Oleander - Bucky BarnesxOC

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: A HEATHEN CLUNG TO THE HOMILY

"Thank you. So are you." His eyes rake up and down her body. "I like that dress."

He bought her a shitload of new clothes today. Anything she wanted. Dahlia picked out a periwinkle blue sundress with thin straps and a pair of dark blue heels to match. Her hair is piled up on top of her head. James tosses his cigarette out the window, reaches over, and grasps her hand, kissing her knuckles. She smiles at him and stares out the window again.

"James?"

"Yeah."

"When's the last time you were in love?"

He takes a deep breath.

"A long time ago," he says softly.

"How long?"

"About ten years."

"Really?"

He nods.

"I was engaged."

She doesn't know why she feels jealousy bloom in the center of her chest. Dahlia feels a kind of possessiveness over James, like he was made just for her. She knows it's bullshit. He's had an entire life before he came into hers. He's ten years older than her, it makes sense that he would have had more experience, and possibly been engaged or even married before he met her.

"You were?"

He nods.

"What happened?"

"She wasn't really interested in being with me. She was interested in the money and the power that came along with being with me." He glances over at her. "And it wasn't exactly the kind of relationship that we have."

"What do you mean?"

James clears his throat.

"It was an arrangement. Her father wanted more territory and more power that I had control over. He was dying. Uh, lung cancer. And he wanted his little girl to take his place running his gang. I agreed to the marriage if I could absorb his assets." James shrugs. "It started out as more of a business venture and then... I fell in love with her over time. I thought she loved me, but she was just playing the long game, I guess."

Does James think she's going to do the same thing to him?

"Why did you break up?"

"Like I said—"

"No," Dahlia replies. "There had to be an inciting incident."

"She tried to poison me."

"What?!"

He nods.

"Slowly over time. She took pleasure in watching me get sicker and sicker. I was losing hair. I thought it was stress."

"How did she do it?" Dahlia asks.

"I used to have a drink every night when I came home from the office, and she started making it for me. It was an old fashioned with extra cherries. I didn't even think about the fact that she could do this to me. Steve was actually the one who caught her one night when he came over for dinner."

"How?" Dahlia asks softly.

"The poison was in her jacket. Thallium."

"I don't know what that is."

"It's a metal compound. Steve knew what it was immediately because he'd used it on someone else before. He also had the antidote."

"It doesn't just leave your body?"

James shakes his head.

"I had to take something called Prussian Blue. It was a few months before my hair grew back."