by Parker Swift
“What? Why?”
“I don’t trust that guy, and you forget to lock your door.”
I rolled my eyes and was about to argue, when he interrupted me. “I’m serious. I’m not leaving you near him.”
“You’re ridiculous. Plus, even if there were a threat, you’re here to protect me.” But as soon as I said it I realized he wasn’t. He wouldn’t protect me—not that I even needed protecting—because no one was supposed to know he was here, that he was with me. He was powerless as long as we were a secret. This was the first time it bugged me, really bugged me. If he was so jealous, so possessive, why not just tell people we were together? It was beginning to feel like he cared more about us being a secret than he did about me. The secret felt like he was just keeping the wheels greased, so he could slide out of this non-relationship as easily as he’d slid in. Secrecy meant he always had an easy escape route, and a small part of me sank at another reminder that we were a temporary casual thing.
He ignored my comment and headed back to the kitchen. I quickly finished putting together dinner, while Dylan laid out plates. He brought the wine in from Lloyd, but we didn’t open a bottle. We ate quickly, and I packed an overnight bag. It felt like we were on the run from a harmless goofy neighbor.
Chapter 29
It was eight thirty when we got back to his house. When we walked in the door, he kissed me, but there was nothing to it. He kissed me the way someone does automatically, while they’re making lists in their head or, I don’t know, desigining buildings. Like I didn’t even have to be there for it
“I have to work. Make yourself at home—there’s a television in the lounge by the bedroom. I might be late, so go to sleep without me.” His tone was distant and cold, dismissive.
“You’re being an asshole.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Lydia—” He looked at me like he was pleading for me to just let him be that way.
“You are. I’m going to go upstairs and watch something funny on TV. I’m only staying because I want to be with you, and I hope that at some point over the evening you realize how ridiculous you’re being about Michael.”
“Lydia, I have to work.” He said it as though I’d misunderstood why he was being distant and weird. But I hadn’t.
“If that were true, then there’d be no reason for me to be here with you.”
* * *
I had no idea what time it was when I rolled over sleepily, looking for a clock, but I ran straight into the firm wall of Dylan’s naked chest. It was the middle of the night, and I’d woken with a deep need for the restroom. I must have fallen asleep on the couch, but somehow I’d ended up in the bed. I was wearing one of Dylan’s t-shirts, which had ridden up, and I pulled it down as I shimmied out of bed, trying not to wake him. When I came back, he was leaning up on his elbow and patting the spot I’d just occupied next to him.
“Come back to bed.”
I just stood by the side of the bed, waiting. When I’d gone to sleep I was still annoyed with him. Now I didn’t know what I felt.
“I woke because you left. Come back.”
“What was going on with you tonight?” I started, staying in place by the side of the bed. “This afternoon we had the best sex we’ve ever had—you were incredible—and then this evening you acted as though I was an annoying kid sister you were forced to look after. You were so…cold.”
Dylan sat up and sighed, running his fingers through his hair. “Can we leave it at me feeling out of my depth and not handling it well? You absolutely deserve more of an explanation than that, but…Christ.” He groaned and fully rubbed his hands over his face, like some kind of tug-of-war was unfolding inside him. “I hated not being able to…Lydia, I’ve never felt that way before.”
“What way?”
“Helpless,” he said, and he swallowed hard as he spoke. He was looking at me like he still felt that way. Helpless. Like by simply telling me how he felt he’d been stripped bare before me. I probably should have pressed him, but I didn’t need to. I may not have fully understood what had made him feel that way, but I knew with total certainty that, if anything, we were closer than either of us had expected to be. The question was whether it would matter in the end.
* * *
We showered together in the morning, and Dylan was fully back to being his attentive self. We didn’t have sex, almost as if we were giving ourselves a reprieve after our intense encounter the day before. I brushed and dried my hair, pulling it into a messy side braid, which I could just pull off with my shoulder-length hair. When I emerged from the bathroom, he handed me my jeans. “It’s cool outside today. Do you have a sweater?”
“Are we going out?” I asked as I rummaged through my bag for my old NYU sweatshirt.
“Yes. I’m taking you out of here for the day. And we’ll be outside.” He looked out the window as he said it, eyeing the grey skies. “I think the weather will hold.”
“Where are we going?” I slipped on my jeans and oxfords. I was reaching for my long-sleeved t-shirt, but I stopped when I saw Dylan emerge from his closet in those perfect jeans and a t-shirt that draped over him perfectly.
He came up behind me, wrapping his arms around me. “I’m not telling,” he whispered and unbuttoned the jeans I’d just put on. He slipped his hands down the front, cupping me in his hands. “No panties. Good girl.” He slipped first one and then two fingers into me, massaging me.
I surrendered to his touch, leaning back into him. I reached my hands up into his hair, gripping and pulling it between my fingers. “Two fingers. Good boy.” I grinned, and felt him grinning into my hair. I was instantly damp, and he spread the wetness, allowing him easier, more fluid strokes. His fingers found the delicious sweet spot inside me, and I felt myself tremble under his touch, the sensation spreading down my thighs, weakening me.
“That’s right, baby, come into my hand, Lydia. I want to feel you,” he whispered. I clenched around him as he thumbed my clit, propelling me completely into the intense white space of my orgasm. I couldn’t believe how quickly he could bring me so deeply into pleasure. My eyes were closed, and as I came down from my orgasm, he dragged his hands up my body, pulling me into him. “I love making you come, baby. I could do it all day.”
“Sounds ok to me.” I was still half groaning, luxuriating in the wake of my orgasm.
I could feel him smiling into my back. “No.” He buttoned up my jeans and gave me a playful slap on my ass. Next thing I knew he was across the room, throwing my t-shirt at me. “Get dressed, baby. Let’s go.”
* * *
I found him in the kitchen, pouring coffee into two to-go mugs, and handing me a piece of toast. He looked almost excited. He grabbed his keys from a hook on the wall, and we walked out the back door. It was unseasonably cool, an early hint of fall in the air.
“Where’s Lloyd?” He was nowhere to be seen, and where the Mercedes had dropped us off the night before there was now a tall black Land Rover.
“Day off. Just you and me.” He opened the passenger door for me before rounding the car to slide into the driver’s seat. He pressed a button and all the mirrors and the driver’s seat automatically shifted and calibrated to him. He fiddled with the controls on the steering wheel and the Rolling Stones started humming through the speakers. “Ready?”
“For what exactly? Are you taking me to like a seventeentht-century English theme park where all the women obediently follow around their knighted menfolk?”
He punched me playfully in the leg, and I shrieked and laughed. “Very funny.” He then reached to my side and tickled my belly, throwing me into a total fit.
“Stop! Dylan! Stop!” I was going to pee my pants if he didn’t relent. “Please! Seriously! Dylan!” He finally stopped, but he was glowing with victory. Bastard.
He expertly navigated the city streets, and we were quickly on a highway headed out of town.
“So tell me more about what happened with Caro
line. “ He winced at my question, but I wasn’t going to back down. I wanted to know more.
“Didn’t Google give you all the details?”
“All I saw was that you were engaged. The palace didn’t seem enthused and the press billed it as some kind of rebellion on her part, which strikes me as odd, given how accomplished you are.”
“I wasn’t then.” He half winced, clearly not wanting to remember something. “I don’t like talking about that part of my life.” His eyes were on the road as he spoke.
“Can you just give me some highlights? I want to know you.”
“You do.”
“I want to, like, know the shit out of you. Like if knowing Dylan Hale were an Olympic event, I’d compete for the USA and win against all the other Knights of the Templar or whatever.” He looked at me skeptically. “Please?”
He touched my thigh and sighed. “Fine. It’s not easy to explain to someone outside my antiquated world, but I grew up with a lot of…duty. Obligation. Titles don’t mean much to me, but they do to my family, and it was drilled into me to keep up appearances. There is a lot of responsibility involved in being a Hale.”
“That sounds heavy, and kind of boring if you’re a kid.”
“Boring was the least of it. One of my earliest memories was my mother and father putting me on a horse, decked out in the perfect little riding kit, and I was terrified. Absolutely terrified and crying. But they told me it was my duty to know how to ride. Duty is a weird concept for a four-year-old.”
“God.” I suddenly thought of all of the warmth in my own childhood, the total lack of fear. But I also thought, for the first time in a while, about my mother. What would it have been like to have had her too? There were moments, flashes, when I felt aware of not having had my parents, not in the way others had theirs, and this was one of them.
“Yes. I mean, they’re not heartless people. They’re not, really. But their priorities are just different. All of their life choices haven’t really been choices, they’ve been about what’s proper and expected. Well, for the most part. Anyway, none of the snobbery that my parents have has ever come naturally to me.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“It is to them. They can’t stand that I haven’t secured the title. It kills them that I haven’t guaranteed that there’ll be an eighteenth Duke. Anyway, so when I became friends with Grace and others who weren’t from our world, my family didn’t look on it kindly. And when she got hurt by association, I realized they’d been right in their own way. I shouldn’t have let her in.”
“Dylan, that’s—”
“Lydia, stop. It’s true. I realized that all of their snobbery had a purpose, that there were certain realities about my life, whether I liked them or not. I stopped caring, I got into fights. There were drugs, a lot of drinking. Mostly stupid rich-kid antics, nothing I’m proud of. And I wasn’t alone. We all knew the rules. We were the offspring of titled aristocracy and London’s big players. And as our antics moved from school to coming-out balls and then to benefits and Ascot and the rest of that bullshit, it became front-page tabloid news. Caroline was the culmination of all that.”
“This doesn’t sound like you at all. And I still don’t understand what happened with Caroline.”
“Getting into mischief with some asshole son of a notable family is uncomfortable gossip, but Caroline is royalty. She understood, better than me, what lay in store for us. It was her idea. She figured if we weren’t going to have any choices in our lives we might as well plod through it with a friend. And when she and I started to date, the media took notice. They were everywhere. We were photographed on vacation.” I recalled the references to nude photos in a tropical locale. “Eating breakfast, in uncomfortable positions at clubs. In the States it may be movie stars, but here and on the continent the tabloids are fueled by aristocracy, royalty, socialites. It’s its own tawdry brand of celebrity.”
“Weren’t your parents pleased?”
“They would have been if we hadn’t been doing everything in our power to act out. We weren’t exactly following standard royal engagement protocol. The palace did as much damage control as possible, but it became clear we were making life hard for everyone. I think we both knew we’d never be happy that way. We did try to make it work, but I just didn’t love her like that.” I was silent, but I reached out for his hand. He wouldn’t look at me, but he let me hold him in this small way. He stopped, reflecting. “I just don’t like who I was then. I don’t want you to know that man.
“Anyhow,” he continued, “she and I finally decided it was a bad idea. But it’s still my reality. Hers too, of course.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t have a choice, Lydia. I’ve figured out how to have as free a life as I can without hurting anyone, and it’s worked so far. I’m an architect, which is mine. I earned it, and I can do it my way. My grandfather was key in that, by the way. You once asked me if he and I were close? Well, he was my only real ally. The only person who understood that I wanted to work hard and build something.” He glanced over at me thoughtfully for a moment. “He would have adored you.” He paused for a moment before continuing, staring at the road ahead of him. “My parents think architecture is an indulgence. But the rest of it, well…”
“So what? You’ll marry someone of their choosing eventually?” There was bite in my words, no matter how I tried to hide it.
“No. I won’t marry at all.”
“Or date.”
“That’s right.”
“Or have children.”
“If it can be helped.”
It was so sad. He really believed that love was closed to him, that a life with people in it was something he wasn’t allowed.
“I don’t understand how you became so successful if you were so busy being this bad boy. How’d you pull it off?”
“I’m lucky. Talent helps—I just get architecture, and I love it—and hard work gets you far.”
“Can I ask you something about Grace?” I was going to take total advantage of this openness. I felt like I had somehow caught him in a confessional state.
He sighed, but gave in. “Sure.”
“I Googled you and the name ‘Grace’ and nothing came up. Why aren’t there any pictures of you guys on the Internet anymore?”
“I hired a lawyer and we managed to get them all removed. It was the least I could do. For her family. I wanted to sue for damages, but her family didn’t want a big trial, anything to continue to fuel the madness. But we were able to get all mentions of her removed from the Internet. My legal team still has to pursue media outlets about it from time to time.”
He was starting to make sense to me, why he felt like he needed so much control. Taking control had brought him so much. He’d built his life, repaired relationships, kept public troubles at bay, all by being in total control and leaving no room for others’ errors. The wall he’d built around himself was tall and firm, and it was also breaking my heart.
Chapter 30
After about an hour’s drive from the city, we pulled up to set of unobtrusive dark metal gates that opened when Dylan entered a code into his phone. We proceeded down a seemingly endless wooded driveway, passing a field on the right, with a large curved steel sculpture in the center of it that I couldn’t take my eyes off of and recognized immediately.
“Is that a Richard Serra sculpture?” I asked, my mouth hanging open and following it with my eyes as we passed. I’d only ever seen his sculptures in museums and public spaces.
“It is,” Dylan replied, clearly surprised and maybe even impressed that I’d recognized it. I was still looking at it when I saw deer meandering at its edges.
We rounded a corner, and I saw a large arc of glass panels forming the front of an elegant modern house. A circular gravel drive with perfect modern stone and wood accents marked the entrance. Despite the grand nature of the front of the house, it somehow seemed like it naturally emerged from the gro
und, like it was part of the earth. I saw glimpses of a couple of small outbuildings set back from the home—a garage, and what looked like large sheds. There was a small garden near the house, but mostly it seemed to be bounded by beautiful hilly wilderness.
Dylan helped me from the car and retrieved a large shopping bag from the backseat. “What is this place?” I asked, spinning, taking it all in, my eyes wide with appreciation.
“It’s my hideout.”
“You designed it?”
He nodded and guided me to the front door, opening the lock by waving his phone in front of a panel. This place was clearly state-of-the-art.
We entered the large front space, one large room divided into living and dining areas. Despite the impressive height of the windows lining this space, the house didn’t actually appear to be that big. It was clear there were some private rooms behind the main space, but it was one level. It was furnished with a mixture of midcentury modern pieces and more traditional antiques. It seemed to perfectly represent Dylan. He grabbed my hand and pulled me back into a warm open kitchen, and I saw that the back of the house was lined in glass as well. I could see a large stone patio and fire pit beyond a slim kitchen door.
I noticed that there were sandwiches on the counter and a bottle of white wine, sweating at having just been taken from the refrigerator. I looked at him questioningly. “Are we not alone?”
“There’s a caretaker, Mrs. Upton. I told her we were coming. She’ll be back at her cottage by now,” he said as he deposited the bag by the rear door and opened the wine. We leaned against the island in the middle of the room and ate our lunch.
“So what are you going to do with me, now that you have me here?” I sidled up next to him, tucking myself into his side, holding my wine in my free hand.
He wrapped his arm around me and looked down into my face. “I’m going to fill those lungs with proper country air. So eat up—we’re going for a walk.”
