“I don’t.”
“Then maybe going home, right now, isn’t the best idea. You need to calm down. You need to start thinking like a grown-up.”
I laugh, a cynical laugh, and she lets go of me.
“Look, do what you want, Evan. Okay? Because I don’t have time for your crap anymore. I’m going back to L.A. in a day or so, I’ve done my bit. The rest is up to you.”
I sit down on the arm of the couch and drop my head, clasping my hands together between my knees. “I am grateful, Alicia.” I slowly raise my gaze. “For everything they did for me. I know… I know their methods, the way they guided me and Heath toward something they probably wanted more than we did – I know that wasn’t done out of spite or even selfishness, I know it was done because they only wanted us to have the kind of life they had, but...” I drop my head again, and I close my eyes and take a short, deep breath, “but the kind of life they had, when I look back on it all, it was cold. One dimensional, almost.” I once more look up and her eyes meet mine. “They were emotionless, at times, and in doing what they did, raising us like they did, pushing us constantly in the way that they did… I became like them. And for a long time I didn’t see that, even when I was married to Dana, I didn’t see that, in the beginning. Neither of us did, because she came from a family just like mine. But then I realized. I saw the problem, and I got out. But it wasn’t until Lola…”
I stop talking, and I stand up and go back over to the window, digging my hands in my pockets as I look outside again.
“Lola changed me. She opened up all those repressed emotions, all those pent-up feelings, and I fell in love, Alicia. For the first time in my fucking life, I fell in love.”
I turn around and lean back against the window ledge, and she walks over to me, her eyes never leaving mine. “You never loved me then, huh?”
“I never loved anyone. Until Lola.”
“Then if she can do all of that; if she can change you and make you this whole new person, then why don’t you talk to her, Evan? She’s your wife.”
I drag a hand back through my hair and sigh quietly. “I’m terrified that involving her in that side of my life… I’m scared it’ll affect us.”
“Evan King scared of a challenge, huh?” The corner of her mouth twists up into a small smirk, and I smile slightly.
“You saying that me going to my father’s funeral is a challenge?”
“No. But you’re making it one. I think you just need to go over there, talk to your mom, reconnect with Heath, and put all this shit behind you.”
“Just like that, huh? Because you’re making it sound so easy.”
“It really doesn’t have to be that hard, Evan. And believe me, your mom is gonna be beyond happy to see you settling down…”
“You think she’s gonna be happy I married my secretary?”
Alicia raises an eyebrow, and then I realize how that sounded and I close my eyes and throw back my head and the sigh that escapes me this time is much, much heavier.
“Jesus!”
I stand up and face the window again, resting my forehead against the cool glass, closing my eyes.
“This is how they made me,” I say quietly, my eyes still closed. “This is the shit they instilled in me, that nothing but perfection is good enough.”
“I don’t understand…”
I open my eyes and I turn around, and I’m feeling that anger start to creep back again, it’s rising. The resentment, the frustration, it’s all flooding forward like a cruel and painful tidal wave. “To me, Lola is perfect. But to them, she’s just my secretary.”
“Evan…”
“So I can’t let them in, Alicia. I can’t let them into my life, I can’t risk them destroying what I have now, I’m not willing to put that on the line.”
“You’re not willing to stand up to them?”
I look at her, and for a couple of beats I say nothing. Because, in a way, she’s right. I’m a coward. And there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to believe that, that I’m a coward, it doesn’t feel right. But I’m protecting the thing that is most important to me now – my life. My life, not theirs. I’m protecting me and Lola, and if that’s being a coward then so be it.
“No. I’m not.”
She drops her head and sighs quietly. “You’re not coming, then? To the funeral?”
“No.”
She looks up and her eyes are almost pleading now, but I’m done here. “Just think about it, Evan. Okay? The funeral isn’t until next week, and…”
“Come say goodbye, before you go back to L.A.”
I’m already heading for the door, grabbing my jacket from the back of the couch. But before I leave I turn around and I give her a small smile.
“It really was good seeing you again, Alicia.”
“Yeah. Yeah, it was good seeing you, too.”
I’m going home now. I’m going back to my wife. Back to Lola. Back to a life I want to live, not one I was forced into.
I’m going home…
Lola
I close the door behind me and hang up my jacket, and I’m smiling, because that couple of hours with Jess was just what I needed. We drank beer from the bottle, played pool with a group of strangers that have now become friends, kicked back and relaxed as music played loud and we just chatted about everything from our favourite TV show reboots to sports and food and what gigs were happening in and around the Village. Gigs Jess and I just may go to, and meet up with those new-found friends we made tonight.
I had the best time. I was dressed in jeans, boots and a checked shirt, my hair pulled back in a high ponytail, and I was the most comfortable I’ve been in a long time. I didn’t feel the need to check myself in the mirror constantly to make sure I still looked good, I didn’t feel hemmed into a dress so tight and so fitted that eating anything was a terrifying prospect. I was just me. A me I don’t think I’ve been in a long while. A me I realize I can be, when I want to.
I head into the kitchen and I open the fridge and I get myself a glass of water. I also eye some left-over chicken that’s sitting there, but I’m not really hungry. We had the best lamb sliders and chilli fries I’ve ever tasted at the bar not two hours ago so I’d only be eating for eating’s sake now.
I close the fridge and sip my water as I lean back against the counter, staring out ahead of me at the stunning view of Manhattan from our floor-to-ceiling windows. And once again I realize how lucky I am, to have this life, to have a man I love and who loves me; to have my dream job in a city I was born in but never really knew until eleven or so years ago. But now it’s my home, and yeah, I’m lucky.
“Did you have a good time? With Jess?”
I look over as Evan walks into the kitchen, still dressed in his suit pants and shirt, so I’m guessing he hasn’t been home all that long, either.
“Yeah. I did. How did your meeting go?”
He drops his head, digging his hands into his pockets, and his body language immediately sets an alarm bell ringing. “There was no meeting, Lola.”
“Then where were you?” Why do I feel a sudden panic grip my gut? What am I expecting to hear him say?
“I was with Alicia.”
That panic grips a little bit tighter, and I feel sick to my stomach; do I need to be scared here? She’s his friend, she’s not in town for long. And that’s fine, if he wants to see her, that’s really okay. But he felt the need to hide it from me, and that isn’t okay.
“So, you lied to me.”
“I was protecting you, Lola. I was protecting us.”
“From what, Evan?”
I am not going to make more of this than it needs to be, I’m not doing that.
“I just needed to – to talk to someone who… She knows things, about my past, about my family, and I… But now we need to talk, Lola.”
I feel that knot in my gut pull even tighter, the nausea rising. “What’s going on, Evan?”
He holds out a hand and I take it, let him lead
me into the living room. And I sit down on the couch and I cross my legs up underneath myself and I wait, until he starts talking, before I actually take a breath, I hold it in there until he starts to speak.
He sits down on the coffee table opposite me, and he drops his head and he clasps his hands together in his lap, and as he slowly raises his head I don’t think I’ve felt a fear like it swamp me so fast I almost choke on that breath I’m still holding.
“My parents, they…”
He stops talking almost immediately, and I keep my eyes on him as his gaze drops once more, focusing on his clasped hands, and I wait for him to continue.
“I’m adopted, Lola.”
I don’t know what I was actually expecting him to say, but it wasn’t that. “Adopted?”
He nods, and he raises his gaze and his eyes meet mine and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look so sad. “I didn’t find out until I was in my late thirties.” He briefly looks down again, and he takes a deep, heavy breath before he looks back up at me. “My father was diagnosed with OPMD – Oculopharyngeal Muscular Dystrophy – a few years ago. It’s a very rare form of the condition, but, y’know, he probably thought that was an achievement, for him.”
I know there’s a reason for his flippancy, I can see it in his eyes, he isn’t comfortable talking about this. And I watch as he breaks the stare and once more looks down, raking a hand through his unusually disheveled hair.
“Children of people with OPMD, they have a fifty per cent chance of developing the condition themselves, so, when he was diagnosed it was advised that Heath – my brother – and me, we were advised to be tested, to see if we carried the gene that could trigger the condition, because this form of Muscular Dystrophy, the symptoms don’t usually start to show until between forty and sixty years of age. But there was a problem, y’know? When it came to testing me.”
“A problem?”
I just seem to be repeating things that he says, because I’m not sure what else to do, what else I can say, and I’m also scared that if I start talking he’ll stop. And I want him to open up to me, it’s what I’ve wanted all along, isn’t it?
“They – my parents – they told me I was fine. That I’d already been tested, just to be on the safe side, at my last health check a few days ago, and I was clear. So why keep that a secret, huh? Why not just tell me that? I guess that’s what fired off the first warning shot, that something wasn’t right. And that was it – when their years of molding me into their image, making me the best lawyer I could be – that was when it all backfired. Because I could tell they were lying. I hadn’t been tested. And they had no intention of getting me tested, because if they did – if they got me tested then I would find out that there wasn’t a need for any test, not where I was concerned. They were lying. So I did some digging, and I eventually found out the truth. A truth they couldn’t tell me themselves, they left me to find out who I really was all by myself; that I wasn’t their blood, I wasn’t their son, not by birth. That’s the kind of people they are. They’d spent every day since they brought me home lying to people, pretending they had this perfect life, this perfect family, when it was really a charade carried along by lies. They even told my brother about my adoption – they told Heath, but they decided not to tell me. Because I was the son of drug addicts. I was born a drug addict, and then bought by a middle-class couple who were having trouble conceiving kids of their own. A couple who thought they’d just speed up the process by buying a baby.”
I’m too stunned to say anything, I can only sit there and look at him as he once more drops his gaze, runs a hand through his hair, and I can tell by his shoulders how tense he is. And I don’t know whether to touch him or leave him or – I don’t know what to do.
“The adoption, was it… was it legal?”
His head shoots up and he looks at me, and he nods. “Yeah. It was all above board, they just chose not to tell people what they’d done. Instead they hid away, in their house in the Hamptons, spieling some story that my mother needed to rest, that her “pregnancy” was a difficult one, that she needed some time out, needed round-the-clock care. And then once a safe period of time had passed they, apparently, returned to Manhattan with this brand new baby and resumed their perfect life, which, just a year or so later was made all the more perfect by my mom actually falling pregnant for real. How ironic, huh?”
“Evan, I… You found all of this out by yourself? I mean, didn’t you ask…?”
“They refused to talk about it. I was their son, in their eyes, in the eyes of their friends, their peers, and I could never be anything else, because that would only soil this perfect existence they’d created. Another reason why they moved to California, after my father’s diagnosis. They couldn’t face cracks appearing in that life they had here in New York. So, yeah, I was left to dig up the facts behind my adoption all by myself. And once I’d done that, they asked me to keep it quiet, because nobody really needed to know, did they?” He laughs, but it’s such a cold laugh I actually feel my skin break out in goose bumps. “Nobody needed to know…” He rakes a hand through his hair again, and he briefly drops his gaze but his eyes are back on mine in less than a heartbeat. “It was a mess, Lola. This perfect life they thought they led. It was a mess. And okay, they brought me and Heath up to be successful, to have those careers they were so desperate for us to have, but in reality that was only so they could hold their heads up in those shit circles they mixed in. But it was a mess, when you scratched beneath the surface. And I still don’t understand why they bought a “damaged” baby, I mean, just the idea of introducing something that wasn’t perfect into a life they considered to be just that… it still doesn’t fit. It still confuses me.”
He gets up and goes over to the sideboard, pours himself a drink, and I watch as he knocks it back in one mouthful. And I can see now why the man I first met seemed so closed off to emotion, to relationships, to most things, except work and honing this reputation he once seemed so keen to live up to.
He looks over at me, and even from here I can still see something in his eyes that breaks my heart.
“My “real” parents, they died of a heroin overdose. Both of them. Together. Just a few weeks before my second birthday.”
“Jesus, Evan…”
I get up and go over to him, and he pulls me into his arms, holding me close, and I cling onto him as his fingers scrunch up the material of my T-shirt, so tight his fist must be balled right up.
“I should be grateful, y’know? That they got me out, that they gave me the life I’ve got, except… they didn’t give me the life I’ve got, did they?” He pulls back slightly, just so he can look at me, and I reach out and gently rest my palm against his cheek. “You did.”
I close my eyes as he kisses me, as he holds me even tighter, and I know what he wants now; what he needs.
“Come on,” I whisper, taking his hand, watching as his fingers curl around mine. “Let’s go to bed.”
Evan
I grasp her hips and pull them up toward me, and as I sink into her I feel that weight lift from my shoulders, albeit temporarily, I’m under no illusion that all that crap is finished with. By opening up to Lola like I have done, all those feelings, all that emotion and frustration and still-present anger that I’ve tried to keep down these past few years, that’s all resurfaced now. But this – I need this. I need her.
She sighs quietly as I thrust gently inside her, arching her back and gripping the corners of the pillow as her hips jerk upwards against mine, and she’s warm and wet, my beautiful, safe place. My escape. And for a few glorious minutes she makes me forget all the shit and believe that it’s only me and her and nothing can get to us, when we’re like this.
I pull out of her slightly, and I watch as her expression changes, her eyes begging me to finish this job, so I push gently back inside her, let my thrusts build up rhythm and pace, I enjoy the ride. But as her muscles contract around me she’s almost forcing me toward my endgame, and before
I can get my head around it I’m coming, hard and fast. I’m filling her with my frustration, and as she cries out I know she’s coming, too, her grip on my throbbing cock tightening even more, and together we reach one incredible, beautiful climax. But once it’s over; once we’re done, that frustration and anger, all those fucking emotions I never wanted to face up to ever again, they’re back. And she knows that.
I turn onto my back and she kneels up, clutching the sheet to her chest as she looks at me.
“I wanted to protect you, Lola. I wanted to protect us.”
“From what?”
“From all of this.”
“Why?”
“Because if I let them into my life…” I look up at the ceiling and I take a deep breath, and she doesn’t say anything. She’s waiting for me to continue. And I have to now. I’ve opened that box and I can’t slam it shut anymore. It’s way too late for that. I sit up and I look at her but her expression is expectant, she’s still waiting for that answer. “If I let them into my life, Lola – into our life, I’m terrified they’ll destroy it.”
“Why would they do that?”
She’s asking the kind of questions I’d expect her to ask, but I’m not sure I can give her any kind of definitive answer here. My family are complicated. Complex. But I don’t think I can shut myself away from them anymore, not if I want my marriage to survive. And I want that more than I want anything, but maybe I was risking it all the more by keeping all that shit from her, rather than opening up to her from the start. Maybe Dana, Alicia – maybe they were right.
“I don’t know, Lola. I just know that there’s always a motive, always a price to pay where my family is concerned. And if I go to that funeral – if we go to that funeral I’m scared, that they’ll say something or do something that’s gonna destroy us.”
“So don’t let them.”
I reach out and cup her cheek and I pull her forward until her mouth touches mine, and I breathe her in as I kiss her.
Willfully Hers (The Dirty Business Series Book 2) Page 8