But yet that just happened.
With Harris.
With Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome, Mr. Strong and Silent, Mr. Cool as a Cucumber in Any Situation, Mr. I Can Kill a Man Without Flinching.
I exchanged a glance with Roth as he lifted me out of the skiff.
"What the hell did I just see?" he whispered.
I could only shake my head. "Fuck if I know, babe."
*
The house was incredible. Roth had arranged it, so of course it was. But...incredible barely describes it. It was only one floor, but it sprawled out to cover over fifteen thousand square feet, carefully crafted to make the most of the views, perched on a slight rise that looked out over the Caribbean, each room facing the water on one side and the forest on the other. The kitchen was the centerpiece, taking up the entire width of the building, connected in an open floor plan to a sitting room and a dining room. All four exterior walls of the building were folding glass doors that could be pushed open from corner to corner, making it totally open to the salt-scented breeze and the soothing sound of the surf in the distance. To the left and the right, walkways made of what looked to be reclaimed driftwood meandered away, leading to freestanding bedrooms each with an en suite bathroom--which included cleverly hidden outdoor showers. There were six bedrooms in total, three to the left of the kitchen and three to the right, arranged in a semi-circle around the main structure and connected by the same driftwood path to the kitchen, to each other, and to another large structure opposite the kitchen.
The secondary building held a movie theater, a gym, a wine cellar, and a small library. Each room occupied an outer quadrant, with another sitting room at the center. Every exterior wall of the entire home could be slid open from corner to corner, even the movie theater, which used glass that could be electronically tinted to block out the light so one could watch a movie during the day.
In the center of the property was a swimming pool lined on one side by a tiki-hut bar and lounge chairs on the other. The courtyard also held a fire pit surrounded by semi-circular couches, and an outdoor kitchen--a grill, a pizza oven, an induction range top, and a built-in under-the-counter refrigerator.
Roth took us all on a tour, pointing out all the various features. Even Layla seemed excited by the place. We ended the tour in the kitchen, sharing a bottle of white wine. "All the bedrooms are equal, in terms of size and amenities," Roth said. "So it doesn't matter which one you pick."
"When you said you had a place in Turks and Caicos, I wasn't expecting this," I said. "Why haven't we come here before?"
Roth lifted one shoulder. "It's brand new; I had it custom built. This is the first time I've been here myself."
I tilted my head. "But you said--"
"I did have a place in the islands, but I sold that several months ago," he explained.
"Why?"
He glanced at Layla, and then Harris. "Would you excuse us?"
Harris put a hand--just three fingertips of his right hand--to Layla's lower back, and subtly but effectively guided her out of the room.
When we were alone, Roth returned his attention to me and sighed. "Lots of reasons. First and most importantly, I was on record as the owner. I bought it during a time when I hadn't heard from Vitaly in many, many years. I'd hoped he'd forgotten about me. I assumed he had, I guess, so I figured it was safe to own property in my own name. I sold it, knowing I'd never want to go there again, because he could easily find us there. When I built this place, I purchased the land and hired the contractors through a series of false corporations, which I dissolved after the construction was complete. It's inaccessible except by water, and it's owned by a company that can't be traced back to me."
There was something he wasn't saying. "Roth." My tone of voice was all I needed.
"My previous property in these islands was a getaway. It wasn't a home, but more of a private resort, I guess you could say. When I needed time away from the chaos of Manhattan, I would retreat there."
I read between the lines. "But you weren't alone, is that what you are saying?"
He nodded. "Precisely. Not alone."
I swirled wine around the bowl of my goblet. "Explain."
"Why?" he demanded. "Surely you understand without needing a detailed explanation."
"You know every last detail of my life, every guy I dated or slept with, absolutely everything. I, on the other hand, know little or nothing about your past, romantically speaking."
He nodded, letting out a sigh of acquiescence. "True enough, I suppose. This requires more wine, however." He reached under the island in the middle of the kitchen where there was a wine refrigerator, and withdrew another bottle of chilled white wine, opened it, and refilled both of our glasses. "The first thing you need to know is that I don't have a romantic past. The only woman I would claim any sort of romantic attachment to would be Gina, and you know about her."
"But there were other women?"
He shrugged. "Of course. Many. But none of them held any real meaning." He glanced at me. "Do you remember our first conversation about the difference between sex, making love, and fucking?"
I nodded. "I remember the conversation, yes." I thought back. "You said something about how all of your previous sexual partners were--how did you put it?--carefully chosen for their willingness and discretion? There was something about a contract, too, I believe."
He nodded, taking a long pull on his wine. "Correct. I didn't have girlfriends, or fuck buddies, or anything like that. I would choose a woman, bring her to my office, explain the contract to her, have her sign an NDA regardless, and then if she was agreeable to the arrangement, she would sign the contract."
"I have so many questions, babe," I said. "Like, how did you find them? How did you choose them? And what was the contract?"
Roth hesitated. Or, rather, took a long moment to consider his response. "They were not prostitutes or escorts, which I know is what you're thinking. They were mostly employees of the corporation, or one of the subsidiaries. Never anyone that worked in the tower itself, never anyone who might accidentally come in contact with me on a day-to-day basis. I perused the employee dossier registry, if you want total honesty. They were chosen primarily for their looks. Every employee of VRI Incorporated, as part of the hiring process, was required to take a basic psychological profile test, males and females, no exceptions. I had an assistant who would comb through the list of single female employees and create a file of potential candidates, which I would look through and choose a girl based on a criteria of looks and psychological willingness to participate in the arrangement I had in mind. Not every female employed by VRI fit that bill."
I frowned. "Jesus, Roth. That's...very...I don't even know. Logical. Mechanical."
He just nodded. "Well, yes. Of course. That's the idea, after all. It wasn't about a connection, or about romance, or seduction, even. It was about meeting a physical need. So, I would have the individual brought to my office, and I would lay the proposal out for her, which was very simple, actually."
This system just seemed so...odd. So calculated, so cold, so utterly logical. Choosing a sexual partner isn't a logical thing, it's a chemical thing. Attraction, lust, need, desire. Not psychologically profiling someone to filter out the attachment-prone. Not sorting through a roster of potential candidates and choosing the most suitable among them. Was I disgusted? Sad that he was so closed off, that this system of his was all he was capable of? Glad that he kept himself so aloof, because it meant I got to have you for myself?
A little of all of the above, I think.
I was quiet for a long moment, trying to sort through my feelings. "I don't know what to think, Valentine," I said, eventually.
"It was a long time ago. When I decided I had to have you, I stopped all that. When I brought you to my home, I hadn't touched anyone else in...months. Nearly a year. And you were the one and only woman to ever enter my home."
"So you just...used them for sex, and that was it."
"It just...I don't like it."
"Why?"
I shrugged miserably. "You're mine."
"I am now, yes."
"I don't like the thought of you just...casually fucking other women. You didn't just have a fuckpad and a little black book, Roth, you had a goddamn system. An entire roster of fuckable employees, and a fuck-resort you took them to.." I stepped back, walking over to the covered deck circling the building. "God. I'm...I don't know. I wish I hadn't asked."
He moved to stand behind me. "Kyrie, love. I will never lie to you. That's why I told you. That was the truth. That was my life. Am I proud of it, now? No. It was all I was capable of, then. After Gina, I just...shut down. I wanted nothing to do with an emotional connection. I thought I loved her, but she turned on me. Controlled me, used me, tried to have me killed. Tried to own me. I wanted, after I'd gotten away from her and her father and that whole lifestyle--I wanted something I could control. Something easy, no strings attached, simple."
"I get that," I said. "And I don't...I guess I don't hold it against you. Like, I'm not mad. I just...I don't know. I knew going in that you'd had other sexual partners. But the reality of it, hearing your whole system..." I shrugged again. "I'm just jealous, I guess."
"They weren't partners, Kyrie. It was just sex. Nothing else--maybe that only makes it worse, I don't know. It doesn't lessen your right to jealousy, though. Or mine." He turned me around, and his eyes were intense, but warm, the eyes of my Valentine once more. "You think I'm not jealous of your exes? I hate all of them for getting you before I did. I hate the thought of anyone else putting their hands on you. It makes me sick to my stomach just to think about it."
I sighed and pressed my forehead to his chest. "There weren't that many of them, though."
"So? Is that supposed to make it better, somehow? You're mine. All mine. Whether it was one man or a hundred, I hate the idea of anyone ever having any part of you." He touched my chin and lifted my face. "But at the same time, I know that each of our respective experiences led us together. Your past makes you who you are, just as mine makes me who I am. And...it's hard to put this into words." He paused to think, and then continued. "In a way, I'm glad we didn't meet each other as virgins. I want all of you, forever. But...that you had experience before you met me...it meant you knew what you wanted, what you liked, it meant you knew what to do with me. And my past meant I could make you mine, it meant I knew exactly what to do with you, how to make you scream, how to make you need me."
"I never thought of it that way," I admitted, resting my cheek on his broad, hard pectoral.
"Regardless of jealousy or our pasts, how we feel about any of it...there's nothing we can do about it, is there? We're here, and what happened, happened. We each have the right to our feelings, to be upset or angry or jealous. But the real question is, what are we going to do about it? Will it change our present together? Our future? Does knowing how I chose which women to engage in sex with before I met you change how you feel about me right now?" He brushed his hand down my back, smoothing and scratching over my shirt.
I shook my head against his chest. "No, it doesn't."
"Good." He was silent for a moment, and then tilted my chin up so I had to look at him. "And to be totally honest, I sold the...fuckpad...as you called it, precisely because I didn't want to be anywhere with you that I'd been with anyone else. I want us to make new memories together, in a place that's totally ours."
"That makes me feel a bit better," I said. "I do have one potentially stupid question."
"What's that, love?" He sounded resigned, and slightly amused.
"You never felt anything for any of them?"
He was quiet for a moment. "Hmmm. That's not what I thought you were going to ask."
"What were you expecting?"
He hesitated. "A number."
"I don't think I want to know the number."
"Probably not," he agreed.
I didn't even like that answer, as vague as it was.
"No, I never felt anything for any of them. I didn't let myself. I...I didn't let them get close to me, see the real me, and I didn't try to get to know them. I didn't want to."
"Did it ever backfire, the proposal? The contractual casualness of it?"
"Yes. More than once. If they got clingy, started asking too many questions, demanding things that smacked of intimacy, if they got too personal, I'd send them home. That happened...not frequently, but more than I liked. I suppose it was inevitable. This is going to make me sound like an ass, but I'm going to say it anyway: if you present women with the unobtainable, a mysterious man, however unapproachable, however cold or distant, however clearly he may make his intentions, there will always be those who try to...get him. Change him. Make him hers. Someone will always think she's different." There was truth in his words, and in his preface to the statement.
"And me?" I asked.
"You didn't try, Kyrie. You tried not to. You were you; you played by the rules and just tried to get through it with your own heart intact. But...you were different from the beginning. It was always different between us. I tried to convince myself otherwise, but it was in vain." He tilted my face up again. Kissed me slowly, gently. "Can we be done rehashing the past, Kyrie? Please? I don't like to think of that any more than you do. That's not why were here; we're here for the future--our future together. Let's just focus on that, all right?"
I nodded, reached up and clung to his neck. "I like that plan."
"Me too."
5
LAYLA, THE NOPE-FISH
I found Layla by the pool, lying in a lounge chair, clad in a neon-orange bikini that would have fit in a Tic-Tac box with room to spare. God, I loved her, but she dressed like a skank sometimes. She had huge round bug-eye Audrey Hepburn shades on her face and her hair pulled up in a sloppy knot.
I had a glass of sweet white wine in each hand, and I extended one to her as I took the lounge chair beside her.
She accepted it, took a sip. "If you gotta be exiled from everything you know...this is the way to do it."
"Right? Roth has amazing taste."
"This place is awesome. I could hang out here for a minute." She still wasn't looking at me.
"Layla."
"I'm enjoying the sunshine and this really tasty wine. I don't want to get into it."
"Dude."
She swiveled her head on the chair back. "Don't 'dude' me, Key. It's fine. I'm fine. Everything's fine."
"I'm a woman too, Layla. You can't fool me with the 'it's fine' bullshit."
She laughed at that. "Okay, well then...whatever. It's not fine, but I still don't want to fucking get into it. We're cool, I just need a minute to figure my shit out."
"We're not cool. I have no clue what's going on with you." I grabbed her bottle of sunscreen lotion and squirted a dollop into my palm, spreading it onto my arms. "We can't be keeping things from each other, hon. We're all either of us has, right now."
"You've got Roth," she said, pushing her sunglasses higher onto her nose.
"And so do you. We're a family, Layla."
"Fuck that. You and him are a family. You and me are a family. But he's just your fiance to me. We're sort of friends, I guess, but I'll never be close to him. Not that I don't like him, because I do. He's great.
He's supercool. But he's not my fucking family." She spat the last word with something approaching actual hate.
"Whoa, Layla. What the hell?"
"Don't worry about it. Just...forget it." She set her wine glass down and stood up, tugged the bottom of her bikini down and the top up, and then stalked away, storming through the kitchen and out toward the beach.
I followed her, of course. She was a good thirty feet away by the time I made it through the house and down to the beach. She strode angrily through the lapping surf, bare feet leaving fading footprints in the wet sand. I jogged after her, caught up, grabbed her arm and spun her around.
"Layla. What the fuck is wrong with you? What did I do?"
She jerked away. "You wouldn't understand."
"I'm your best friend! What wouldn't I understand?"
She backed away, shaking her head. "Me! Why I'm mad! Everything! Anything! Pick one, bitch, they're all true." The term we threw back and forth at each other in a joking, loving way for once didn't feel very joking or loving.
Tears pricked my eyes. "Layla...what...? I--I don't get it."
"No shit. You're so caught up in you, in fucking Roth, in whatever the hell we're even running from that you don't even know what's going on with me. We've been best friends for so long, but you sure don't understand how throwing around the idea of family would be hard for me?"
I shook my head. "I know being away from home is hard--"
She laughed bitterly. "See, that's exactly what I mean. Home? You think fucking Pontiac was home? And family? You can honestly throw that word at me?"
"I'm so lost, Layla. Talk to me."
She turned away and walked deeper into the water, till it was up to her knees. I went in as well and stood beside her.
She twisted a flyaway curl between a finger and thumb. "What do you know about my family, Kyrie? My real family, I mean. The one I was born in to."
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