by Raven Scott
Carlyle arched a brow quizzically. “No one is more important than her to you. I’ll appreciate your boundaries, Darren, but make no mistake. When I say ‘jump’...you jump, even if it takes you a few minutes to get on your feet. I’ll do my best to avoid it, but you should know by now that some things happen that even I can’t control. If your contracts refuse to deal with Oran, you will make the deals. If your expertise is required, you will give it. Ponyat’?”
Alarms rang in my head as I nodded mutely.
Carlyle punched a code into the pad under the doorknob. Casting me one, final, look, he turned and strode off.
It left me feeling puny and overwhelmed. And I thought Aleksander was scary...Carlyle’s on a whole other level.
7
Delilah
A soft knock on the door stuttered my heart, and I sucked in a sharp breath as I jumped up from the sofa. Fluffing out my hair, my hands shook as I smoothed my cute, pastel green dress, and I reached to make sure the zippers on my boots were all the way up. Excitement flooded my system and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth before I walked across the living room to the door.
Holding my breath as I grabbed the doorknob, I smiled automatically even as nerves dug deep into my gut.
Darren stood rigid and anxious on the other side of the doorframe, holding a single, pink peony in his hands. He stiffened as he scanned me through wide, brown eyes, while he worked to pick his jaw up from the carpeted floor. “Your hair looks amazing ” He clenched his jaw hard.
Flames licked up my neck and my smile widened as my ears burned.
Holding out the flower, Darren cleared his throat roughly before speaking up again, “You said once these were your favorite.”
“Yeah, they are.” What happened? I could answer that without making my frazzled brain work as I took the peony. Darren’s afraid I’ll leave him. He seemed to want to try and work his hands to the bone to get me to stay with him. There weren’t any excuses left that he could use to ignore how I felt and he was afraid of losing me completely.
After thinking on it all day, I realized something. If Darren hadn’t asked me out on a date, had just tried to do things the same as they’d been for years, I would’ve rejected him. Had he tried to put me in bed and comfort me, I would’ve kicked him out and never spoken to him again. But asking me out on a date, a casual, no strings date...Darren was willing to start at the beginning and I appreciated this.
I didn’t intend to jump into this, but I could give him a chance. “Um so, where are we going?”
Darren blinked hard, nodded almost to himself.
I stepped out of my apartment as he backed up a safe distance. The awkwardness didn’t die down despite my question.
He smiled tightly as he stuffed his hands into his casual, solid black pants. “I don’t know anything around here, so I thought we could walk around town?”
I hummed softly in agreement as Darren and I started down the hallway to the stairwell.
“I know I have a lot to make up for, Delilah, but I’m going to.”
“I believe you.” Gulping down the cotton filling my mouth, I twirled the peony absently as the atmosphere became suffocating. “To be honest...I blame Carlyle more than you, Darren. He promised me money, that I would stay where I was and keep my job which I didn’t like teaching, as it turns out, but all because I slept with you too many times, Carlyle decided my entire personal worth was based on you. I know that’s not your fault.”
“It’s my fault for blowing you off all the time, thinking you’d always be there regardless of how I treated you.” His deep timbre thickened with regret.
I pursed my lips thinly before Darren opened the door to the stairwell for me. Ducking under his arm, I paused when he grabbed my elbow, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
“I know what you meant last night every time you said ‘no’. I do. I’m not gonna screw up like that again and expect you to do all the work, Delilah.”
“...I really hope you don’t.”
Darren squeezed my arm reassuringly.
I gingerly pulled from his grasp. Tingles buzzed just under my skin.
He didn’t try to touch me again as we walked down to the ground floor.
Just knowing that Darren was here, beside me, not rushing out to make some deal halfway across the world was comforting. Whenever I caught him out of the corner of my eye, my anxiety lessened a little bit more. Feeling his heat against my back eased the rigidity of my spine just a tad. Hearing his breaths dulled the beating against my eye sockets a smidgen.
“I really love what you did to your hair. Red looks great on you, Delilah.”
Popping open one of the many side doors, I smiled as I glanced back.
Darren wore a plain, light grey button up, the sleeves rolled to show off his tattoos dancing to his elbows. “I used to get shit on in Russia because my dad is American, but now I’m really glad I have the dual citizenship.”
“Are you gonna go see him?” I asked.
Darren’s brows furrowed as we walked to my car.
For some odd reason, the bright, spring air put a pep in my step. “I mean, he’s been in prison for six years, right? He’s due to get out soon?”
“Ah, yeah, he is. I don’t know if I’m going to though. I honestly haven’t thought about it. He caught racketeering charges. I don’t really want to be associated with that anymore. I’m as out as I’ll ever be with Carlyle staring over my shoulder.”
Pulling my keys out of my dress pocket, I hummed again.
Darren frowned under the shallow crease between his brows. Rounding the back of my car, he leaned on the top to prop his jaw on his forearms. “I have all the money I’ll ever need, and I have a more important person to focus on right now, than my dad.”
“What if it doesn’t work out?” That forbidden question slid off my tongue like acid. Tightening my grip on my keys, I ignored the pinch digging into my palm.
Darren smiled gently at me from across the top of my car. “Then at least it won’t be because of my inattentiveness. Even if we don’t work out, I have five years to make up for. At the very least, if we decide not to be together anymore, it won’t be because of what a piece of shit I’ve been the last five years.”
He spoke so earnestly, and I bit my bottom lip as I nodded curtly. Darren had a point...I couldn’t just never forgive him and hold onto this bitterness forever. It’d destroy me. Unlocking my car, I climbed into the driver’s seat to huff a short breath.
Today’s date was going to be about today. Not the past five years. Not about Carlyle or Aleksander or deals or some unrealistic vision of the future...
No… it’d only be about Darren and I …that future we fantasized about and trying to make it a reality.
“If you could live anywhere in real life or a fictional place, where would it be?”
My brows rose at the question, and I punched the ignition button with my thumb before glancing over the center console.
Darren shut the door but immediately rolled down the window, as if the pressure was too much.
Licking my lips heavily, I let my mind wander on that notion as I twisted to back out of my spot. I’d lived too many places, in my personal opinion, but my favorite had to be Los Angeles. The weather had two settings: hot and blisteringly hot and I hated the cold. I hated the dirty streets of New York City, and I hated Oregon because of my allergies. “I really liked living in Los Angeles, actually. It’s always hot, which is great. My allergies don’t get too bad, either.”
Darren’s breath hitched lightly as his surprised eyes bored into the side of my face.
Arching a brow quizzically, I pulled out onto the street before he spoke up a bare whisper, “I didn’t know you had allergies, Delilah.”
My lips parted in an O before I scrunched up my nose and I managed a faint shrug.
“What are you allergic to?” he asked.
“It’s not a really bad allergy, but most pollen. Growing up, allergy seas
on was insufferable. Sometimes, I couldn’t go outside or to school or anything.” My admission earned me silence, and I glanced over.
Darren’s gaze left me. It looked a torturous expression on his face that only came with realization.
He didn’t know I was allergic to something…one of the most basic, fundamental, first things asked on a date. Questions that he’d never bothered with.
My heart ached for him, but how bad could I really feel about it?
“Are you allergic to any food?”
“Shellfish...but I like fish. I just can’t eat lobster, shrimp, and stuff. It’s not a terrible allergy, but it’s bad enough that I carry around an EpiPen. I haven’t had to use it since I was a kid, though, I don’t think.”
Darren ducked his head, propping his elbow on the open window to push his knuckles into his temple. “Good. That’s good that they’re not severe.” Darren’s Russian accent peeked through in his tone, a sure sign he was distressed.
I ground my teeth in the ensuing silence.
“...I really fucked this up, didn’t I, Delilah?”
“Um...not irreparably.” My answer hung heavy between us, as I drove a leisurely 30 miles per hour, away from Carlyle’s compound and I only just began to feel free.
8
Darren
Smiling as Delilah struggled to keep her ice cream from melting down her cone, I leaned back on the bench to savor the moment. When I blinked, her image branded in my mind, with her tongue out and her nose scrunched in concentration. Her red hair shimmered in the sun, the greenish-blue over her shoulder soaking up the rays.
“You need help?”
Vibrant, green eyes met mine, and Delilah shook her head.
I adjusted my grip on my own cup of ice cream, twirling the spoon between my fingers. “What about being a teacher? You don’t miss it?”
“I don’t miss teaching second grade, for sure. Maybe if I’d taught another grade, I’d like it. I didn’t expect to like teaching, but I had to do something and my mom’s a teacher, so...” Trailing off, she licked her ice cream around the rim once more.
I was taken off guard again.
She went on, “She was all like ‘well, at least it’s a surefire job’ and I was dumb enough to believe her. After I got my degree, my mom couldn’t deliver me a job, so I moved to Los Angeles and got the second grader job after one of the super old ladies died or something, and man was it terrible.”
“But...I thought your mom was ignoring you because of your ‘modelling’? You’d think after she made you go to college and didn’t back up her promise, she’d expect you to go into something else. She sounds like a...complicated woman.”
Puffing out her lips, Delilah shrugged as she reached her free hand to pick an invisible piece of lint off her skirt. “I honestly think she believes all that stuff about modelling, and it wasn’t like I already didn’t care about my looks or anything, so the leap was easy for her.”
I took a spoonful of my black cherry ice cream and nodded.
Delilah tucked her gorgeous auburn hair behind her ear to expose her lean jaw. “I haven’t talked to her in years. My mom has always been judgmental and tried to push her ways onto me. It got so bad when I was a teenager that we would go weeks without talking to each other. When I moved out for college, I seriously considered changing my major, but I didn’t know what to, so...”
“They’re stereotypes for a reason, I guess. My dad was so pissed when I started working for Makovich. He said once before running back to America that he’d rather be dead than work for an imbecile like Aleksander. He came back and got himself in prison, though, so I’m not sure who’s more the idiot…me or him.” Casting Delilah a curious glance, I licked my lips heavily as she hummed softly across the bench. “Did you know that Carlyle is allowing the Russians to operate in America?”
Delilah tensed, the same worries I had flashing in her moss-colored eyes as they flickered to catch mine.
Faint anxiety pooled in my gut and I stuffed my spoonful into my mouth.
Now, she slowly licked her vanilla cone. “Are you going to hide?”
Ah wasn’t that the question of the moment? Having Aleksander’s goonies on my ass wasn’t ideal, but I felt fairly confident that he’d leave me alone. After all, even though I wasn’t making him money, I still had potential to smooth his rocky relationship with Carlyle Santino.
“Either way...it doesn’t really matter, does it?” She shrugged. “Unless something happens, it’s safe to assume that nothing will happen.”
“That’s how I see it. I’m not concerned.” I was starting to realize how prevalent danger had become to me, and I frowned at my ice cream absently. “I wonder when I got to that point...being unconcerned about people trying to kill me.”
“Probably, when they failed the fourth time.”
Her remark quirked up my lips briefly as Delilah crossed her long, lean legs at the knee out of the top of my field of vision. Sitting here, on a bench, in a park, eating ice cream...it was a scene out of my wildest dream, but I still managed to bring up work somehow. Fucking shit.
“We should sign up for a pottery class or something together.”
Surprise twitched my brows, and I clenched my jaw as I glanced over at Delilah through narrowed eyes. I knew she wasn’t artsy, but was she really grasping at straws to just be with me?
Her face tinged pink.
Suddenly, realization crept up on me. “...Why are you asking me questions, hoping I’ll shoot you down?”
Scrunching up her nose in discomfort, Delilah shrugged a little at my question and ducked her head.
“Delilah, I’m trying to get on your good side. That’s kinda difficult if you suggest pottery classes.”
“I know that—It’s just his whole evening, I’ve been thinking that I really don’t like you.”
Blood drummed in my ears as my heart stuttered at her confession.
Delilah inhaled deeply through her nose before staring me in the face. “I appreciate that you asked me out on a date instead of trying to pick up where we left off, but...it’s like you’re groveling, and I don’t like it. You shouldn’t act different because I’m upset with you.”
“I’m not acting different.” Immediately on the defense, my throat tightened when Delilah shot me the most stupid look from under her long, blonde lashes. The panic that swam in my veins flared, and I tore my gaze off her to stare at a particularly long blade of grass. “I don’t know what you want from me but my effort, Delilah.”
“An apology would be nice...” Delilah scooted over the worn stone to me until she brushed her arm against mine.
Surprise knocked the stale air from my lungs. The hairs on my forearm stood up, and I bit my inner cheek.
She continued, “I’m not going to hang the past five years over you, Darren. I just don’t want to keep feeling like I’m not important to you.”
“I came all the way here for you…how can you.” Biting my tongue before I said something I would regret, I swiped my hand down my jaw. “You don’t know me enough to think I’m not acting like myself. That’s the whole point of this...dating thing.”
Delilah’s stare grew sharper on me. “I can tell.”
Her short, infuriating answer thinned my lips, and I tilted my head.
Delilah leaned against my arm to rest her cheek on my shoulder. “Just because you’re trying to make me like you, Darren, doesn’t mean you should get on your knees and beg. That’s the whole reason I said ‘yes’ to this ‘dating thing’...because I know that you’re better than you have been. Forgiveness and redemption are different.”
Gingerly pressing my cheek against her crown, I exhaled a hard breath as I took in Delilah’s words. The ball of tension in my chest eased a little as I reached to hold her slender hand in mine. She smelled like the sun and a faint hint of some shampoo, I couldn’t quite pinpoint. I never wanted to be without this scent, this feel of her... “I hate my American accent.”
My grumble ea
rned me a smile, Delilah’s cheek puffing slightly against my shoulder as she rubbed the back of my palm with her thumb.
In my lap, my ice cream glinted in the waning gold of late evening and I frowned under furrowed brows. I’d always been good at hiding my Russian accent simply because my clients couldn’t understand me.
But now, I had no clients, and I didn’t have to hide anymore.
I opened my mouth again, but the buzzing in my pocket cut me off. I scowled darkly as Delilah lifted her head off my shoulder. Fishing the device out of my pants, my eyes narrowed into slits when I saw Carlyle’s name flash insistently on the screen.
“Answer it.” She nodded.
Shooting her an apologetic look, I swiped the screen before standing up to stretch my body, flexing my toes in my shoes. “Hello?” Sourness coated my tongue, and I set my ice cream cup on the bench as the line crackled ominously.
“I have a proposal for you, Darren. Feel free to decline, although I don’t think you will.”
I cast Delilah an exasperated look before wandering off a few feet.
Carlyle didn’t bother waiting for a reply before continuing, “I’m offering to send you to Portland to advise Oran for a few days. I want this transition to go as smoothly as possible. As it so happens, Portland’s fair season is starting next week. Oran’s a quick learner, so I’m sure you’ll have plenty of free time to get your fuck buddy to take you back. I’ll be taking my wife. It’ll be fun, like a company team-building exercise.”
Alarm bells rang in my head shrilly as my brows rose in surprise.
Carlyle actually chuckled a deeply amused baritone over the line.
Glancing over at Delilah, I cleared my throat roughly and shrugged at her curious look. “Do I have a choice?”
“Of course, you do. It’ll look bad if you don’t go, but you haven’t been on America soil for a whole 24 hours yet, Darren. I wouldn’t have offered if the fairs weren’t going on, but I thought this would be a good time to suss out your future. I’m well aware of all that Delilah has gone through, remember? So ask her.”