Rylan waited until she’d moved down the bar to shake his head. “You never turn it off, do you?”
“Like you do?”
With a sad chuckle, Rylan picked up his drink. “Not sure I remember how to turn it on anymore.”
Chase did a double take. “Wait. I’m sorry, I thought I was meeting Rylan Bellamy for drinks.”
Rylan shrugged. He and Chase had gotten into a lot of trouble together in their day, but things changed. He had changed.
He set his glass down and managed a smile. “So what the hell have you been up to?”
As it turned out, Chase had been up to kind of a lot. Gander and Sons had been growing like crazy, even after the fallout from the Bellamy scandal. They’d stayed on as general counsel for Rylan’s father’s company, though Chase had mostly moved on to other accounts.
Rylan shook his head. “I’m still sorry about that. If I’d had any idea what the old man was doing…”
“No one knew.”
But Rylan should have.
Rylan caught a glimpse of his own face in the mirror behind the bar, and hell. He glanced away, working to smooth out his expression, to wipe the poison from his mouth.
Chase paused for a second. Apparently sensing the need for a change of subject, he segued into an account of all the shit their social set had been getting into in the past year. Heiresses and moguls. Hushed whispers and betrayals. Rylan’d always had a vague sense of all the goings-on before, but hearing it in summary was worse than a soap opera.
“Damn.” He shook his head. This was the stuff Kate feared, maybe. The detachment from reality. The waste. All of a sudden, his throat threatened to close. He coughed, then drained his drink.
Chase quirked a brow.
“You ever stop and think about how ridiculous our lives are?” Rylan asked, voice dark. When Chase didn’t answer, Rylan motioned with his hand as if he could encapsulate the whole of it. “The who’s-sleeping-with-who and the”—he gestured at Chase—“the suits.” He didn’t know what this glass of whiskey cost, but he could guess. “Even going to a place like this.” One you needed an invitation and a trust fund to get access to, all dark wood paneling and crystal. “The games.” Bitterness flooded his mouth.
Kate would hate it.
For a long, long moment, Chase sized him up. Then he tipped his own glass back. Setting it down, he tapped the rim.
As if she’d been waiting for the signal—because she had been, of course she had—the bartender swooped in, silent and efficient as she refilled them.
Once she’d retreated, Chase turned to Rylan again. “You always did have a shit way of looking at things.”
Rylan just about choked. “Excuse me?”
“You remember how we met?”
What did that have to do with anything?
“Because I do,” Chase said. “Christ, you were a little shit back then. It was our first year at Exeter, wasn’t it?” At Rylan’s nod, he continued on. “I was heading out of the locker room after soccer practice, minding my own business, when I stumble upon this kid. All of, what, fourteen years old? Five foot three and a hundred pounds, and beating the hell out of a punching bag, and do you remember why?”
Rylan did. Even though it was the good stuff, his next pull at his whiskey burned.
“Because your daddy got you a nice room without a roommate, and you were convinced you were missing out. Like there was some lifelong connection you weren’t going to make or something.”
It seemed so ridiculous now. But he’d been told by the sons of his father’s friends that going off to boarding school meant roommates.
It meant not being alone.
“Only you.” Chase shook his head. “Any other guy would be thrilled to have a safe place to jerk off without some mouth breather snoring in the other bunk. And nothing’s changed, has it?”
“Because I still get to jerk off in private?”
Chase wiped the condensation from his glass and flicked it at Rylan’s face. “Poor little tiny teenage Bellamy. He has a rich daddy and has to go to a fancy school and have a room all to himself. What a burden.”
Rylan grabbed a cocktail napkin from the bar and dabbed at the droplets on his cheek. “Fuck off.”
“Poor grown-up, stick-up-his-ass Bellamy. His life is so terrible he has to run off to Paris for a year—”
“I said fuck off.” It had been a mistake coming here. Reconnecting with the people from what had used to be his life. They didn’t understand.
“Rylan. Dude.” Chase caught his arm and gave him a shake. “Our life is awesome. I mean, there’s shit in it, don’t get me wrong. We keep a lot of therapists in business. But we can afford to.”
Rylan snorted into his whiskey. “Great.”
“Stop acting like it’s such a tragedy, having nice stuff, or access to nice places. Just enjoy it, for fuck’s sake.”
And something inside Rylan snapped. Guilt had been eating at him for so long, he wasn’t sure there’s was anything left to gnaw. He’d fucked up with Kate, and he’d left his sister to fend for herself as she kept his damn birthright afloat. He’d let Kate’s reaction to who he really was turn from guilt to shame, let her kick him out of her bed because she couldn’t handle it. Couldn’t handle him, even when he’d given his all to her.
When she’d decided the real him wasn’t enough.
His glass made a cracking sound as he slammed it down too hard against the bar. “Fine.” He looked to Chase. Maybe he was right. Maybe it was time to let it all go and enjoy himself, at least for a little while. Time to stop letting his own life weigh him down. “And how, precisely, would you suggest I do that?”
The corner of Chase’s mouth twitched up. “I have a couple of ideas.”
Chase’s first idea was another, bigger glass of liquor, and after that, all of his ideas started to sound good. From the car service that took them to the other side of town to the even more exclusive club, the hundred Chase tucked into a greeter’s palm and the velvet booth they slotted themselves into. The music thrummed, and there were girls. Beautiful girls, and there’d been a time, not that long ago, when they would have seemed like good ideas, too.
With a particularly busty one perched on his lap and another drink in his hand, Chase shot Rylan a raw, sloppy smile from across their booth. “See?” he shouted over the roar of the club. “Tell me this isn’t awesome.”
And Rylan took it all in. The girls were nice as hell to look at, even if he wasn’t going to touch. Big tits and tiny skirts. The cushions were soft against his back, and the whiskey so damn smooth.
His neck didn’t want to hold itself up, but it wasn’t like the last time he’d gotten himself wasted. Everything felt good.
He let his head loll backward and stared up at a ceiling made up in blue velvet and stars. “It does not suck.”
Chase jostled the girl and his drink both with the force of his laughter. “Finally.” He kissed the girl’s cheek. “My buddy admitted something doesn’t suck.” He pulled back, his hand drifting higher on her thigh. “I bet you do, though.”
Shit, but the girl was eating it up.
Chase caught Rylan’s eye. “What do you say?” He bounced his knee, and the girl bounced, too. So much bouncing. “For old time’s sake.”
It had been a long time since the two of them had shared a girl. It had been good, though. It’d be good.
But his gut turned over. He shook his head and his vision swam. He closed his eyes. “I don’t think so, man.”
Time went sideways on him then for a while, and the next thing he knew, Chase was leaning forward across the table, his entertainment for the evening gone. He pressed a bottle of water into Rylan’s hand, already open, thank fuck. Rylan got it to his mouth and sucked the cool, cool liquid down. It made his stomach feel worse but his head a little better.
“Come on,” Chase said.
Chase got him out the door—how? He’d had almost as much to drink as Rylan had. They didn’t have to wait long
for the car to collect them, and about a second after Rylan’s face hit the plush leather of the backseat, he was drifting, imagining soft fingers in his hair.
Fingers that couldn’t be there. A sharp stab of panic had him lifting his head.
He hadn’t done anything, but she wouldn’t like this. Not any of it.
He scrambled, looking around, but it was only him and Chase. “Don’t tell Kate,” he managed to get out, and even that was the wrong answer, wasn’t it? He was supposed to tell her everything now.
Chase laughed. “What happens in Vegas, buddy.”
He set his head back down. The next time he opened his eyes, the world was a bit less blurry, and the car had stopped. Chase opened the door and coaxed Rylan along. “Pretty sure you should bunk with me tonight. Lexie’d have my head if I let you go back to her place now.”
Ugh, Rylan wasn’t going to argue him on that.
Chase’s apartment at least was still more or less the same as Rylan remembered, open and airy, with rock album covers on the wall and the sleekest, prettiest baby grand in a corner. Flagging, Rylan dropped himself into one of the bar stools set up by the counter. He caught a glimpse of the time and groaned. “Shit, is it really that late?” Another hour and late would officially be early. Chase was hardly going to get any sleep at all.
“Yup. Coffee?”
Rylan nodded. “I’m sorry, man.”
“We’ve done worse.”
Chase didn’t stop at coffee. He got some eggs and toast going, too, and by the time Rylan’d gotten all of that and a handful of Advil down, he was almost feeling human again.
“So,” Chase said, leaning back in his stool. “You want to tell me what that shit show was about?”
“Not really. If you want to go try and grab a couple of hours…”
“Better just to stay up at this point.” And he wasn’t wrong; already, the sky was starting to lighten through the window. Then his face was in Rylan’s. “Now stop avoiding the question. Talk.”
But Rylan’s breath was frozen. He’d been alone for what felt like so long, living in this self-imposed exile, and maybe he hadn’t had to. Chase had tried to show him tonight, hadn’t he? This life he hated didn’t have to suck. He didn’t have to be alone.
“Fuck.” He dropped his head into his hands. “It’s just…It’s all so messed up.”
“What’s so messed up?”
“I…” Finally, he looked up. And the frozen piece of him cracked. “I met this girl.”
After that, it all spilled out. He kept the details to himself—what Kate felt like in his hands and on his tongue, how his whole body quaked at the triumph of bringing her to a new height. But in generalities, he laid it out. Meeting this woman who’d seen through so much of his bullshit and through the emptiness he’d surrounded himself with. Who loved art and who’d made him want more.
How it had all come tumbling down as soon as she’d found out who and what he was.
“She says she wants to know who I really am, but she hates the money. She doesn’t care about the company or my family or any of it.”
That had been the appeal, at the beginning. It’d been such a relief to have someone like him for him, and not the trappings. But now the trappings were keeping them apart.
“What the fuck does she even want from me, you know?”
“Take it from me,” Chase finally chimed in, clinking his mug against Rylan’s. “The exact opposite of whatever the hell you seem to think she does.”
“What?”
“It’s how girls work. You know this.”
He didn’t. He was starting to think he didn’t know anything.
“How many times have we picked up chicks with a round of drinks or a ride in a fancy car? They turn to butter in your hands, man. Don’t you remember?”
“Those girls were different.” He’d never felt like this about any of them.
Chase’s mouth flattened, a grim line. His voice went eerily cold. “Girls. Are. All. The. Same.”
And for a second, it was like that awful night a few years ago. The night Chase had driven all the way back to New York, hardly seeing straight, blowing off his classes, ready to blow off law school entirely, because his fiancée—his ex-fiancée had jumped into bed with someone even richer…
Rylan swallowed. “Not all of them.”
A long moment passed, but then the harsh lines to Chase’s face smoothed out. He let out this echo of a laugh and turned to gaze at his mug. “Enough of them.” When he twisted around enough for Rylan to see him again, the deadness to his eyes was less jarring, his tone more even. “They just. They’re raised on Disney princesses, you know? You joke about all the bullshit drama with heiresses, but the rest of them? They all want their prince to show up in his carriage.” He glanced at Rylan with a sad, flickering smile. “They want the fantasy.”
“You think?”
“I bet you. She may say she doesn’t want it, but I dare you. Give her the rich guy cliché experience. If she doesn’t swoon I’ll…I’ll…” He searched for a second, then snapped his fingers. “I’ll give you a weekend with Betty. A week, even.”
“Betty?” Rylan sat up straighter at that.
There was nothing—absolutely nothing—Chase was more protective of than his car. As crazy as his advice sounded, he was serious.
“Betty.” Chase nodded, like that was that. “I keep trying to tell you, Ry. It’s like everything else with this life. You can wallow in the parts of it that suck, or you can embrace the good parts.” He gestured around at his apartment, and the contrast with Lexie’s took Rylan off guard, now that he was looking for it.
Lexie had spent her money paying someone to make it look like she had taste. Chase had spent his exuberantly, with relish, on things he loved. His cars and his piano, his view of the city and his books.
He enjoyed it.
“Embrace the money,” Chase said. “Show her how good it can be. And I promise you. She’ll change her tune.”
The cynicism behind that promise was a thickness at the back of Rylan’s throat. Kate had entranced him because she was different. If Chase was right, it would mean she was really the same.
But what other choice did he have? If they were going to make this work, she had to know him in and out.
The good. The bad.
And was it really all that wrong? Wanting to show her the best parts first?
Chapter SIX
Wrong, wrong, wrong, it was all wrong. Kate didn’t actually throw her paintbrush across the room, but it was a near thing.
With a huff, she dropped the brush into a jar of turpentine and turned away.
Sacred spaces. She’d been working all week to home in on that theme, had even gone out and scouted more locations, filling up the memory card of her crappy camera with photographs of Brooklyn churches. The scene she was working from now had so much potential—gorgeous, ethereal light slanting down through leaves onto old stone. She’d had all these ideas for layering thin washes of pigment on the canvas to make the space shine. To make it look sacred. Reverent.
She blew out a sigh. Maybe the result wasn’t as bad as she imagined it was.
Holding her breath, she spun back around. And tears welled up in her eyes. Damn. It was even worse. The proportions and the perspective were fine, but there wasn’t any heart to it. Lifeless and flat, the image stared back at her, evoking no emotional reaction from her at all.
She clenched her hands into fists. Fine. She’d set it aside for now. She’d been working here in her apartment for hours now, and she wasn’t thinking straight anymore. Tomorrow, she’d be able to come at it with fresh eyes.
But first. Tonight.
Crossing her arms over her chest, she leaned against the wall, letting her head drop back to rest against it. Exhaustion fell over her, and she closed her eyes.
Rylan had waited forever to call, and it had been a relief and a disappointment. Until finally, exactly three days after he’d turned her life inside out, he�
��d invited her to a night on the town, dinner “someplace nice” and a show. He hadn’t volunteered any more details, and she’d been so close to throwing her hands up in the air and calling the whole thing off. His ridiculous, pointless plan for them to try again—to really get to know each other this time. It’d never work.
But then she’d remembered the weight of his hips pressed to hers, the warmth of his breath on her skin, his lips at her ear, the hot fullness as he’d eased inside. The way he’d looked on a hotel bed in Paris, smooth skin lit up by the dappled sun.
She’d said yes.
Two hours from now, he’d be showing up at her doorstep. And yet here she was, still in her painting clothes, hair in a ponytail. Two hours—that was how long she had to fix this.
No way he was catching her unawares this time. He’d had the upper hand at every turn, but tonight she’d be prepared. She’d let him take her out, show her “his New York,” whatever that meant. She’d follow him home to his place, or maybe she’d bring him here. Then she’d ask him to put his mouth between her legs again, because the thought, the sense memory of it alone, had her clenching up inside. They’d—
They’d fuck, and it would be amazing. That part didn’t scare her anymore.
And after, they would each go home. Alone. She wouldn’t fall in love with him again. She had it all planned out.
What she hadn’t planned for was the buzzer going off while she was still cleaning up.
She swore beneath her breath and finished rinsing out the last brush before scrambling for the intercom. If this was Rylan and he was two full hours early, she was going to strangle him.
“Delivery for Ms. Reid?”
She wasn’t expecting a delivery. “Um. Okay.” Usually, she’d buzz the person up, but this was weird. “I’ll be right down.”
It wasn’t Rylan standing beyond the entryway, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out he was behind it. She opened the door to find not your typical bike messenger or UPS guy, but a…a…She wasn’t even sure. He wore the sort of hat chauffeurs did in movies, and a suit.
When she cracked the door open, he presented her with an armful of flowers, too many red roses to count. Perfect blooms. Gorgeous and generic, and she tried not to let that disappoint her. Rylan had brought her a single rose on their second date, had twirled it between his fingers as he’d waited for her in a sculpture garden on a Parisian afternoon, and she’d been charmed by it. This wasn’t quite so charming.
Eight Ways to Ecstasy Page 6