Snapdragon (Love Conquers None Book 1)

by Kilby Blades

  She had, countless times, seen her father’s assistants brief him on the identities of guests seconds before he got an introduction. If things weren’t heating up on the South Side project, Darby wouldn’t have known whether her father truly recognized Michael or whether he had simply been prepped.

  “Senator,” Michael said in what would seem to anyone else like warmth, yet she knew him well enough to hear the tinkling of ice chips in his voice.

  “None of that senator business, Michael. We’re among friends, and more importantly, you’re here with my daughter. Call me Frank,” he insisted, clapping Michael on the back.

  He guided them away from the spot where they had been comfortably watching people, a maneuver Michael accepted with predictable grace. The sprawling tents had created somewhat of a covered outdoor city on the mansion’s vast lawns, allowing spectacular views of the lakefront while insulating guests from the cold. Only about a quarter of the space had been transformed into a formal dining room, with another quarter or so being used for the full band, a few bars, and a dance floor. The other half was styled as an enormous lounge, with performers, displays of food, and yet more bars peppered among a large sprinkling of immaculate indoor living rooms.

  Darby focused on holding Michael’s hand as she listened absently to the conversation between he and her father. Predictably, Frank was buttering Michael up with a mixture of interest in Michael’s work and ingratiating talk about himself. He made some specific comments about Michael’s reputation and his promising career, and even praised him for his community work. He also threw in a few comments about how proud he was of his little girl, and how important her work was to the world of addiction. Especially after having lost his beloved wife to such a terrible disease.

  “Darby’s poor mother, God rest her soul, lost the fight,” he said in a way that made Darby want to vomit. He had the audacity to turn to her as he spoke. “Darby’s got her spirit. I see more and more of your mother in you every day, honey.”

  Michael wrapped his arm around her, pulling her a bit closer in a way that succeeded at calming her, and gently kissed her jaw. He could tell that his father’s talk was making her tense.

  “There’re somebody who’s been waiting to see you,” Frank said then, finally stopping in one of the sitting areas. She assumed it would be some crusty donor she was supposed to remember from a lifetime ago. She was only half-right—and when she saw who it actually was, she wished she’d been wrong.

  “Darby,” came the most unwelcome voice she could conceive of. She hated this voice more than her father’s. More than Huck’s. For a second, she couldn’t breathe. “What a beautiful woman you’ve become.”

  Then he came into view—Charlie Sweeney, her father’s former deputy mayor, and now the deputy governor. She shot her father a venomous look. He had some nerve.

  In seconds, she was shaking with rage, a rage that couldn’t be contained. She couldn’t be in the same room with either of them—neither her father, who had swept an unspeakable crime under the rug, nor the pedophile who had committed it. She was over the hurt of knowing how little she meant to her father. Now, it was his only his audacity that offended her. In that moment, she knew that she’d been ambushed, that Frank had planned to dangle her in front of Sweeney all along. Not saying a word in response, she turned on her heel and left.

  Her father followed her as she stormed inside the mansion. She navigated the halls easily and found the same library where she had spent so many hours as a child. Darby could hear him hot on her heels. Her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides. She eyed a heavy-looking bookend and imagined the sound it would make as it crashed into his skull.

  “This isn’t what we agreed to.”

  He said it seconds after she stopped, because now that she had ducked into a room, she was cornered. Collecting herself, she turned to face him with fury in her eyes.

  “I agreed to keep up appearances. I did not volunteer to have you confront me with my attacker so you can raise money for a political campaign,” she seethed.

  “That’s all in the past,” he said with matter-of-fact dismissal. “And you’d do well to let it go, honey.”

  “Well I guess we all wish we could be more like you,” she spat. “When I walk in on one of my colleagues forcing himself on my pubescent daughter, I’ll be sure that she never speaks about it. I’ll protect him and keep her quiet, like you did. It’s nothing a little therapy can’t fix, right? Luckily I know a few good psychiatrists. They could make a teenage girl right as rain after her father condoned her attempted rape.”

  “I’ve learned to forgive, Darby. Why can’t you? Human beings make mistakes.”

  “Why are you making excuses for him? He was forty-five. I was fourteen!”

  She was out of wasted breath. Her words didn’t seem to penetrate an inch.

  “So if you thought you’d come in here and convince me to lower myself to go back out there, you can forget it. And you can forget the rest, too—our agreement is off. I’m not fourteen anymore, old man. If that son of a bitch ever so much as looks at me again, I’ll handle things my way.”

  He looked at her, as cold and calculatingly as ever, and said nothing as he considered his next move. But she headed him off, speaking in a measured but venomous voice.

  “And if you ever even mention me, or our farce of a happy family again, I will ruin you. That pervert isn’t the only one in this fucked up equation I haven’t forgiven.”

  At that, Frank’s mouth widened into a sinister smile.

  “And what do you think you’re going to do? Go to the press? Tell them your sob story? I own the press, sugar. Nobody will print a single word you say. And, even if they did, you’ve known me long enough to know what I would do next. So why don’t you get your little revenge fantasy out of your system, toughen up, and realize how well my agenda serves us both? You’d be stupid to sacrifice everything you’ve worked for to get back at me. Two years from now, you’ll have everything you’ve ever wanted.”

  “The only thing I’ve ever wanted was for you to get what you deserve.”

  “You know what I’m capable of. Think twice before trifling with the future President of the United States.”

  Vice President, she wanted to correct him. God, he’s an egomaniac.

  “Try me,” she ground out through gritted teeth.

  “Better yet, try me,” she heard a third, dark voice chime in. It was Michael’s. From the look on his face, she knew he’d been standing there long enough to hear everything.

  Her father had the nerve to smile again then, as if Michael’s vow had been the brave words of a fool. But Michael didn’t flinch. Frank looked between the two of them, that unshakeable arrogance of his still evident in his smile. But he didn’t say anything more, only raised his scotch glass in a final salute before he turned and left.

  Left her alone with Michael, and the things she knew it was only a matter of time before she would have to decide what to say about things he would want her to explain.

  “Not here,” she pleaded softly.

  Twenty minutes of silence stretched between them as they got their coats, ordered her car from the valet, and drove the short distance back to her house, his hand in hers all the while. Michael pulled the car into the garage and turned off the engine. Neither of them moved to leave.

  Darby had spent the car ride thinking once again about how Michael knew nearly every skeleton in her closet. And now this one—the biggest and scariest one—recalled a story she hadn’t told in twenty years, and even then, only to Ben. Before her epiphany about Michael, she would have laid it bare. But giving away even more of herself when she was still so confused about him was something she wouldn’t do.

  I’m done.

  She thought it to herself before opening her mouth to use well-practiced psychiatrist language to draw a boundary. But Michael beat her to it.

  “You don’t have to tell me anything.” He said it resolutely, in a voice that sounded rough an
d determined.

  She looked up at him in surprise. He always made her talk when he knew something was hurting her. It had been the very last thing she’d expected.

  “And I know the right thing to do would be to tell you I’m sorry. This is the second time I’ve interfered in something that you never asked me to be a part of. A decent person would be at least a little ashamed of that.”

  He turned to her then, his intense blue eyes all over her.

  “But I’m not a decent person when it comes to things like this. Predators like Huck and your father make me lose my shit. I can’t control my instinct to get involved, especially when it comes to you. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  But she didn’t speak or nod, because even though she did know by then that Michael had some deep need to defend her, with all that he held back, she didn’t understand how it added up.

  “I’m not the kind of guy who can hear what I heard tonight, or be privy to the kind of shit Huck pulled, and do nothing about it. And, believe me, I know it’s a lot more than you signed up for, but this is who I am.”

  I know it’s a lot more than you signed up for.

  She didn’t respond for a full minute, not because she needed time to digest what he’d said. Because she needed to figure out how to ask the only question that mattered—why? Why were his instincts to get involved so strong? Why especially when it came to her? What had possessed him to threaten a powerful man, and to ruin a prodigious doctor’s career? Why would he give her all of that yet withhold so much else?

  “You’re an enigma, Michael,” were the words that finally fell out of her mouth. His eyes darkened as he comprehended them. “You know my every fear, my every weakness. You come to my rescue. Every time I’ve needed someone, you’ve been there. But you hide from me. You don’t let me see some of the best parts of you. You never ask me for help. And if I ever did want to help you in some…meaningful way…I wouldn’t know how. And even if I did, I don’t think you’d let me.

  She didn’t think it was possible, but his eyes grew more intense, and his voice more determined in his response.

  “You help me more than you know.”

  But that was exactly the point. She didn’t know. He’d said it to her before, but she still didn’t know what it meant. He shared his home with her, his bed, and he never seemed to be hiding anything. But there were the things he’d never, ever discussed with her—big parts of his life she’d discovered on her own.

  “Fixing your zoning board problems and bringing you Zofran when you’re sick doesn’t count,” she said.

  He was quiet then, for a long moment.

  “You’ve never even mentioned your foundation.” Darby broke the silence.

  “I figured that most people who mention their foundations to you are probably fishing for donations.”

  “You’re not most people,” she retorted, a bit of an edge creeping into her voice. “I saw a TV clip of you talking about it. You obviously love it. I’ve never heard you talk so passionately about anything else.”

  “If I had mentioned it, would you have donated?”

  She cast her eyes out the window, but told the truth. “Yes.”

  She didn’t mention that she had donated anonymously after she’d read up on it. Now wasn’t the time. More silence stretched between them. She wasn’t going to needle him but she refused to let him escape so easily. It had taken courage for her to say anything about this, to say what she’d said three weeks before, and she wasn’t going to gloss over it now.

  “I don’t talk about the shitty things when I’m with you because I want to milk every last drop of good.”

  She still didn’t look at him. It was the same line he’d fed her before. He sighed.

  “It’s not pretty, Darby.”

  “I don’t need for it to be pretty.”

  Neither of them spoke. The chill from the open garage was starting to seep into the car, but she didn’t move to get out.

  “I barely sleep,” he said finally, as if he were admitting something grave.

  “But—”

  “But I sleep like a baby when I’m with you?” He laughed humorlessly. “I know.”

  “When I’m not with you…” he continued slowly, “I get two or three hours at the most. And I’m awake hours before sunrise, every single morning.”

  She proceeded cautiously.

  “What do you do?”

  “When it’s not so bad, I try to meditate; when it’s a little worse than that, I draw…”

  She hesitated to ask.

  “And when it’s worse than that?”

  He didn’t answer, not directly.

  “I can’t turn off my brain. Every minute I’m awake, I’m thinking…processing. It’s one reasons why I’m so good at what I do. I obsess over things in my head until I figure them out. But it’s not just designs that get stuck in my head—it’s every single problem I don’t know how to solve. Every tiny weakness. Every little fear.”

  She recognized her own words turned back on her.

  “What are you afraid of?” she whispered, wanting so much to know but afraid of what she might find. Men were secretive animals who hid all manner of things in their caves. Christ, look at what she herself had been hiding. Was there some trauma from his past? Some abuse he had suffered? Some person he had lost? She looked at him then, and for the first time, she saw it—insecurity in his eyes.

  “The fall,” he said as if it should be obvious. “The day when everyone figures out I’m not some prodigy. The day when it’s as clear to everyone else as it is to me that I can’t possibly live up to the hype.”

  And it dawned on her. He felt like an impostor. His fear of failure was crippling, so much so that he hid away a secret inner life. The fact that couldn’t turn off his brain hinted at profound giftedness—she was now certain that he had an off-the-charts IQ. A brain like his had the ability to take in and synthesize astounding amounts of information, but it overwhelmed him and the inability to fully process all that he perceived added to his anxiety.

  She felt for him then, for his own sake, but in the same instant her own remorse set in. Because hadn’t she been just as guilty as everyone else of putting him up on a pedestal? It was satisfying, somehow, to believe the illusion—to believe that this fairy-tale prince could exist. He was whip-smart, rich, charismatic, a celebrity in his field. He gave oodles of money to charity, comported himself like a gentleman and was tall, dark and sexier than anyone had a right to be. He was the caricature of perfection. Only, he wasn’t a caricature. He was a real person. But nobody—maybe not even Darby—had treated him that way. And he was crumbling under the pressure.

  “Before I even turned thirty, they were comparing me to Vyatichi. Last week, they called me the next Shah Jahan.”

  The fact that she had no idea who he was talking about must’ve shown on her face.

  “The first one built the Kremlin. The second built the Taj Mahal.”

  She winced.

  “The interviews, the photo shoots, the awards…the partners at my firm have me on this unstoppable PR nightmare train. At first, I was flattered to be recognized for my work, but it’s not about the work anymore. It’s turned into a total shit show. Do you know how many times I’ve been approached for ‘Most Eligible Bachelor’ stories, or had to turn down features that wanted to portray me as some sort of sex object? Chicago Magazine wanted to show me at a construction site, reading plans, wearing a hard hat with no shirt.”

  “That’s terrible,” she said, and meant it deeply. A fresh flash of guilt pulsed through her. “And, I’m sorry—that night at Tavern on Rush…I…”

  She faltered, and he shook his head.

  “I don’t blame you for thinking that about me. Why wouldn’t you think that? I never gave you any reason to believe otherwise. You didn’t know any of this shit. I couldn’t expect you to understand if I hadn’t told you.”

  Part of her still felt that she owed him an apology. Part of her f
elt relieved that he had finally admitted to what had been troubling her that entire week. She hadn’t understood his reasons for shutting her out and he’d finally copped to the fact that he was the reason why.

  “I’m not good at letting people in, Darby. It’s not because I don’t trust you—I trust you more than nearly anyone. I’m just not used to this. The people closest to me have always had their own shit to deal with. The people I grew up with take so much pride in me. They look up to me, and they have real problems to deal with. I’m not going to complain to them about feeling like a fraud. I mean, fuck—I make half a million dollars a year. I’m a tall, good-looking white guy, which has probably gotten me a lot farther than I deserve. I sit at a desk all day drawing, which is my favorite thing to do, and I want for nothing. When I think about my mother, who worked herself into an early grave for less than a tenth of what I make…”

  He looked broken.

  “Just because you’re talented and gorgeous doesn’t mean you deserve to feel like this.”

  He looked out the window. She treaded lightly, unsure of how he would take what she was about to say.

  “Have you seen anybody? About your insomnia?”

  “No.”

  “I know a great—”

  “No, we’re not doing this. Not, no I haven’t seen anybody. I don’t want you to be Darby my shrink, I want you to be Darby my—”

  Darby my what?

  Her mind screamed it. But she knew he wouldn’t say. And when she calmed down enough, she spared them the conversation she was resigning herself to believe they would never have. Because he’d just told her more than he ever had and she didn’t want to make him regret it.

  “Your friend,” she finished for him in a voice so defeated, that she knew her fight was gone. Whatever she’d seen the week before, however she was feeling about it, however many questions she had, in that instant, she knew they wouldn’t all be answered. He looked away then, and she ignored what looked like shame written on his features.