“I remember finding all those letters.” She clucks her tongue, her words drifting into silence. “You wrote him hundreds of letters. It was the sweetest thing.”
“Whatever happened to those anyway?”
“I sent them.”
I stop in my tracks, nearly causing the man on the sidewalk behind me to pummel into me. He utters a string of swear words and sidesteps me.
“You sent them ... where?” I ask.
“I mailed them to Bryce.”
“Oh, god. When?”
“Oh, it must have been five, six years ago.” She chuckles.
“Why would you do that?” I swear, I love my mom, but I’ve yet to encounter a single person on this planet as random and ridiculous as she is.
“It was after his father had passed,” she says. “I sent him a letter about you. I gave him all your contact information. Photos. Your name and birthdate. I told him like it or not, he had a sister, and that he was doing himself a huge disservice by leaving you out of his life. And then I included the letters because I felt they chronicled one of the hardest years of your life, and I wanted him to see the effect he had on you.”
These letters were all written after his initial rejection of me. Some of the letters even addressed that rejection. But at the close of each one, I always signed it, “I love you anyway. Your sister, Ayla.”
So this must be how he knew my full name and date of birth, but it still doesn’t explain why he left me his life insurance money.
My eyes mist, and for the first time in my life, I think he might not have hated me as much as I believed he did.
Sadness sinks into me like a heavy weight, and I find it harder and harder to trudge back to Bryce’s apartment knowing what I now know.
I need to get out of town for a while, even if it’s a few days.
“I’ll let you know about the flights, okay, Mom?” I say, my thumb hovering over the red button on my phone screen as I pull it away from my ear. My voice is breaking, and I don’t want her to hear it. I don’t wait for her response. I end the call and I amble back to the apartment, and as soon as I arrive, I book the first trip I can find that isn’t two thousand dollars.
It leaves on Tuesday.
18
Rhett
“You have a good weekend?” I call Ayla first thing Monday morning. After everything that happened Friday night, I decided to give her a little bit of space. Hell, I needed it too.
“Yeah.”
“Do anything fun?”
I’m trying here. I’m trying to show an interest, just like she asked, but talking to her this morning is like pulling teeth.
“Not really.” She sighs. “Just worked.”
“You want to let me go? You seem distracted.”
“I’m packing.”
“Where’re you going?”
“Back home.”
“Home?”
“LA,” she clarifies.
I take a seat on the sofa, sinking back. “I thought you lived in the city.”
“I’m just visiting,” she says.
Good to know.
“For how long?” I ask.
“Not sure. Taking care of some things for someone. I could stay until the end of the year. Just depends on when I’m done.”
Now I’m almost regretting the intentional distance I’ve placed between us from the start. Who is this woman? What is she doing? And why the hell is she being so vague all of a sudden?
“You want to come over later?” I ask.
“I’d love to, but I have a meeting this afternoon, and then my flight leaves first thing in the morning,” she says, the sound of a zipper pulling filling the background.
“Then I’ll come to you.”
“No,” she replies almost immediately. “Anyway, I have to go.”
And now I’m intrigued.
19
Ayla
“Ayla?” A dark-haired man in a charcoal three-piece suit steps out of an office suite Monday afternoon, extending his right hand. His wrist is adorned with a gold Rolex and his cologne smells like money, but he has kind, emerald eyes that crinkle when he smiles so I decide to stop judging him then and there. “Liam Greenbrier. Nice to meet you. Come on back.”
Liam leads us down a long hallway filled with oil paintings and then through a set of cherry double doors where he points toward his desk and tells me to take a seat. A manila folder rests on top, and he flips it open, revealing a small stack of typed documents.
“I’m sorry about your brother,” Liam says, expression growing somber as he pages through the papers. “He was a good client of mine. Got me season tickets every Christmas.”
Interesting. So he was a generous asshole.
“Never said much. Man of few words,” he says. “You probably already know that. Anyway.” Liam reaches across the table, stapled forms in his hand. “These are your copies of your brother’s last will and testament.”
I pour over the first page, everything neatly typed and double-spaced, filled with legal jargon and formalities. It’s a very straightforward will from what I see so far. Two, maybe three pages long including the list of assets on the last sheet.
My eyes scan the pages one last time because I feel like I wasn’t actually reading the words as much as I was going through the motions, and then I stop when I see my name—and the number beside it.
With trembling fingers grazing my lower lip, I glance across the desk at Liam.
“He left this ... to me?” I ask.
Liam nods.
“That’s a lot of zeroes,” I whisper, reading the number over and over again. “Are you sure?”
“Now this is only liquid assets,” he says. “Once you go through the remainder of his estate, there could be more.”
“More?” I’m half laughing. This feels like a joke. It can’t be real.
Liam squints at me like I’m crazy. I think I’m making him uncomfortable, but I can’t help the way I’m reacting. It isn’t every day that someone drops twenty-two million dollars in your lap and tells you there’s more where that came from.
“A couple things,” he says. “If you’ll notice beside your name, it says forty percent.”
“Okay.”
He flips to the second page, and my eyes land on some lines I must have missed earlier.
Oh, god.
“Bryce designated twenty percent of his estate to a small group of people. His landlord. His physical therapist. His cleaning lady. A couple of others. And forty percent of his estate is designated to one other person,” he says. I already know where he’s going with this. “My secretary’s been reaching out to him for weeks. She’s left several messages with his assistant, telling him it’s an urgent matter in regards to Bryce Renner’s estate, but he’s yet to return our calls.”
“Oh?” My heart trots in my chest. I know where he’s going with this as well.
“You wouldn’t happen to know Rhett Carson, would you?”
My jaw hangs. I don’t know how to answer.
I don’t know how to answer his question without making myself seem like some heartless, selfish weirdo, and maybe that’s a sign that I should’ve put a stop to this a long time ago.
“If he knows you, maybe you could reach out to him?” Liam asks. “I’m familiar with what happened. I imagine he wants nothing to do with Bryce, but legally, he’s entitled to twenty-two million dollars of Bryce’s estate. If he doesn’t want it, it’d default to you since you’re his next of kin.”
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” I say, “me contacting him.”
Or me getting another twenty-two mil …
Liam swipes his hand in the air. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have asked; I just didn’t know if maybe you knew each other personally. Anyway, we’ll be sending him a letter soon if we haven’t already.” He sits up in his chair, buttoning his suit jacket. “Oh. One more thing before I forget.”
He hunches over the folder, rifling through the pape
rs in the back and retrieving two white envelopes.
One bears my name, the other bears Rhett’s.
He hands me mine. “In the instance of Bryce’s passing, we were instructed to give you each these letters.”
My hand clutches the envelope, and I press it against my chest. To think that my brother sat down with a paper and pen and wrote a letter to me—it overwhelms me like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. I need to take a second to catch my breath and fight the rush of tears threatening to cloud my vision.
My nose runs, and I want to smile. Liam hands me a tissue.
“Here’s my card.” He retrieves a business card from a shiny silver rack on his desk a moment later, sliding it across the wooden surface. I pull in a deep breath and stack it with my letter from Bryce and the papers that declare I’m officially a multi-millionaire.
I’d trade it all for a shot at what we could’ve had though. I’d give it all away if we could go back, if I could meet Bryce … if he could give me a chance.
“I’ll be in contact with you shortly with all the specifics,” he says. “If you want to arrange an estate planning meeting for yourself, that’s something I can help you with, though it says here that you’re from California, so you’ll probably want to consult someone back home. Just keep me in the loop, and we’ll do everything we can to help settle this for you.”
“Thank you.” I rise, gathering my things, and folding the papers neatly before placing them in my bag. It isn’t until I’m fumbling with the zipper that I realize I haven’t stopped shaking.
Liam walks me to the elevator, apologizes for my loss once again, and tells me to call him if I have any additional questions.
I blink and I’m outside strolling down the sidewalk.
I blink again and I’m past the coffee shop on the corner.
I blink a third time, and I’m halfway across town, headed toward Rhett’s.
20
Rhett
“If a good person does a bad thing but had good intentions, does that make them a bad person?” Ayla stands on the other side of my door this afternoon. Her hazel eyes are glassy, and she chews the inside of her lower lip. Before I have a chance to answer, she pushes past me, showing herself in and dropping her bag on my counter.
“Hello to you, too.”
“Just answer my question.”
I rake my palm along my jaw, studying her.
She did something. I can tell. It explains why she’s pulling away and being short with me lately. But the question isn’t what she did, it’s do I really want to know?
“I need context,” I say.
Her arms fold. “I can’t give you context.”
“Then I can’t give you my answer.”
She exhales, her lips slightly pouty as she stares at my feet.
“Ayla, relax.” I go to her, sliding my hands down her arms until they stop at her waist, and then I pull her body against mine. Tasting her lips, I inhale her soft scent. Just being with her quiets the storm in my mind, and I’ve missed this so much. “You want a drink?”
“It’s three o’clock.”
“Your point?”
She hesitates. “Yes.”
I go to the fridge and grab her a beer, twisting the cap and tossing it in the sink before handing over the brown bottle. She chugs drink after drink, letting it slosh around before bringing it to her lips all over again.
“Come on.” I take the beer from her clenched fist and sit it aside before lifting her onto the counter. Her legs straddle my hips as our eyes meet, and I reach for the buttons of her jeans before working them down her hips and yanking them off her thighs.
“We can’t keep doing this,” she says.
“Doing what?”
“Distracting ourselves with sex,” she answers.
“That’s the entire point.” I slip a finger beneath the waistband of her panties, sliding it between her folds, aided by the slickness of her arousal. God, all I have to do is look at her and she’s wet, and that turns me on like nothing else has ever turned me on before.
“Oh, god,” she says with a hitch in her breath when I plunge two fingers deep inside. Her eyes squeeze and her head rolls to the side while I drive my fingers in and out with steady friction. Reaching for my shoulder, she braces herself against me.
“That’s what I thought.” I slide her panties off completely before spreading her thighs apart and feasting my eyes on her gorgeous pussy. Lowering my mouth to her perfect mound, I taste her. Soft strokes, then hard. I slip a finger inside, dragging my tongue along her seam then circling her swollen clit.
Ayla leans back, resting on her elbows with her head hanging limp between her shoulders. I devour her pussy, pulling her lips between my teeth before letting them go, alternating unrestrained with gentle, soft with hard, and fast with slow. I stay down there for ages, going harder and faster when I hear her breath grow jagged. When her hand reaches for my hair, grabbing a fistful, and her hips buck against my mouth, I know she’s almost there.
“Come on my mouth,” I whisper, my breath hot against her pussy. “Just let yourself go.”
Her hips buck and writhe as my fingers push deeper inside her, curling and stroking against her g-spot as my tongue laps her arousal and flicks her sensitive crux.
Ayla releases a harbored moan, pulling my hair, and her body tightens before it releases. When it’s over, she’s limp and lifeless, her body melting into the cool marble counter like a spent sex kitten.
I give her a second before helping her up, and with wobbly legs she slips her jeans and panties back on.
Sliding the beer in her direction, I head to the fridge and grab one for myself. I’d ask her to return the favor because I’m hard as a goddamn fucking rock right now, but she seems a little out of it.
Ayla climbs onto one of the bar stools, taking a small sip, her eyes dancing nervously between mine and the bottle before her.
“What?” I ask.
“I was just thinking ...” her voice dwindles. “I’m going to miss this.”
“Of course you are. It’s fucking amazing.” I twist the cap off my beer.
“I don’t just mean the sex,” she says. “I mean… I don’t know. I don’t know how to say this without sounding like I’m in love with you or something.”
My heart freezes, and our eyes lock. She shouldn’t have said that. Why the fuck did she just say that?
She places a palm toward me, defensive.
“I’m not in love with you, let me make that clear,” she says, sitting up tall. “I just mean, someday, I’m going to miss this. I’m going to miss what we had, and I’ll probably even miss what we’ll never have.”
“What we had?” I scoff. “Ayla, we don’t have anything. We have sex. That’s it.”
“I’m not making myself clear.”
“Who the hell are you?” My forehead wrinkles, and I take another swig. I need it. “You’ve been different lately.”
“Don’t you think it’s kind of sad that we have all this chemistry and we’re so good together—physically—but we can’t even have a regular conversation like two regular people?” she asks. “Every time I so much as hint at taking our conversations in a deeper direction, you deflect. You change the subject.”
“I hadn’t noticed.” I take a bigger drink.
Ayla places her hand over her heart. “You’re so closed off. You’re cold. Emotionally, you’re cold. And I worry about you.”
“Don’t waste your time. I’ll be fine.”
“Will you?” she asks.
I don’t answer.
“Maybe you don’t want happiness with me,” she says. “Maybe you don’t want anything with me, and that’s fine. You shouldn’t. We’re all kinds of wrong for each other in ways you couldn’t even imagine because you won’t let me tell you a damn thing about myself, but I digress.”
I roll my eyes. “No clue what you’re talking about.”
“That’s exactly the problem.” She rises off the ba
r stool, walking toward me. When she reaches her destination, she cups her soft hand against my tense jaw, her eyes gently narrowing. “I just hope someday you get what you need.”
“You sound like my …” I stop myself, refraining from bring up Irena because then Ayla might ask questions, and I don’t want to have to explain anything.
“Are you afraid of getting hurt?” she asks.
“Afraid?” I chuckle before taking another drink, then I leave the tight space we share, heading to the sofa in the living room. She follows. “Wait a sec. You showed up here acting all weird, and now you’re turning everything around on me. Do yourself a favor and don’t waste your time trying to psychoanalyze me.”
“I’m not trying to psychoanalyze you. I just wish—” she stops herself, sinking into the sofa beside me. She’s close enough that she could touch me if she wanted, but she keeps her hands to herself, bathing me in nothing but a sympathetic gaze.
Now it’s all starting to make sense. She saw the photos of Damiana and probably took it upon herself to conduct a little background research, and I’m sure she’s drawn some kind of conclusion that couldn’t be further from the truth.
“So you read some articles about me and now you think you know everything.” I exhale, staring forward at a lifeless fireplace. “And on top of thinking you know everything, now you feel sorry for me.”
“What happened to you is a matter of public record, but no, I didn’t go digging up anything,” she says. “And I don’t feel sorry for you, Rhett.”
“Good. That makes two of us.”
“Your situation is none of my business, and I’m sure you’re using me to distract yourself from any real emotions,” she says. “But I find it concerning that you won’t have an actual conversation with me. That’s all I’m trying to say.”
“For a writer, it sure takes you a hell of a long time to get to the point,” I say, huffing.
“You make me tongue-tied. And sometimes my thoughts don’t make sense when I think about you,” she says. “And on top of that, I always feel like I’m walking on eggshells around you, like I’m two seconds from saying the wrong thing that’s going to completely flip this bizarre dynamic we have.”
Cold Hearted Page 10
