“And that was part of the reason I pushed you away at the final team event, because of the group of foster kids who were there. Those kids just—hit me right in the heart when I see them. As if I’m still one of them. Because I guess in a way, I am. I always will be.”
“I’m sorry.” Dylan kisses my hair and my cheeks. “If I had known—one of the little girls was so damn cute. She kept following me around, telling me she just wanted a mom and dad to go home to. Freaking broke my heart.”
I put my hand to his chest. “You’re making a difference. Any positive attention I got as a kid was like gold. It means everything to have that kind of reinforcement. And in spite of all of it, I still want the ‘normal life.’” I use air quotes because I’m well aware there’s no such thing as “normal,” no matter how many ways people want to say there is. “As much as I try to convince myself I don’t. I want to be a mother. I really do. Whether I get pregnant or choose to adopt an infant or an older child like me who had no home—I’m not sure how I want to do things yet.”
“I would be open to any of the above,” Dylan says in a quiet voice. “Even though I know you weren’t asking.”
I inhale. “You—would be? Open to adoption?”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
My stomach flutters with an unfamiliar emotion at his words, and I keep talking quickly. “But I don’t want to carry on all that crap—you know, abandonment issues and inability to parent.”
“You won’t.” Dylan kisses me again. “You’re in a completely different place than it sounds like your mother was when she had you.”
“Maybe. Except I still have that pain of having been unwanted,” I say. “I don’t want to pass that feeling down to my child.”
“Oh, you’re wanted,” Dylan says. “You’re very, very wanted.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Turns out I get sick. I stay in bed for three days with a high fever and cough. On the second day, Dylan calls in his team doctor, who’s still in town vacationing with his wife, and he checks me over carefully and then proclaims it’s just a viral flu and I’ll be fine in two days. Dylan stays with me the whole time, ordering soup from room service and getting us take-out dinners.
We play cards—Bullshit—when I’m feeling strong enough to be bored.
“Bullshit,” I say after he says he doesn’t have any fours.
“Why do you always say bullshit?” he complains. “Half the time I’m not even lying.”
“I’m not very trusting,” I tell him.
I lean into his solid chest and exhale. The fever has me talking more than normal, and I start rambling. “I started thinking about how I’ve never really had anyone to count on. Until I met you.”
Dylan rubs his hand in circles over my back. “You’ve definitely got me, baby.”
I shut my eyes tight, but a single tear squeezes out nonetheless. “You mean the world to me, Dylan. I’m not good at saying it, but…”
Dylan cradles me against his chest as he gathers up the cards and puts them over on the nightstand.
“Come on. Let’s go to bed. It will be better in the morning.”
I really am better in the morning. My fever’s finally gone.
“I feel amazing,” I say to Dylan. “I honestly forgot what it felt like to not be deliriously hot and weak.”
One side effect of feeling healthy again is that I remember the money burning a hole in my bank account, and I remember why it’s there. I can’t mask the pain that I know crosses my face when I think about my mission in coming to Tucson. “Um…”
Dylan’s gaze is steady on mine. “I know you aren’t sure what you’re going to do about your mother. I haven’t forgotten.”
I shift awkwardly on my feet.
“Do you want me to come with you?” he asks me.
I stare at him. “Would you do that?”
“Of course.”
I reach for his hand, and he tugs me into his chest.
“Thank you for offering. I think this is something I need to do on my own, though. And I’m not ready today. I need to do something to get my mind off of it, actually.”
He strokes my hair. “I understand. I have an idea, something that might help you to relax before you deal with that, but it would take up the whole day. Is that okay?”
“Um, sure. But I have to shower.”
“Great. You shower, and I’ll get things going out here.”
When I go into my bathroom bag, I realize my perfume bottle is empty.
I’ve never let this happen before. I haven’t gone a day without my mother’s perfume since I was fifteen years old. I can’t believe I allowed her essence to drain out before my eyes and didn’t catch it in time.
But I can’t do anything about it now. I’ll buy some later, as soon as we figure out our plans.
When I come out of the bathroom, Dylan is in the room with a bellhop and a luggage cart.
“What’s going on?” I ask him.
Dylan grins. “We’re going to L.A., baby.”
I look around. Our bags are packed, and the bellhop is beginning to pile them onto the cart.
“We are?”
But that goes against our plan to never leave Tucson.
Dylan reads my mind. “The beauty of my plan is this: we fly to L.A. for the day. I’ve got a private plane, so we’ll fly back and spend tonight back here at the hotel.”
“You have a plane-?” I can’t even register this.
“Brilliant, huh?” He grabs me in a hug. “This way, I can see where you live, and we’ll visit my Malibu beach house later.”
Malibu beach house? So he has more than one home in Los Angeles.
“Well, this should make our lives seem all the more similar.” I playfully tap his chest.
“It’ll be a blast.” He picks me up and flips me over his shoulder so that I’m hanging upside-down. “I’ll carry you.”
“Dylan, put me down!”
I laugh for the first time in days.
L.A., here we come.
“Do you want to play a game?” Dylan asks me as the plane levels off. “I’ve got a bunch on my phone.”
I shake my head. Going back to L.A. with Dylan feels like a pretty dumb idea right now. I texted Rosita to warn her, but thank God today’s her day to visit her niece in Covina so she’ll be gone most of the day.
“I can’t believe you talked me into this,” I say.
“Didn’t feel like I needed to do much convincing,” he argues.
“Once you see where I live, you’ll understand why this would never work between us long-term,” I say.
Dylan just looks back at me calmly. He doesn’t have to say anything for me to know he was prepared for my freak-out.
“First of all, I have cats,” I say. “Two cats! And they’re big pains—Bessie and Balaster hate almost everyone.”
Dylan’s warm brown eyes twinkle.
“Second of all,” I continue without taking the time to exhale. “My place is a mess. A big, hairy mess. The state of a living space tells a lot about a person you know. So, you can guess what my place says about me.”
Dylan raises his eyebrows.
“It says I’m a mess!” I say. “Get it? You can do so much better than me, Dylan. I promise you that.”
He stands up. “I’m going to get a drink. You want anything while I’m up?”
I shake my head. “Why are you ignoring me? I’m telling you important stuff here.”
“Oh, really? Sounds more like you’re trying to convince yourself of something. Because you haven’t deterred me at all. Not in the slightest.”
I slouch down in my seat, pull my legs up to my chest, and wrap my arms around them.
“Let’s go to your place first,” Dylan says once we’ve landed safely and settled into a cab. “I want to see these cats of yours. And your sty of a home, of course.”
“Fine. If we must.”
Might as well get it over with. I never really cared about the cat hair in my ap
artment before, but I do now. And Rosita tends to leave chips around after she’s visited. Great.
When we pull up to my building, I jump out with my suitcase after handing Dylan a bunch of bills. “I’ll see you up there, okay? It’s apartment 205.”
“Um…” He tries to give me back the money, but the cab driver is waiting, and I move away too quickly for him to reach me. “Okay.”
I jog up the outdoor stairwell to my second floor apartment and hurriedly unlock the door. Once I’m inside, I drop my suitcase and race through the apartment, grabbing any errant clothes as I go. I throw what I can into my hamper and then begin on food left by Rosita and really obvious hairballs. “Bessie! Balaster! Where are you?”
I find my two cats under the bed, most likely hiding from Rosita’s constant visits.
“Hey, guys,” I say softly.
They come out and rub up against me. “I missed you so much!” I hug them to me tightly and bury my face in Bessie’s fur. “Someone will be joining us in a minute. A new friend of mine. I hope you like him.”
I stroke their fur and try to catch my breath.
“Hey.” Dylan appears in the doorway.
“Hey! That was fast!”
“So, these are Bessie and Balaster.” Dylan kneels down. “Hey, guys.”
Both cats eye Dylan with great suspicion. They haven’t approved of any man I’ve dated, including Joel. Maybe especially Joel.
Dylan is patient, though. He sits quietly and waits for them to come to him. And eventually, they do.
Bessie’s first. She approaches him gingerly and shyly puts one paw up on his leg. He doesn’t move. Feeling more emboldened, she rubs her body against his knee. He reaches out and touches her gently. She arches her back for more.
I exhale. “She likes you. And she’s the leader. So you’re automatically in with Balaster.”
“Oh, yeah?” Dylan scratches Bessie behind her ears. “Cool.”
I keep Balaster in my lap, and Dylan coaxes Bessie into his.
“They don’t like men,” I admit. “So this is kind of…a big deal.”
Dylan’s eyes lock with mine. “It’s a big deal to me, too.”
“Oh, my God.” My hand goes to my mouth in astonishment as I step out of the cab onto the stone-covered driveway of Dylan’s home in Malibu. His beautiful driveway looks like you could eat off of it.
“Your driveway’s cleaner than my kitchen,” I say to him.
He puts his arm around me. “Come on. I’ll show you around.”
“Will that take two tour guides or three?” I joke.
Dylan just hugs me tighter to him and leads me up to the house.
His home sits ocean-side up on the cliffs. The property is high above the water, but it still has amazing views of the sea and the mountains in the distance. He shows me through the four bedrooms, three and a half bathrooms, an unbelievable kitchen with two stoves and an island, and a living room with floor-to-ceiling windows that look out on the Pacific Ocean below. I’m so overwhelmed I hardly know what to do with myself.
“Your place is amazing,” I say to him as we stand on the outdoor patio off his living room. “I can’t believe this is just your second home.”
But despite how massive the place is, it’s actually homey-feeling and warm, too. I love it. In an I-could-live-here kind of way. I felt it from the moment I stepped inside the foyer, and that feeling followed me through every room in the house.
“Me neither. I just bought it a few months ago. I’ve hardly slept in it.” Dylan pauses and furrows his brow. “In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever slept here.”
“Why don’t you move here, and get rid of your place downtown?” I ask him.
“The apartment is more convenient to work. When I finish practice, I don’t want to be driving here in rush hour. Colt lives in Malibu, though, just up the road from here, and he doesn’t mind the commute. So it may not be as bad as I’ve convinced myself it would be.”
I look down at the ocean below. It’s an unusually hot February day in Los Angeles. The sun is shining brightly, making the ocean shimmer in the light, and the breeze is minimal. Impulsively, I take off my shirt.
Dylan’s lips part. “Did I miss something? Like a come-on line?”
“Nope. I want to get a suntan.” I grab his sunglasses off his head, put them over my eyes, and lie down in one of his numerous lounge chairs.
Dylan sits in the chair next to me and takes his shirt off. “Do you want company?”
“Of course. The sun’s here for all of us.”
He lies back. After about a minute, I feel his hand touching mine. I look over.
“Is it okay for me to tell you I’m glad we’re here together or will that freak you out?”
I smile at him. “No, silly. I’m glad, too. This has been fun. Funner than I thought it would be.”
“Funner? Is that a word?”
“It is now.” I grab his hand back and hold it tightly.
He looks at me so intensely my heart jumps. “Jasalie, I love you.”
Say it back to him, you fool. Say it. Three damn words. Just freaking say them.
My throat constricts, and I start to cough, and hack, and practically gag.
“You still sick?” Dylan hands me his water bottle.
I spend the next minute sipping the water. When I’m done, I hand the bottle back to him and manage a smile. “Yeah, I guess so. I’ll just rest a while.”
Before he can answer me, his cell phone rings. Assuming it will be one of his teammates, I lean back on the chaise lounge and close my eyes.
“Oh, hi.”
I hear him get up and leave the patio and then shut the living room door for privacy.
My pulse picks up.
What if it’s some woman he didn’t tell me about?
When Dylan comes out a short while later, he gives me a kiss. “So my dad called.”
I freeze.
“Yeah, I figured this might be an issue.” Dylan starts talking very fast like that will help to keep me from bolting. “Look, my parents are going to be in town this afternoon for his shoe business. My brother will be there, too. He works for my dad.”
I think I may black out.
“I said you and I would maybe meet them for a picnic.”
There they are.
Those two dreaded words I was waiting for.
Meet them.
I stay still, very still, almost like if I appear invisible, Dylan will forget I’m here, and he’ll just leave without me.
“Just a picnic,” he says. “We’ll drive to the park on the cliffs overlooking the water, eat, then drive back. Sound okay?”
I pull off his sunglasses and look at him. “You mean we’ll be done early enough to fly to Tucson tonight?”
“I don’t see why not. I mean it’s hard with family…”
I know that. “So family counts in our deal?”
He fidgets. “I guess not. I guess it can’t. We don’t always have the power we want to over our families. At least I don’t.”
I wouldn’t care to wager what kind of power I ever had over either my mother or father. I’d say less than zero.
“Are you willing to give it a try anyway?” Dylan leans in and kisses me.
I put my arms around him, and he holds me close.
My curiosity gets the better of me. “Sure. We’ll meet them.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I‘ve changed my outfit three times in the last half hour. Luckily, I’d repacked my suitcase at my apartment with a fresh set of clothes, but a “meet the parents” outfit wasn’t on my checklist. By the time Dylan returns from his beach run, I’m standing in his bedroom in a bra and skirt.
“You ready?” he jokes.
“Yes. I think I’ll seduce them. Or better yet, let them all think I’m a whore. That should get me points.”
“You always look beautiful.” He gives me a kiss. “Anything will look great.”
He heads into the shower, and I continue
staring into the massive mirror inside his walk-in closet.
Fifteen minutes later, when Dylan comes out of the bathroom with damp hair and only a towel around his waist, I decide my sick-time is definitely over. I walk over to him and run my hands down his bare chest. Then I pull the towel off him. He brings me against him and puts his mouth over mine. His impressive erection presses into my belly, and I cry out.
“I’ve missed you,” he says into my tongue. “Missed being naked with you.”
“It’s been a long few days,” I whisper as he pulls my bra straps off my shoulders, and my breasts pop free.
Dylan groans and puts his mouth on my left nipple. When he sucks on it hard, my knees turn to jelly. He backs me up to his California king bed until I’m seated on the edge. Then he pushes my skirt up to my waist.
“Christ.” He stares between my legs. “You’re not wearing any underwear?”
I shrug. “I never do with this skirt. It shows panty lines really badly.”
“Sweetheart, I will not be able to sit next to you at this picnic and know you’re naked under there.”
He puts one finger gently inside me, and I gasp.
“Dylan, shit. Why are you so damn good at that?”
He chuckles and pushes his finger in further. I moan and lean back on my elbows as I spread my legs more.
“Jasalie, you’re so beautiful.” Dylan’s voice is guttural. “God, I could look at you forever. I could make love to you forever, and I can’t believe I haven’t tasted…”
He kneels down like he’s going to touch me there with his…
Oh, no. Not that.
“I’m on the pill,” I burst out with the one thing I’ve been wanting to say for a while now.
Dylan’s dark eyes go positively liquid as he puts both hands on my waist and jerks his head up to meet my gaze.
“And I know you’re a professional athlete, so I don’t want to sound like a naïve schoolgirl or something,” I ramble. “But I was tested recently, a couple weeks before I left for Tucson, and I’m clean.”
Dylan’s expression turns serious. “I’m clean, too. I was tested after we won the championship, at my year-end physical. And I haven’t been with anyone since. Not until you.”
Dylan (Wild Men) Page 20
