Prologue
PROLOGUE - Ten Years Ago
MALAIKA
It’s extra humid this morning.
And tight.
My skin is tight. Warm and clammy and two sizes too small for its own body, that’s all but bursting like a ripened fruit ready for harvest.
My skirt is tight. The pleats and belt bite into my waistline. The cambric feels less like fabric and more like prickly heat that keeps riding up my thigh in all the wrong ways.
The silk top isn’t faring any better. Feels like all it needs is my next breath for the buttons and seams to pop open and have my boobs spill out.
Goodness, did my clothes shrink in the five minutes I’ve been standing here?
Of course not. I run trembling fingers through my hair and secure a knot at the nape. It’s just nerves.
A mirrored panel in the hallway confirms as much.
I’m still me.
The chauffer’s daughter. The adopted charity case. The accidental fashion find with her hourglass figure and Naomi Campbell walk.
My sister hates that last bit with a vengeance. She’s also justified, to be honest.
After the meeting with the school headmaster yesterday, after the incident at the pool party before that, she has every reason to detest my newfound fame. Every reason to send me packing to an avalanche-ridden village in the Himalayas and not worry if I never return.
But it’s neither her nor my imminent ouster from Kemora’s civil society that bothers me. It’s the dark oak door down the hall that has my composure in a twist. The one with brass knobs and bolts and the space it opens up to. Just one of the many massive rooms in this mansion.
One where he is.
I knock. And enter without waiting for permission that will never be mine. The intrusion forces him to look up and the moment he finds me, the tender gray of his eyes burns to ash.
I almost miss a step at the threshold.
No point in falling. The Persian rug underneath my feet will not break my fall softly this time. The library is cold despite the ancient comfort of leather-bound books with broken spines and scent of paper loved through generations. Today, the sanctuary offers no protection against the storm I’m about to walk into.
“Sorry.” The apology is comical. “May I come in?” The question even more so since I already am in his space.
He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t stop glaring either even though he can see its crushing weight stifling me. But that’s kinda his thing. One look from him and my good sense packs up and leaves.
Always.
Even now when I’m scared shit and desperate to be on his good side, I can’t help soaking the sight of him. My heart sighs at how ruinously handsome he looks in khakis, a crisp shirt, an unbuttoned collar offering miles of skin loved by an island sun.
My gaze admires folded sleeves revealing delectable forearms. A headful of dark hair ruffled in the best possible way, a face that inspires romance, a body carved like an ode to masculine beauty. A polished demeanor that demands distance unless invited to stand closer.
I love all of that.
He is standing bent over a massive desk, a book splayed in front of him, and an expression that makes his jawline sharper. He doesn’t straighten, doesn’t ask me to take one of the three guest chairs and doesn’t fill the frightening silence with words. Not even angry ones, which I’d expect – welcome actually – if it meant he’ll talk to me.
“Hi,” I say.
He keeps glaring.
I swallow and take another step closer to the chair in the middle. “May I sit?”
He doesn’t reply.
So, I keep standing. My fingers dig into the back of the chair. “Ruhan…I’m sorry.”
He blinks. The controlled fury in his eyes doesn’t diminish.
I clear my throat. “I was reckless and thoughtless and I shouldn’t have…” shouldn’t have…I shouldn’t…have…
The pause doesn’t favor me as he catches my gaze dropping to his mouth.
“Millie.” He growls in warning but it doesn’t help.
I’m already back at the pool party and reliving the moment that changed everything.
My lips on his. My hands in his hair. His fingers curling into my bikini wrap. Reluctant. But there for my skin to register and senses to commit to. The barely-there groan trapped in his throat. The moan I wasn’t afraid to let out. My curves pressing perfectly against his planes…
Then, his girlfriend saw us.
He couldn’t push me away fast enough to run after her. Leaving me annoyed, not ashamed. My cheeks not burning with embarrassment but flushed with victory because finally he knew how I felt about him.
Now though, seeing the moment flash through my mind wrapped inside this sunless room as the rage in his eyes turns charcoal, recognition dawns on me.
Ruhan didn’t want that kiss.
But I did.
But he froze.
“Shouldn’t you be packing?” he asks, destroying the world that has already formed in my head. His voice is low and his attention has shifted from my face back to the book on the table. “Your sister tells me you have an early flight.”
So, he knows I’m leaving. And he’s okay with that?
“I don’t want to go.” My fingers dig deeper into upholstery. “That’s why I came here. Please, tell them I don’t want to go.”
His gaze slides back to mine. “And why would I do that?”
“Look, I know you’re angry about the party–”
“Angry?” The almost imperceptible scowl with which he delivers the word makes my breath hang. “I’m not angry. I’m not sure why you’re here.”
“I already told you.”
“Tell me again.”
It’s hateful how the color crimson is bruising my ego with shame now after everything. Simply because he’s looking at me like I’m guilty. Like I should feel it too and repent.
I take a deep breath. “I want you to tell Rani to not send me away.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to stay here in Kemora.”
“Why?”
“Because I go to school here. Because my whole life is here.” Because you are here! I kill those words and reach for logic instead. “How would you feel if your family tried to ship you off to God knows where for no reason at all?”
“Milan is not God-knows-where.”
“I don’t want to go.”
He shrugs. “It’s your sister’s decision.”
“She’s being ridiculous.”
“She has her reasons, I’m sure.”
“No.” This is the part where rage starts to crawl up my neck and I should leave, but don’t. “My sister has no reasons. Her only reasoning is that your girlfriend threw a tantrum. She called my sister and threatened to–”
“Watch it, Millie.” The eyebrow he raises to silence me is worse than his words. “Natasha has nothing to do with this.”
“You’re such a coward.”
There’s a lethal wrinkle in time where Ruhan goes still and the room decides to absorb the shock of what I just said.
“You are a coward.” I charge to the edge of the desk until it’s the only surface separating us, and rest both my fists on top of it. “I kissed you and you ran like it was the worst thing that’s ever happened to you under the sun. And for what? For Natasha? Just so you know, nobody likes her. She’s vile and a slut who manipulates and plots for fun! Do you even know what she did to me? She tricked me into–”
“Who do you think you are, Millie?”
The quiet in his voice makes the room arctic. It scissors through my rage, cutting up the air open like a mist curtain and making things clear. The way he’s looking at me as if I’m a stranger he’s seeing for the first time breaks my heart even more.
“What makes you think you can have an opinion about my life?” he asks. “About my friends? Who I date?”
“Natasha–”
“–is the girl you’re not and never will be.”
He stands to his full height then, stuffs his hands in his pockets and lets his gaze roll over me like I’m a particularly nauseous specimen of scum.
“Natasha has more class in one tiny finger than you can ever hope to have in your whole body,” he says. “Stop comparing yourself to her, Millie.”
Something harsher than rage cuts deep inside my chest at the way he praises her.
At twenty-three, Ruhan Dervish is many things to the world. To me, he is more than a silly childhood crush that grew up with me under the same roof.
He is a memory of love that blossomed over the years like a fever dream and branded my soul. He is my most cherished prayer. A susurrus of passion, which he never promised, but one that breathes under my skin all the same.
And he has chosen someone else. Someone bad. He has no clue what she is capable of, no idea of what she has already done. And he doesn’t care. He’ll end up marrying her one day. Or someone like her. While I’ll just watch from the sidelines.
“She isn’t a nice person.” I force the words out because he needs to at least hear something. “You don’t know what she did to me.”
“What did she do to you?” He might as well roll his eyes with boredom and it kills me.
I square my shoulders. “She told the guys I was game. She left me alone with them.”
“The guys you were flirting with all evening?” His eyes narrow. “The guys I told you weren’t my friends and you told me to fuck off?”
“It’s not like that!” Frustration makes me less credible. “You don’t know her.”
“I don’t know you either, apparently.”
“You could.” Stupid, careless hope blooms in my chest when his eyes soften for one wayward second. “We’ll start now. We could–”
“No.”
“Is it my age?” I hate that I’m desperate enough to still be looking for reasons because there has to be a reason that explains why there is disgust in his eyes where warmth used to be. “I’ll be legal next year. We can wait. I wouldn’t ask you to do anything–”
“Shut up.” He shakes his head like my presence offends him. “You don’t know the hell you’re talking about.”
“Yes, I do.” Tears escape and I let them fall with my self-esteem. “You have to hear me out.”
“Just leave, Millie.”
“I love you, Ruhan!”
The confession echoes louder than any sound has a right to. But that arrogance is justified if it means he heard it. Loud and clear and pure like the truth it is and I love the silence that follows to revere the sentiment.
This is what matters. This is where we fix our story.
But then, his face changes and frost curls down my spine in tiny bites.
“Are you utterly brainless, Millie?” His wrath has teeth this time. “Embarrassing yourself like that. Embarrassing me. You think you have time for this nonsense? You’re on the verge of dropping out of school, you have no experience of anything. No money, no skill, and this is where your brain’s at?”
“I just–”
“Your sister works her bones off to keep a roof over your stupid head and you think you have the luxury to indulge in romance? If I fired her today, you’d be nowhere.”
That startles me. “You wouldn’t do that.”
“You don’t know what I would do.” Dread takes root in my gut at the unkind flicker in his eyes. “Know your place, Millie. It isn’t with me.”
Know your place, Millie.
I hear the words. My sister has said the same to me too many times to count and each time I have laughed the warning off.
But coming from him, they have a life of their own. A blade and a war strategy of their own. They take up space in me where hope used to live and replace it with something wrecked.
I can’t retaliate.
The shift is too brutal for my brain to process. I want to speak. But I can’t. My mouth won’t work.
But I love you. I want to say it louder. Is that not enough? I want to ask. But my throat burns and closes up and the whisper of a wish dies somewhere inside it.
He inhales like breathing the same air as me is costing him his soul. Then he looks at me with gentler eyes, ones that harbor pity more than mercy.
“You’re just a child, Millie,” he says. “Don’t say things you don’t understand.”
But I do understand!
I understand that I gave him the most precious thing I had and he callously threw it back in my face. I understand that I stupidly believed that if I loved him enough, he would finally see me. Nothing else would matter. Not his family’s wealth. Not my low birth. Not the law that makes me jailbait for him.
Such a naïve fool.
He grabs the book and sits back in his chair, leaning away from the desk, from the room, the conversation. Leaning away from me with a finality that slices like a paper cut. He doesn’t even look at me when he delivers the final goodbye.
“Have fun in Milan,” he says, turning a page. “Make something of yourself, Malaika.”
Malaika.
The final severance. Taking my full name instead of the nickname that he once gave me. That nickname wasn’t just that. It was his first act, as innocent as it was, of claiming me as part of his life and it’s now buried just like that.
Fresh tears slide down the path of old ones. I don’t wipe them and take a second to understand how comfortable he was in tearing me to pieces.
So, I step away from his desk, close the massive library behind an oak door with gold accents and make way to my room where my sister is waiting for me to pack and leave for what seems like a whole new life.
I do turn once in the hallway and look back at the closed entrance to where he is. A sob that nobody hears escapes my lips. And becomes a curse.
Goodbye Ruhan.
I hope you fall in love.
I hope it breaks your fucking heart!
**Welcome to Kemora Archives Book 4 BEYOND THE RUNWAY - Ruhan & Millie's story.
I've only uploaded the sample Prologue for now. Please let me know how you feel about it. Gripping? Should I write more? Let me know!
If we do embark on this journey, I hope you enjoy coming back to the island with all its colorful atmosphere and characters, and I hope you love BEYOND THE RUNWAY just as much as you have loved the previous books!**
