Star-Crossed Read Online Free

was playing the grand piano; a drizzling of notes floated above our heads like moths. Each of the rooms was full, straining at the seams while couples danced and laughed and touched each other’s arms and faces and masks. Everyone was unrecognizable, and there was something both eerie and liberating about the whole affair.
    I plucked one of the cherries from my glass, popping it into my mouth and sucking on it like a piece of candy, which it practically was. With the music turned down and someone in the background yelling for the masked-pianist to continue playing, all I could hear was the piano sounds as I drifted out of the ballroom in search of a quieter space. In such a place as this, calling the staggering structure a house would be an insult. It was a mansion. A large, intimidating palace. And I needed to get away from the glossy eyes and rattling laughter.
    “It's not good to be so solitary,” the maids would always say. “You'll get lonely.”
    I told them that there was a difference between being lonely and being alone. Alone was a word that I could have very well written, keeping the definition tucked in my pocket to pull out and skim over quickly when the moment was appropriate. When that sharp, barbed-wire pain gripped my chest. The moments when I looked at doting boyfriends on the sidewalks, holding a lover's hand. Coffee shop talks; laughter over pastries and hidden jokes.
    Alone. Not lonely. Just alone. But you can't feel sorry for the things that you ask for.
    I'm not sure how far I had walked before the music had completely faded. All I know was that when I saw him, I was standing in the center of a narrow hallway with crimson walls on which heavy, hanging portraits were hung. Piper's face was immortalized in oil paint, giving her an eerie, luminous appearance. I lifted my mask quickly to take a better look, sliding it back down only when I heard the sound of a voice that seemed to be talking to me.
    I turned, and that's when I saw him. Really saw him. He wore his mask so that it rested across his eyes in a simple black strip of Fleur de Lis printed cloth. When I finally fixed my sights on him, my initial thought was that I was in the presence of someone who had just walked off the set of some striking, pop-punk music video. There was an elegant mess to him; his midnight-colored hair was long, tousled and swept back lazily. His eyes wide and curious and so brown that they themselves were almost black.
    Through the fabric, all I could see were two onyx-colored irises. He wore a burgundy-colored shirt layered with a black pinstripe suit. He wore no tie, opting to keep his collar unbuttoned. And if I hadn't been so startled by him, I would have asked if he was planning on attending a masquerade or a funeral.
    Either way, it was deafeningly sexy.
    When he finally parted his lips, I bit down on the cherry that was still in my mouth; the sweet syrup coated my tongue. When he spoke, I swallowed.
    “I think you're a bit lost,” he said, his voice dropping a decibel so that the sound was nearly hushed. “The party is that way.”
    He pointed in the direction of distant sounds, but in that present place every single noise that was not his voice or breath had been entirely muted.
    I could choose to say that I immediately caught his accent. British. But instead of the typical, gushing reaction that most girls would give a man who opened his mouth and expelled simple words that sounded like the foreign cry of angels, I turned back to the painting and forced myself to lock into Piper's liquid stare.
    “I'm not lost,” I answered after half a beat. “I know exactly where I am.”
    Resisting through clenched teeth, I set my glass down on the rug. My fingers were wet with cold condensation.
    “Why are you standing in the hallway?” I asked.
    The strange man shrugged.
    “I needed to escape for a moment. I just...” he paused. “I needed some air.”
    That's when I chose to look at him again, and he did indeed