I went back to the memory.
21 years ago.
I was bored. So deeply bored I could feel it in my teeth. My parents sat on a park bench, speaking in hushed, excited tones about the "vibrancy" of the place, the "beautiful people" they'd glimpsed.
"I think that was the mayor's wife," my mother whispered, as if sharing a state secret.
My father nodded, serious. "The landscaping alone must cost a fortune."
It was mulch and money. That's all they saw. I saw the dirt under the shiny surface. I was five.
"Too sharp for your age," every adult who bothered to speak to me said. They'd pat my head like I was a clever dog. What did that make the other children? Dull. Normal. I didn't want to be sharp. I wanted to be invisible.
"Mum, I need the restroom." I tugged at her sleeve.
They were lost in their fantasy of belonging, their faces turned toward a world that glanced right through them. They didn't notice me slip away.
I knew this park. They loved it. They claimed it was hallowed ground—the site of their "secret kiss" that, as my mother always said with a sigh, made me.
It was disgusting.
The women's restroom was a gallery of polished shoes and gleaming hair. Girls my age, but not like me.
They were wrapped in colors I didn't have names for, fabrics that didn't itch. I stood there in my second-hand dress, the lace at the collar fraying.
One of them turned. She had a smile like a porcelain doll. "What's your name?"
I opened my mouth.
Before I could speak, her friend snorted. "Her name is Poor Mrs. Disgusting." A tinkling, cruel laugh bounced off the tile.
The heat of shame was instant and complete. It flooded my cheeks, my throat. I didn't cry. I ran.
Blurred greenery, the slap of my small shoes on the path. The sign for the restroom appeared again, a generic silhouette in a dress. Next to it, the one in pants.
The Boys' restroom.
Who cared? What could happen to a five-year-old who trespassed? The worst had already happened. I'd been named and discarded in one breath.
I pushed the heavy door. It was quieter. Emptier. It smelled of stale urinal cakes and damp concrete.
I didn't go to the stall. I just stood in the middle of the cool, dim space, trying to make my breathing slow, trying to un-hear the laughter.
That's when I noticed I wasn't alone.
A boy was sitting on the tiled floor, his back against the wall.
He was crying—not loudly, but with a quiet, steady surrender. Tears traced clean lines through the faint dust on his cheeks. His eyes, a striking, watery green, were fixed on nothing. Rich, dark-honey hair fell softly to his shoulders. He looked… delicate. Like a painting of a sad angel.
More beautiful, I thought with a sharp pang, than I could ever be.
He glanced up, noticing me. His crying didn't stop, but his gaze sharpened through the tears.
"You're not supposed to be here," he said, his voice thick but clear. "The girls' room is at the corner."
"I know." I lifted my chin a little. "I want to stay here."
"Get out." The command was flat, devoid of real force. He was trying to control me, but his tears undermined his authority. I wasn't leaving. He was just crying.
"Did you not hear me?" he tried again, wiping his face with the back of his hand.
"And who gave you that right?" I took a step closer. We were of a similar height. I could see the fine grain of his wool sweater, the silver buckle on his leather shoe—details of a world that had just rejected me.
"You leave!"
"No, I want to stay here." I studied his face, the tears that seemed too heavy for someone so polished. "They called you names, is that why you're crying?"
"No!" The word burst out, sharp with a pain deeper than any taunt. "My mother died."
I blinked. Grown-up things were always confusing. "Then why are you crying?"
"Because she's dead." He said it like I was stupid, his green eyes flashing.
A thought formed, clear and simple in my five-year-old mind. I'd heard the grown-ups at my grandma's funeral say it.
"She went to heaven. Why should you cry? You should be happy for her. Everyone will die one day."
He stared at me, his tears momentarily stunned into stillness. My logic, heartless and pure, hung in the damp air between us.
To me, it was a fact, like the sky being blue. To him, it must have sounded like a slap.
"You're a devil," he said, turning to look at me fully. His green eyes were still glistening. "How old are you? Nine… eight?"
"I'm five. And you?"
His face filled with shock. "I'm nine."
A small, satisfied feeling warmed my chest. "You're short. You may never grow." I paused, then raised my hand toward him. "Let's be friends, though."
He stared at my hand, then slowly, wrapped his fingers around mine. They were colder than mine.
From then on, whenever our paths crossed in the park, it was a secret.
His father was rich—I could tell by the sharp cut of his coats, the way nannies and drivers lingered at a distance. My parents didn't know him. His father didn't know me. We were invisible to the adults, and that made us free.
He would sneak away from watchful eyes to find me. We became a secret tucked between the polished world he came from and the quiet, frayed edges of mine.
We played chase around the oak tree, held hands during scary parts of movies shown on the community lawn, and shared stolen lemon candies that tasted like dust and sugar.
Once, behind the tool shed where the gardeners kept their rusting tools, he tried to kiss me. It was a dry, clumsy press of lips on lips that lasted a second before we both pulled away, giggling nervously, the taste of stolen lemon candy still sharp on our tongues.
"My parents said a secret kiss is what made me," I told him proudly, repeating what I'd heard, a piece of grown-up magic I now possessed.
His eyes, those deep green pools, got very serious.
The playfulness vanished, replaced by a focus that made my stomach flutter. "Then maybe we should kiss more," he said, his voice low with a new intensity that didn't belong on the playground. "So we can make a baby."
Before I could process the absurdity, his hands came up. One cradled the back of my head, fingers tangling in my hair. The other held my neck, not roughly, but with a certainty that left no room for escape. This wasn't the peck from before.
He kissed me deeper.
His lips weren't dry anymore; they were urgent, moving against mine with a clumsy, wet insistence.
I could feel the cold, hard metal of his braces against my teeth, a startling, inorganic sensation. His lips sucked at mine, a strange, pulling pressure that was nothing like the stories. The lemon candy taste was gone, replaced by the faint, clean scent of his soap and something else, something unfamiliar and vaguely alarming.
I didn't know how to kiss back. I stood frozen, my own hands hanging limp at my sides, eyes wide open, staring at the blurred grain of the wooden shed behind his head. A jumble of feelings crashed into me: the thrill of a shared secret, the sharp pinch of his braces, the weight of his hands holding me in place, and a dawning, confused understanding that this was different. This wasn't playing house. This felt like a claim.
He broke away, breathing a little harder. A string of saliva briefly connected our mouths before snapping. His face was flushed, his green eyes bright and searching mine for a reaction.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, a reflexive gesture. My heart was pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs. "Did it work?" I whispered, the words swallowed by the thick air between us.
He looked at me, this boy from a world of silver buckles and wool sweaters, his gaze holding a possessive gleam that seemed far too old for his face. "Maybe," he said, his voice husky. "We might have to practice more. To be sure."
The idea was absurd and fascinating. He wanted to get me pregnant. It felt like the ultimate game, the ultimate secret. The stupid secret kiss that made my parents bore me was now our own strange, powerful magic.
He was my first crush. He had braces that caught the light when he smiled, which wasn't often.
The last time I saw him was under the same oak tree, months later. The smell of wet earth and rain hung thick in the air. The gray light of a stormy afternoon made everything feel like a dream.
He'd pressed the little metal ring into my palm. His mother's ring. The knight's ring.
He claims it was when she was small she had it.
"I like you so much," he'd mumbled, looking at his shoes, his ears turning red.
Overwhelmed by a dramatic, sweet sorrow—the feeling of a story ending—I'd shoved my beloved bear into his arms.
"Take him," I'd said, my childish heart swelling with the importance of the moment. "Keep him for me… till we meet again."
I had leaned in and kissed his cheek, a quick, clumsy press of my lips against cool, rain-damp skin. I had passed the bear to him.
I didn't know I was trading a piece of my childhood for a token of his grief. I didn't know that the ring in my hand was a weight I would carry forever, or that the bear I gave away would become a relic in a future prison of silk and shadows.
I just knew he was my secret friend. And we had a promise.
Now, standing in the silent hallway of a house that shouldn't exist, staring at the worn fur of that same bear, I understood.
Lucian Thorne wasn't just a man who bought me.
He was the boy who kept his promise.
And I was the girl who had sealed the contract with a kiss, twenty-one years ago, trading a teddy bear for a ring that would change everything.
Our secret friendship had been the first currency. My entire life since had just been the interest, compounding in tragedy.
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To be continued...