by Elle Keating
“What’s going on, Luke?” she asked, desperately fighting back pathetic sobs.
He took a few steps toward her and stopped. From ten feet away, as he nervously raked his hand through his hair, he said, “Up until five minutes ago I was the silent co-owner of this place. I met with Ashton, my business partner, tonight and asked her to buy me out, which she agreed to.”
He owns…owned…a sex club.
Okay. I hate the idea that he co-owned a sex club. We can work through this. It was a business…that’s all.
Peyton looked around at her surroundings for the first time. A king-size bed took up the majority of the wall to her right. The simple white bedding was actually quite tasteful, a stark contrast to the rubber sheets she had seen in the communal room down the hall. Opposite the bed was a chest of drawers, the type of bureau one would find in a typical bedroom. Beyond that was an open door leading to what looked like a bathroom. Standing in this room she would never have guessed she was at Eden, the same place she had run away from and later puked on the beach as a result of what she had seen or thought she had imagined. And then her eyes gravitated to a hook on the wall and the items that dangled from it. Morbid curiosity drew her there, beckoning her to come and touch them. She didn’t ask permission, she just went and pulled one of the many silk blindfolds from the hook and stared at it in her hands.
And then it hit her. Right after she heard his voice in her head.
“With the exception of close family and friends, I have never brought a woman here.”
He had never brought a woman into his home or to his bed. Because he didn’t have to.
Peyton let the blindfold slip through her trembling fingers. “This is your room. You may have been a silent co-owner, but this space, this is your own personal playroom.”
“Was, not is, Peyton. I haven’t been here, been with another woman, since we met. That is the truth.”
“The truth.” Her initial shock started to seep out, allowing her to be consumed with another emotion: anger. “I’m just supposed to take your word for it? That you no longer come here to live out your fantasies?” She reached over, tore the rest of the blindfolds from the hook and threw them across the room. She then bent over and picked up the blindfold she had dropped previously and asked, “Why do you blindfold them?” The look he gave her was one of defeat and despair, but her heart didn’t…couldn’t…go out to him.
“Peyton, I don’t think you want to know the details.”
Her face grew hot as her blood went from a simmer to an all-out boil. “Don’t you dare tell me what I want!”
“Fine. You want details, then here they are. Each woman I have been with here was previously screened, had to provide proof that she was clean, and had to agree with my stipulations.”
“Stipulations?”
“Each woman knew what they were agreeing to if they were with me. I promised them pleasure. I promised that I would never hurt them. I promised that I would respect their limits. And they understood that I would not hold them after, that I wouldn’t kiss them on the mouth. But what was non-negotiable was that they remain blindfolded at all times, that it was never to come off.”
“Why?” she asked, barely suppressing the urge to vomit.
“I didn’t want an emotional connection. In this room it was strictly sex. A need for a need.”
A need for a need. That was how Robin had described Eden as well.
“The second reason I blindfolded them was that I never wanted this life to interfere with the life I had created at the winery with my father, to tarnish what my dad and I had built.”
Her head was asking her why the hell she was still standing there listening to him, but she had to know more. Foolishly she asked, “When did you become co-owner of this place?” Luke drew in a deep breath. The alarm bells went off in her head and they told her, screamed at her, that she hadn’t heard the worst of it. He was holding something back. “When?” she asked again.
“Five years ago.”
She had wondered if she would be astute enough to know the precise moment when the other shoe dropped, the shoe she had been waiting for since her life for the past week had been absolutely perfect. And then she heard it.
“What did you do before Eden…for sex, I mean?”
She watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard. His cheeks flushed as he looked her in the eye. “I knew early on, even in high school that I wasn’t going to be able to have a normal relationship. The girls back then and then later in college, always wanted more. More emotion, more of everything that I couldn’t give. I ended up hurting them, not physically, but it became impossible for many of the women I had been with not to feel like they were being used for sex. So, I did the only thing I thought I could at the time. I decided to only be with women who would never ask questions, never want an emotional connection, and could give me what I needed in that moment.”
She closed her eyes, which was the absolute worst thing she could do. Her imagination ran wild and all she could picture was Luke being serviced by hookers, his cock in their mouths as he fisted their hair. “Prostitutes,” she said, barely over a whisper.
“Yes,” he said, his own voice shaky.
Peyton didn’t want to stand back and be the judge and jury. She had made her own share of fuck-ups and she firmly believed that people who lived in glass houses should not throw stones. But what he had withheld from her was not a stone, but a Goddamn bomb. One that blew her world apart.
Prostitutes? Sex club owner? What else was he hiding from her?
“I love you, Peyton. That may be hard to believe right now, especially after learning that all I’ve wanted and needed up until I met you was meaningless fucking, but it’s true. I meant what I said before. Everything changed. You changed me and made me realize that this,” he said, waving his hands around, “place, this life, is not something I need anymore. Because everything I need is standing in front of me.”
“What you need?” she asked, the anger and pain mixing and rising to a dangerous level. “What about what I needed? I told you my darkest, my most brutal secrets. I laid them all out there, bared myself to you. What I wanted, what I needed, was that same soul-exposing honesty. You intentionally hid things from me. And if I hadn’t put two and two together and come here tonight, I may never have found out about you and Eden. You came here to bury your past in the hope that I would never discover the truth.” Her entire body shook as she wiped her eyes. “You may have been willing to give me bits and pieces of your past, share things that you’ve never shared with another woman, but you never planned on telling me about Eden. Am I right?”
“Yes, I never wanted you to know.”
“And that’s why this can’t work. I don’t need any more secrets in my life…or a man who just said without batting an eyelash that he had every intention of lying to me tonight.” Adrenaline pulsed through her veins, giving her just what she needed to turn away from Luke and flee that club once and for all.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Luke
Minutes after Peyton had left him at Eden, he was in his truck and driving home, where he drank himself into oblivion. He woke up the next morning on the bathroom floor, still in his suit pants and shirt and cradling a bottle of Jack. Luckily, the winery was closed for the next several days due to the holiday, which meant that he didn’t need to leave his house, which meant that he could drink until he passed out again. His head pounded. His muscles ached. And his back was on fire from sleeping on the hard, cold tile. But the pain paled in comparison to the damage that had been done to his heart.
He had lost her.
Peyton had left him last night and he didn’t even attempt to stop her.
And why?
Because she was right. She had trusted him with her heart and the painful secrets she had never shared with any man. And what had been his response? To omit critical pieces of his past, pieces that made him the way he was. He hadn’t been strong enough to tell her
the truth and because of that, he had failed. He didn’t deserve a woman like Peyton.
Luke emerged from the bathroom, only to go straight to the liquor cabinet. He didn’t want to think of her, of how she had looked at him with disgust as he told her about the life he had lived before he met her. He just wanted to forget and get lost at the bottom of the bottle of scotch he was now holding. But with each passing sip, his grief only grew along with the realization that he would never hold Peyton in his arms again, that he would forever be haunted by her smile and taste.
Hours must have passed, or maybe days, because it was close to nightfall when he woke. Two arms yanked him out of his bed and dragged him to the bathroom. His vision was blurry at first, but he knew who was manhandling him.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Luke asked.
Gabe grunted as he tossed him into the shower like a rag doll. “Saving you from yourself. Trust me. You look and smell like shit.” Gabe turned on the water and Luke’s eyes shot open. Standing in just his boxer briefs, Luke felt like he was being assaulted by a million icicles. He quickly tried to adjust the temperature, but his brother blocked him and said, “No, you need a cold shower to sober your ass up.”
“Why are you here?” Luke asked. His mind started to clear as his body tried its best to adjust to the bitterly-cold temperature.
“I had a feeling something was wrong even before Dad called and asked me to check on you. Mom and Dad are at Jake’s but they’ve been trying to reach you all day. Left you several voicemails and texts.” Tremendous guilt washed over Luke at the thought of making his parents worry. “Looks like Dad’s intuition was right on the money.”
Luke looked at his brother. His first instinct was to tell Gabe to fuck off, but he didn’t. Instead, he closed the glass shower door and told Gabe that he would be right out. His brother didn’t question his brisk tone or the fact that he was being dismissed.
Ten minutes later Luke was showered, his teeth were brushed, and he was feeling, at least physically, more like himself. He threw some clothes on and went to the living room only to find Gabe sitting on his couch and making himself at home. He hadn’t noticed before, but Gabe wasn’t wearing his typical jeans, t-shirt and boots. Rather, he was shaven and dressed in a suit and tie. For a second, Luke wondered if Gabe had been on his way to a wedding or maybe a funeral when he stopped by, but then it registered.
“On your way to church?” Luke asked.
Gabe nodded but continued to eye him up and down as if he was studying him. Luke wondered what was going through his brother’s mind right now, what Gabe had first thought when he found him lying passed out, looking like death.
“I’m going to go out on a limb, but does finding you face down in bed and smelling like booze have anything to do with Peyton?” Although Brennan was typically known to be the wise ass of the bunch, Gabe could from time to time give as good as he got. But there was no levity in his tone, no pain-in-the-ass smirk. Only concern radiated off him. Luke had no idea how Gabe knew that he was not in a good place right now, especially since the last time they spoke Luke had told him that he and Peyton were now a couple and completely in love, but somehow Gabe had sensed his despair from ten towns over.
Luke plopped down on the oversized living room chair and sighed. What was the sense in lying anymore? Gabe and the rest of his brothers, even his sister, wouldn’t judge him. They may be shocked at first, but he knew that at the end of the day, they would love him no matter what. “Peyton left me.” Hearing himself say the words only confirmed that the woman he loved was gone. His heart broke all over again and he struggled to continue.
“Talk to me, Luke.” He didn’t look at Gabe as he gathered the strength to reveal things he had never shared with a single family member. “Really talk to me this time,” Gabe said.
Luke met his brother’s gaze before resting his head on the back of the chair. For the next half hour, Luke told his brother everything. By the time he was done, Gabe knew that he had resorted to paying for sex in his early twenties and how and why he became the co-owner of a sex club. He had expected those two things to be the toughest to reveal and the most embarrassing, but what ripped him to shreds was when he explained how Peyton found out about the life he had been leading.
Gabe just sat there, nodding from time to time, as if in understanding or maybe as a signal to keep talking. Never once did his neutral expression waver. After Luke purged every last secret, he asked, “Can you blame Peyton for leaving me? Not only did I not tell her about Eden, but I tried to cover it up by severing my ties with Ashton Coe. I fucked up twice. And that was after she told me in as much detail as she could most likely handle, that she herself had been abused…like me.”
The slight intake of breath was Gabe’s only tell that he was affected by what Luke had said. Peyton probably wouldn’t appreciate the fact that he had told his brother about her past, but he needed to confide in someone, someone he could trust, someone who didn’t need further explanation.
“Does she know what happened…when you were a child?” Gabe asked.
“She knows some things. She’s seen the scars on my back and I told her how I tried to kill myself when I was eight. I didn’t tell her about Warren or what drove me to suicide. But the way I have caught her looking at me, the shadows behind her eyes…on a subconscious level she must know.”
“And loves you anyway,” Gabe said.
“All that has changed. It wasn’t love I saw in her eyes when I revealed the ugly truth, but shock and disgust. She had every right to walk away.”
“So, that’s it? There’s no way you two can make it back from this?”
“I don’t see how it’s possible.” Luke stood, feeling claustrophobic all of a sudden. Or maybe he was hungry. Or in need of a drink. He chose food and went to the kitchen only to have Gabe trail behind. Luke opened the fridge and grabbed the carton of leftover Chinese food he and Peyton had shared a few days ago. Digging a fork out of the drawer, he said, “Tell Mom and Dad and the rest of the crew that I’ll see them tomorrow for Christmas dinner.”
“You won’t come to Philly tonight? It may take your mind off things for a little while. We’re meeting Josh, Carina, Morgan and Jake at Mass. Afterwards we’re heading to Carina’s for dinner.”
Luke shoveled a forkful of lo mein into his mouth and swallowed. “I’m not up for that.”
Gabe nodded and was halfway to the front door when Luke called, “Thanks for coming tonight…and for listening.”
“Anytime.” With a sad smile, Gabe turned and left.
***
Peyton
She knew she looked like shit. No designer dress was going to save her. Standing in front of her bedroom mirror she attempted to hide the dark bags under her eyes with concealer Tasha swore by, but in the end it didn’t help all that much. How she wished to crawl back into bed and hide beneath her covers instead of going to Christmas Eve Mass tonight. It wasn’t like she didn’t like to go to church, but her heart wasn’t in it and she was dreading the idea of being around so many festive people when she was completely miserable and heartbroken. But for Gus’s sake, she needed to get her shit together. Ever since Gina died, Peyton knew how important it was for him to have his two girls at his side. Although he had never given her a guilt trip for not coming home for the holidays, the appreciation in his warm smile, the way he spoke to his church friends after Mass and beamed as he went on and on about his daughters, even with them standing right there, told her that his family meant the world to him. And that meant that she was going to get her ass to church even if it killed her.
Peyton gave herself a once-over and decided to button the top button on her simple black dress. She didn’t need or want to call any attention to herself any more than she unfortunately did when she went out in public. Her gaze drifted to her black strappy heels and then back to her face. Fresh tears formed as she stared at her reflection. It wasn’t her gaunt and haggard appearance that made her unravel, but the sudden
memory of how she got here. Three days ago, she was happier than she had ever been, in love with a man who was her match in every way and looking forward to their future together. Just three days ago.
The sound of the doorbell jarred her from her thoughts and she went to answer the door since she was the only one home. Gus had already left, wanting to get to the church early to help decorate for the night’s multiple Masses. Lainey and Walt had offered to pick her up on the way to church but it would have been out of their way and a pointless inconvenience. Peyton opened the door and met the handsome man’s gaze.
“Gabe?”
A warm smile tugged at his lips, reminding her of Luke. With their dark hair, blue eyes, and strong-set jaw, anyone could tell that they were brothers. “Peyton, can we talk?”
His smile faded, causing her gut to twist and her heart to flutter. “What’s wrong? Is Luke okay?” she asked, opening the door wider.
“May I come in?” he asked.
“Of course.”
Gabe entered and closed the door behind him. “He’s not okay. In fact, I have never seen him look so…lost.”
She told herself to stay strong. To not crumble and feel sorry for Luke. Because he did this to himself. He was to blame. Not her.
That’s what her head told her to do. But she didn’t listen. “Where is he?”
“I was halfway to his house when my dad called to tell me that he hadn’t heard from Luke all day, which is not like my brother. Luke almost always answers his phone calls and texts. He’s the most reliable, at least in that way, of all my siblings combined. Because my parents are in Philly they asked me to check on Luke. When I got there, Luke was…not in good shape. It was obvious he had been drinking for hours, maybe days before I arrived. It was only after I threw him in the shower that he became coherent.”
