THE ALPHA’S REGRET

CHAPTER THREE

Your driver is arriving now.*

Leslie stared at the screen until the words made sense. A small sense of relief eased through her.

Headlights swung into the lot, catching her like a spotlight before sliding past. An old sedan, paint faded to a dull gray, dented along the back door. It looked nothing like the cars lined up near the entrance.

It looked like salvation.

She wiped her face with the back of her hand and walked toward it on legs that didn’t quite feel like her own.

The driver rolled down his window. Older man, tired eyes, a face that had seen a thousand nights like this and worse. His nose wrinkled slightly when the smell reached him, but he didn’t say anything about it.

“Leslie?”

She nodded, because her voice wasn’t ready yet.

“Get in.”

The back seat was cracked leather, worn soft in the middle from years of strangers. It smelled like old coffee and pine air freshener. Nothing like Tony’s cologne, nothing like the gala, nothing like dog filth drying in her hair.

She pulled the door shut and the world outside went quiet.

The car pulled away from the curb, past the valets, past the row of gleaming cars she’d never be allowed to ride in, past the red carpet where an hour ago people had laughed at her like she was a joke someone had told at her expense.

Leslie pressed her forehead to the cool glass and watched the lights of the gala shrink in the side mirror.

Tony was still in there.

She didn’t know if he’d even noticed she was gone.

The thought sat in her chest like a stone. She waited for tears, but they didn’t come right away this time. There was just a hollow, ringing quiet, the kind that came after something broke and hadn’t finished falling yet.

“Rough night?” the driver asked, glancing at her in the rearview mirror.

“Just drive. Please.”

He nodded once and let the radio fill the silence, low and soft, something with a steady piano line that didn’t ask anything of her.

Somewhere around the fifth red light, the tears finally came. Quiet ones. She didn’t bother wiping them this time. She just let them slide down and drip off her jaw, watching the city blur past the window.

The driver didn’t ask again. But when they slowed at the next light, he spoke without turning around.

“Whatever happened tonight,” he said, “it wasn’t your fault.”

Leslie’s throat closed. She managed a small nod, and he let it go, eyes back on the road like he hadn’t said anything at all.

Twenty minutes later, the estate rose up out of the dark. Three stories of white stone and black iron gates, the kind of house that looked like it belonged in a magazine instead of a life.

Not her house. Never her house.

She handed him cash from her purse with hands that were finally starting to steady, and he took it with a small nod, his eyes kind in a way that made her chest ache.

The car pulled away, leaving her alone in the driveway.

Leslie let herself in through the side door with the key they’d given her, the one that opened onto the servants’ hall because Catherine had decided that was more fitting.

The house was dark. Silent. Cold in the way empty houses are cold, like they know no one loves them.

She climbed the stairs two at a time, her bare feet silent against the runner, and didn’t breathe again until her bedroom door was locked behind her.

Then it all came apart at once.

She peeled off the ruined dress and let it fall in a heap by the door. She’d deal with it later. Burn it, maybe. She never wanted to see it again.

In the bathroom, she turned the shower as hot as it would go and stepped under the spray before it even warmed, gasping at the cold shock of it.

The water ran brown, then gray, then finally clear, but she kept scrubbing. Her scalp. Her arms. The webs between her fingers. She dug her nails into her skin like she could scrape the whole night off of herself if she just tried hard enough.

She could still smell it.

She scrubbed harder.

Her breath came in short, broken pulls, and somewhere between the second and third washing of her hair, the sound that came out of her wasn’t crying anymore. It was something rawer, closer to a sob torn loose from somewhere she didn’t know she had.

She slid down the tile wall and sat there under the water, knees pulled to her chest, and let it take her.

By the time the water ran cold, she felt scraped hollow, wrung out, empty in a way that almost felt like relief.

She wrapped herself in a towel and sat on the edge of the tub, staring at nothing, listening to water drip from her hair onto the floor.

Ten minutes passed before she trusted herself to move.

She pulled on an old t-shirt and sweatpants, climbed onto her bed, and stared at the wall until her eyes stopped burning.

Then she heard it.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​