The rain started late that evening. It wasn't a soft rain; it was a heavy, rhythmic drumming against the windows that matched the frantic beating of my heart. I sat in my room, staring at the floor, still feeling the flour on my skin and the sting of his mother's words in my ears.
A servant.
That was all I was in this house when the lights were on. I was a scholarship girl who chopped onions and stirred pots while the woman I loved prepared to meet his bride. The dress I had worn to the office—the one that made Alex lose his mind—was hidden deep in the back of my closet. I felt like I had hidden the real "Luna" along with it.
I heard the apartment go quiet. One by one, the lights went out. I heard the click of his mother's door. I waited, holding my breath, counting the seconds.
Click.
My door opened. This time, Alex didn't whisper. He didn't even wait for the door to close before he reached for me. He pulled me off the bed and into his arms, his grip so tight it almost hurt. He buried his face in the crook of my neck, his breathing heavy and ragged.
"I won't let you do it," he growled into my skin. "I won't let you serve them like a maid, Luna. I saw your eyes in the kitchen. I saw how she was treating you."
I pulled back, looking into his dark, tortured eyes. "What choice do we have, Alex? If I refuse, she will know. If I don't help, she will think I am ungrateful. She already looks at me like I am a bug under a microscope."
Alex let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob. He cupped my face, his thumbs wiping away a tear I didn't even know had fallen. "She doesn't see you, Luna. She sees a student. But I see the woman who has ruined me. I see the only person I want to wake up to for the rest of my life."
He kissed me then—a desperate, salty kiss that tasted like tears and rain. It was a kiss full of the things he couldn't say in front of his mother. It was a kiss that said I'm sorry and I love you all at once.
"Tomorrow will be a nightmare," he whispered against my lips, his hands sliding down to my waist. "But you have to remember one thing. When I am sitting at that table, and she is showing off that girl... I will be thinking of you. I will be looking at you every time you enter the room. My heart will be with the girl serving the tea, not the one sitting beside me."
I shivered, the heat of his body the only thing keeping me from freezing. "She's going to be beautiful, Alex. Your mother said she's your equal. She has a family name. She has everything I don't."
Alex pulled me closer, his eyes turning dangerous. "She has nothing. Because she doesn't have my soul. You do."
He stayed with me for hours, both of us huddled together in the dark, listening to the rain. We didn't talk much more. We didn't need to. The silence was our only sanctuary before the sun came up and forced us to put on our masks again.
As he slipped out of the room just before dawn, he turned back one last time. "Be strong tomorrow, my little moon. Because when this dinner is over... I'm going to make sure my mother knows that her plans are dead."
I watched the door close, a new kind of fear blooming in my chest. Alex was ready to fight. But was I ready for the war that was about to start in this house?