Beautiful Illusion (7 page)

A few people cheered.

“Two…”

Mikayla bolted out onto the stage and reached to stairs of the capsule as soon as the clock struck 15:00.

“One…”

Bubbles were seeping more rapidly out of Enigma’s mouth as Mikayla stuck the key in the lock and turned. He looked desperate—desperate to get a breath of fresh air.

But he wasn’t getting out yet.

The crowd all rose to their feet and the cheers turned to voices of panic as Mikayla struggled to get the key to open the chains. She turned and turned, but it wasn’t working, then she pulled on the chain and yelled out to the other staff members backstage “It’s stuck!”

15:15

Holy shit
, I thought. The idea of Enigma dying right then and there suddenly seemed very real.

Two other assistants rushed to Mikayla, and each tried their hand at unlocking the chain, but it wasn’t working. Enigma pounded the top of the stainless steel lid, and through the glass it looked like he was trying to scream.

That’s when I noticed a second set of keys lying on the table nearby. Mikayla had set two sets there… one for the lid and one for his wrists. Had she somehow grabbed the wrong keys?

I snatched the keys and flew as fast as I could towards the capsule, almost tripping on my heels as I ran. The second time I misstepped, I just kicked my heels off behind me and continued to scurry towards the steps as fast as I could barefoot. I could see Enigma staring at me with confused eyes, his cheeks swollen with spoiled air and fear.

“The keys! Do you have the wrong keys?!” I screamed as I climbed hurriedly up the stairs.

“I don’t know!” Mikayla breathed heavily as she scooted out of the way and let me kneel down to try the other set. The banging of Enigma’s fists up there sounded so loud, so desperate.

I rammed a key into the keyhole, and when I turned it. I heard an affirming click and all three of the assistants and myself started pulling on the chain as hard and fast as we could.

Enigma’s pounding on the lid was growing faint, and the pounding in my chest was growing louder.

Mikayla flung the chain aside and everyone pulled hard on the lid, flinging it open so hard that the squeak of the metal sounded like it might fall off its hinges. The two other assistants reached down into the tank and grabbed Enigma by the shoulders, yanking him up for air.

15:45

Enigma coughed loudly and sucked in huge gulp of air while the assistants held his limp body out of the water. His head was leaned loosely on his shoulder, obviously exhausted and on the brink of passing out from the exercise, and I could see red marks around his wrists from where he had been chained.

Clearly, it really had all been real.

I was so caught up in the moment that I almost didn’t even notice the audience wailing, whistling and clapping at the performance. They were all standing to their feet giving a loud ovation, smiling, wide-eyed and visibly impressed.

And so was I.

Enigma was so much more talented than I could have ever imagined. He was strong and capable of doing things that were far beyond my understanding.

I almost felt stupid for judging him that night at the club.

“
Y
ou’re going
to be all over social media tomorrow.”

I looked up, and Angel was standing in the doorway of my dressing room, dressed in a thin, red dress that exposed her neck, shoulders and fell a little past her knees. She had changed since the show ended, ands she looked like she was ready for a night on the town with that outfit, the tiny gold necklace that dangled across her ample breasts and the matching gold earrings.

I hadn’t seen her dressed like that before. She looked nice… a little more than nice, really; she looked fucking sexy. And with her sandy, golden hair let down and combed straight, she didn’t look like the same business woman that I knew her to be.

I huffed and smiled. “Maybe.”

“No maybes about it. What you did out there was incredible, and the crowd was blown away. Kim told me that people were already asking for tickets to your next show when she was handing out flyers.’”

“Flyers?” I asked.

Angel stiffened. “Yes, you agreed to allow us to hand out cross-promotional information once your show was over.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I did? Well… whatever. And by the way, thanks.”

“I assume you mean….”

“When you opened the tank for me. I could have lost my life out there.”

When I had stepped into the tank, I put all of my energy toward meditating, trying to relax my body and stretch every grain of power I had in my body to its maximum limit.

And 15:45? That was a dream come true. I thought that 15 minutes would be a challenge, and it was, but 15:45 was a time that I never thought possible. At around 14 minutes in, my chest started hurting, and I knew that I needed to get out soon. I wiggled my chains, relaxed my fingers, and managed to squirm free from when there was just little time left, but when the lid to the capsule wasn’t opening, I panicked,

By 15:30, I thought I was dead. My vision was getting blurry, and darkness was slowly creeping over me. I fought the urge to breathe, because I knew that I would inhale a breath of water, and if I was going to die, I wanted to prolong that feeling of drowning as a long as possible. But I did make it out.

Thank goodness I made it out.

If it hadn’t been for Angel’s quick action, I would have died, and I had more than a few words for Mikayla. I know it was an honest mistake, but she should have kept the keys to both chains separate so there couldn’t be any confusion. No matter, I couldn’t stay angry at her long, though, as it was partially my fault for hiring staff members so close to the show date and not giving them the depth of training that’s required for such a dangerous stunt like that.

“I’m sure you would’ve done the same for me or the same for anyone.”

“Probably. But you thought fast, and I’m appreciative of that.”

“Don’t mention it.” She waved a dismissive hand.

I grabbed a towel from the table directly in front of the dressing room mirror and rubbed it across my still-wet hair as I looked Angel up and down. Fuck, her tits looked good in that dress.

“And why are you all dressed up like that? Got somewhere special to be?”

Angel smiled shyly. “Actually, I’m going to meet someone tonight.”

“Going to meet someone?” I questioned. “Didn’t you say the other night when you blew me off that you
didn’t
have a boyfriend?”

Angel sighed and slowly made her way inside my dressing room until she was just a few feet away, then she leaned a shoulder against the wall. “I’m surprised you haven’t forgotten about that yet.”

“Well, I’m not used to getting—“

“Rejected by women?” she finished.

“Something like that.”

“I’m sure you aren’t. And no, I don’t have a boyfriend. The only reason I blew you off that night is because I’ve been talking to someone.”

“Oh, I see,” I said with a slow nod. “Have you been dating long?”

Angel sighed again and turned so her that her back was against the wall and her knees were slightly bent.

“Well, to tell you the truth, I haven’t even met the guy yet.”

I half laughed and half coughed out a “What?!”

“I met him online, and we’ve been talking for months.” Angel shook her head slowly. “I can’t even tell any of my friends about him, because it all sounds so silly.”

“So why are you telling me?”

“Nerves maybe? The feeling that someone should know? He’ll be meeting me here soon.”

“So why’d you wait months to meet up with him?”

“He’s a business owner in Florida. It’s not as easy as just picking up the phone and going out for the night. We’ve both got lives on either side of the country.”

I chuckled again and shook my head. “So you’re going out with some guy from Florida that you haven’t met before? Am I talking to the same girl that was deflecting the eyes of every suitor who looked at her the other night at the club?”

“I know it sounds crazy, but he’s different. I enjoy talking to him, and he likes a lot of things that I do, like
Game of…
”

“Game of?”

“Oh, it’s nothing. Just we seem to get along so well is all. He says all the right things.”

“Well, just be careful. I’ve never been a big fan of the whole online dating thing. I think it’s better to just go out and get a feel for someone in the flesh.”

Just then I heard a low buzz, and Angel stuck her hand in her purse. She peeked at her cell phone and took a deep breath.

“It’s him,” she said. “I’ve got to get going.”

“Good luck…”

“Thanks…” she said as she turned back for the door.

“And thanks again for today.”

D
ante sent
me a text saying that he was 5 minutes away, and I took one final trip into the restroom to check myself out in the mirror before I headed out to the parking lot. I felt sexy and self-conscious all at the same time. I hadn’t worn that dress, which used to be my favorite dress, since I had started Flutterfly. It fit a lot more snugly than it had before, and it showed off a lot more boob that I remembered.

Once I was in the parking lot, I waited outside a good 15 minutes, and Dante still hadn’t shown up. I called his number, but he didn’t answer, and finally he responded with a text saying that the traffic of everyone exiting the Event Center has caused a pretty bad traffic jam.

Dante: I’m here.

Me: Where is here?

Dante: Black car

I looked up, scanning each car that passed by but I didn’t see any that looked like Dante—or at least what I was expecting. There was one black car that I noticed driving towards me, an older model, long, black Cadillac, but that didn’t seem like the kind of car that someone on a business trip would be renting. Usually the major rental centers around the airports hand out compact Fords and Toyotas.

I was still looking up and around the parking lot when the Cadillac pulled into the open parking spot directly beside me and turned off its engine.

“Angel, darling!” I heard as soon as the driver’s side door opened.

There was Dante.

And my first instinct was to run.

It was clearly him. His eyes, nose and general facial structure was the same, but he looked at least 10 years older than his picture on Dateme. Gone was his blonde scruffy hair, replaced with a black tuft that was noticeably thinner than before. His body was still in relatively good shape, but he wasn’t the muscly hunk that I saw in his photos.

Either his photos were old or he had a damned good Photoshop artist.

I stood frozen as he got out of his car and rushed towards me, throwing his arms around my shoulders. “So glad to finally see you, my love,” he said.

I giggled a bit, partly out of shock, and gave him a loose, reluctant hug back. “Yeah, nice to meet you too.”

He pushed himself away from me and looked me in the eyes. “Is everything okay?”

His eyes were not only the same, but they were almost hypnotizing. I stared into them for a few moments, unable to pull away and muttered, “Yeah, everything is okay.”

“Good.” He smiled and leaned in, giving me a light peck on the cheek. “Are you ready for dinner?” he asked.

I felt a bit of a lump in my throat as my mind wrestled with the awkward situation. He didn’t look exactly how I had expected, but he was handsome in an older, sophisticated gentlemen kind of way. There was no way he was 25 like he stated in his profile,
no way
, but I had never even bothered to ask him if everything he wrote on his profile was true.

And that was all. Underneath the fact that he was a little bit older and looked slightly different, he was still the same man that I had spent the last 6 months exchanging emails and chatting with. I wasn’t ready to give up on him just yet. It wasn’t that weird to date a guy who was a decade or more older than you, was it? I mean, as long as we got along and liked each other, right?

I wasn’t sure.

But he had flown all the way to California and then driven down to LA to meet me. The least I could do was go to dinner with him while I decided how I felt about the situation.

“Yeah, let’s go,” I said nervously and nodded my head a couple times.

He snatched my hand and led me around to the passenger side of his car. “I can’t wait to spend the night with you…”

Spend the night? I hope he wasn’t insinuating that we would be sleeping in the same room together. There was still way too much on my mind after just meeting him and being shocked by his ‘off’ appearance.

I sat in the passenger seat of his boat of a car, which was really one big, hard bench seat that stretched all the way across to the driver’s side. The dashboard was dusty and there was the distinct smell of leather and fast food. It was the smell that I’d expect from a car that someone had been using as their daily driver, not the type of smell I’d expect from a rental. Hell, nothing about the car struck me as a rental.

“You rented this?” I asked. “It doesn’t look like a rental.”

He snuggled into the seat and started up the engine. “Oh, this is a…” he stuttered a bit. “My colleague in San Francisco let me drive the car down. No use in wasting money on a rental, right?”

“Oh…” I said.

He pulled out of the parking parking space and started down the main road before it hit me that it didn’t make any sense.

“So if your friend lives in San Francisco, how are you going to get his car back to him before you get back on a flight? I thought you were flying out of LA?”

“Oh, he scoffed and leaned his head back. “It’s complicated. I’ll park the car at the airport. He’s flying out of town and will just pick the car up on his return trip. I don’t want to bore you with all the details.”

“Okay,” I said. It still seemed a little far-fetched, but he didn’t have any reason to lie about the car, right? Unless he was a serial killer… But why would a serial killer waste time talking to me for 6 months and come all the way to LA to kill me? There were plenty of helpless girls in Florida he could take advantage of.

“So what do you want to eat? Anything in mind?”

“Anywhere is fine…”

“Well, since we’re in Anaheim, I know this restaurant that serves great seafood.”

“You’ve been to Anaheim before?”

Anaheim wasn’t the type of place that people outside of California would go to unless they were going to Disneyland or another
family
attraction. It was hardly the place I’d expect someone from the Southeast to have much restaurant knowledge about.

“Just a couple times, but I do know this place has good food.” He turned to me and our eyes locked on each other’s for a moment. “Is that okay?”

I suddenly felt like I was overthinking things. He was a business owner, and if he had friends in San Francisco, surely he had time to make a trip down to Southern California more than a few times. And his face was so kind and his words so gentle.

And there was something about those eyes…