After his second thank-you speech, Brady was escorted backstage to talk to more media. I decided it was time for me to use the bathroom so I’d be back when he returned. The water Nash had handed me had gone right through me. There was no way I was waiting another hour until his next nomination. I signaled the attendant who went to find a seat filler, and then I made my way down the aisle to where Nash was standing. As I reached him, his entire body went still, and he whipped out a hand to grab me and pull me behind him.
“What’s going on?” I asked, heart thudding.
“Tanner needs me on the upper deck. He thinks she’s there,” Nash said.
“Go!” I said.
“Not until I hand you off to Marco.”
“Marco’s backstage with Brady, isn’t he?”
Nash didn’t respond, but we both knew he was. At the door, we were met with one of the FBI agents.
“I’m just going to the ladies' room. Certainly, this highly trained agent can take me. Go get her for us,” I said.
Nash looked doubtful. I pushed on his chest. “Go.”
Nash looked to the agent with eyes ready to kill. “Take her straight to the restroom and then meet me back here. Do not go back into the theater until I’ve given the okay.”
Then, he turned to stalk toward the stairs.
“Nash,” I called out.
He turned back to me. “Please be safe,” I said.
He came back, kissed his fingers, and then placed them on my lips. “Keep this with you until you can give it back to me.”
My entire body convulsed as he walked away. Love. Without the words said, but there. I had to shake myself out of my trance in order to turn to the agent who’d just witnessed one of the sweetest, most romantic things that had ever happened to me.
The agent and I journeyed to the nearest restroom with my heart pounding at a rate that I thought might have me keeling over in my spiked heels. If it were Fiona, it would all be done, because I doubted she could do anything to the military men and highly trained FBI agents tracking her down. She’d started a shitstorm she was going to be lucky to get out of alive.
The agent cleared the bathroom and then stood aside for me to enter.
I glanced at myself in the mirror and, for the first time in a long time, didn’t see a pale reflection of myself. I saw the “me” I’d been before the attack but also stronger. On top of that, I was relieved that the entire situation with Fiona was coming to a close. I allowed myself a small smile of victory. The Dani I was now had come a long way in a year.
I entered the bathroom stall, grateful to not have a long ballgown on for once.
The door to the restroom swung open and then closed, surprising me. I didn’t think the agent would let anyone else in with me. I finished, flushed, opened the stall, and located the other woman at the sink before I moved, listening for signs of any other person in the room like Nash had taught me. I gave her space, skipping a sink to wash my hands, eyeing her from my peripheral vision. The woman was a tall blonde, hair piled high, gorgeous cat-eye glasses on her face.
I tried not to stare just as I’d tried not to stare all afternoon at the sea of beautiful people who had filled the theater. I went to grab paper towels, and suddenly, the woman moved, wrapping a hand into the thick layers of chains I was wearing, bringing them up and twisting them tight at my throat just as I tried to spin away as I’d been taught.
“If I can’t have him, you can’t either,” the woman hissed in my ear.
My brain barely registered that it was Fiona.
As I turned, trying to face her, the jewelry slammed tight against my windpipe, making it impossible to breathe, Fenway’s threat of a belt around my neck bursting into a warped reality.
“You took everything from us,” she grunted as she pulled the chains harder.
I launched an elbow into her gut, and she gasped but didn’t loosen her grip. I took my spiked heel, raising it to drag it down her shin, but it tangled in her long, red dress. The movement caused us both to go tumbling to the ground, and yet, she still didn’t let go of the chain.
My brain was whirling with the word “us” and thoughts of how she’d gotten into the building. Everything started to get dark, and all I could think about was the pressure on my windpipe and the burn in my lungs.
“We deserved everything we had, and he took it all away, so now I get to return the favor and take everything from him,” she said. It wasn’t a scream. It was a scary sort of monotone as if she was on autopilot.
Flashes of Nash and the future we were trying to form together caused anger to pool in my belly. Anger at Fiona trying to take it away. Anger at Fenway. Anger at everyone who’d ever said shitty things behind my back. People who
