It was stupid, and far too soon, and true. She already loved Beckett Finn, and here she was walking away from him. She hadn’t really loved Michael, and she’d given him three years of her life. She was walking away from Beck after a day? If she wouldn’t even fight for a man like him, she didn’t deserve to find love.
Everything crystallized as she stood in the middle of the faery forest. She shook her head. She was in the middle of a freaking faery forest! All of her life, she had daydreamed and read fantasy novels and done anything she could to escape reality. In her daydreams and the stories she wrote that she never let anyone read, she was a different person. She was a confident, lovable woman who faced challenges head on. Maybe it was time to be the person she always wanted to be.
She had waited for this all of her life, and now she was running away?
“Come along, miss.” The red man looked at her curiously. “Well, what are you waiting for? I can get you home.”
Meg shook her head. Her decision was made. “I changed my mind. I don’t want to go home. Honestly, my life there kind of sucked. Maybe life here will suck, too, but shouldn’t I give it a chance? When you think about it, it really is kind of cool. I mean, I have seen more weird-ass shit in the last twenty-four hours than most people see in a lifetime. Vampires! How freaking cool is that? They have their own plane and apparently are just as interested in their stock portfolios as they are in blood. And gnomes! Sure, they didn’t actually have any travel tips for me, so they weren’t like the ones at home, but the ones at home are ceramic. They aren’t half as awesome as the ones here. And the sidhe.” Meg sighed. “I think I care about him. He needs me. I can’t walk away.”
“But don’t you want to go home?”
Meg rolled her eyes. “Screw my home. Somewhere out there is this superhot faery. He paid a lot of money for me. My ex-husband never took me to any place nicer than a Chili’s because he was a cheap ass. Beck already spent more on me than any man ever has, and then he had to do the Fight Club thing. No one ever fought for me before. Sure, he was kind of a dickhead afterward, but I think I can work on that problem. And I haven’t even met his other half. I think they’re identical. Twins should be identical, right? Even if they aren’t, even if he’s unattractive, I’ll be okay with it because Cian is a part of Beck. If I love one, then I have to love and accept the other. Right?”
The red man took a deep breath. “You’re a strange girl. You speak faster than my ears work. Are you saying you no longer wish to return to your own plane?”