by Lily Paradis
I have everything I need and more, so we walk out, and I lock up.
Both of our hands are completely full, so I don’t think the rule is going to take effect on this trip.
He proves me wrong.
The elevator arrives with a soft ding, and he follows me as I walk in. He presses the ground floor, and when I least expect it, he leans over and kisses me softly. It’s the sweetest kiss I’ve ever been given.
It’s different than any kiss I’ve ever been given because there’s something behind it.
It’s not all passion and lust. It’s something else.
Casper never kissed me like this even though I craved it.
Jesse didn’t kiss me like this because that kiss we shared was humiliating.
Hayden’s never kissed me like this, but I almost like it more than the others.
This means more.
And I want more.
Al helps us load all my belongings into the trunk of his car and drives us the few blocks to Hayden’s apartment. Al must be paid obscenely because he never objects to anything Hayden asks him to do. I wonder if Al has a family that he’s missing because he’s always here, and I start to feel guilty for using his services when we could have walked.
Hayden holds my hand the whole car ride, and I start to think we should have a rule about cars, too—except that we can’t because then we’d be that awful couple who can’t keep their hands off each other, and I hate that couple.
Al hands everything to one of the bellboys, who will take them up to Hayden’s penthouse via the service elevator. Hayden shakes his hand and smoothly plants a bill before he turns to Al to discuss tomorrow.
I zone out because I’m standing here, thinking about my life and what’s about to happen.
Not only tomorrow, but also tonight.
“Ready to go?” Hayden is talking to me now.
“Yes.”
I tell him yes because I like saying yes to Hayden Rockefeller more than I like just about anything.
This time, when we step into the elevator, I grab him before he can get to me.
My lips are on his before I know what I’m doing because I want this. I want him. I want a life with him, and I’ve never wanted a life with anyone other than Jesse before. I wish more than anything that, in this moment, I could reassign my soul mate. I wish that the powers that be would just detach me from Jesse, so I never have to think about him ever again, and I would have Hayden tunnel vision instead.
That doesn’t happen, so I have to give myself tunnel vision.
Everything is more frantic, and we’re still soaking wet. I know the doors are going to open soon and spill us out into his apartment. One of his hands is no longer on me because he’s reaching back to grab something.
The elevator jolts to a stop, and we separate momentarily.
He’s pulled the emergency stop button, and there’s an alarm ringing, but I don’t care.
I kiss him again as he pushes me into the wall, and my legs automatically go around his waist.
A voice on the intercom startles me.
“Mr. Rockefeller, there are cameras. You may own the building, but that doesn’t mean I want to watch this.”
From her voice, I’d say she’s a middle-aged woman sitting in security right now.
“So, don’t watch,” is Hayden’s golden response.
“Sir, I have to watch. It’s my job.”
He groans into my neck, and I lower my legs down to the floor. He reaches around and pushes the button in, so with a jolt, we’re moving again.
She doesn’t say anything else, and now, I want out of this elevator.
I let out an audible sigh, which makes him grin this lazy grin that I never want wiped off his face for as long as he lives.
Then, the doors are opening, and he’s picking me up and carrying me to his bedroom. His sheets are black like my soul. Good. Black is a calming color.
Except I’m only seeing red.
My shirt that’s really his shirt is on the floor by now, and his hands are running over my shoulders and down to my rib cage, his lips never leaving mine.
“Tate, what’s this?”
His fingers graze over my ribs again, and he stops kissing me.
He can feel where the letters were shoved into my skin with needles—letters that no one sees, and no one knows they exist. They’re raised because my skin didn’t handle the needle well. It bruised and scarred, and now, if you could erase the ink, the embossing would still be there.
“Can I read it?”
He looks intrigued, so I nod, knowing what he’s silently reading.
Because I could not stop for Death -
He kindly stopped for me -
The Carriage held but just Ourselves -
And Immortality.
He stares at it and runs his fingers over it again before he reads it out loud. I’m afraid he’s going to hate that I have a tattoo, but I got it in remembrance of my parents, so he can’t hate it even if he wants to.
“Emily Dickinson,” he says. It’s not a question. He knows the poem.
“I’ve loved that poem my whole life, but I finally got it when I was eighteen. I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to die with them.”
He takes a step back away from me. “I know the feeling.”
There’s something dark in his eyes as he walks to his dresser. For a moment, he just stands there, and then in traditional boy fashion, he pulls his shirt off from the back.
I’m not at all expecting to see a series of roman numerals inked on his left shoulder blade.
He doesn’t turn around, so I step forward and trace each one of the numbers with my index finger. The muscles in his back flex lightly under my touch, but he doesn’t move otherwise.
XI.VII.MMVIII.
November 7, 2008.
“What is this?” I whisper.
He turns around. “My brother died in a car accident the night before his wedding.”
I take a breath because I’m starting to see part of the reason I’m drawn to Hayden. Something that’s been there all along, but I’ve only seen the surface that everyone else gets to see. The Rockefeller.
“What is this?” I ask again even though I think I already know.
Hayden takes a pause before he answers me.
“It’s his death date.”
Then, that’s it. The undercurrent of darkness that lives inside of Hayden surfaces. It’s the same kind that lives inside me, and I know it’s what drew us together and why I couldn’t place it before. He hides it so much better than I do, but I’ve never felt more emotion in my life than in this moment when I realize Hayden has something more for me than Jesse.
As he turns around, I pull him to me, and I’m standing on my toes, kissing him. He’s surprised because I think he expected me to walk away after he told me he tattooed his dead brother’s death date on his back on the left side of his body where his heart sits instead of what I’m doing right now.
Right now, it’s not enough to have just a little bit of Hayden.
I want all of him.
I want to be engulfed by him.
I want him to set me on fire and let me burn until I’m nothing but ashes.
Then, I want him to set a flame to those ashes because he’s the only one who can.
Now
THERE’S A CERTAIN beauty in sleeping beside another person. You’re in their space, and they’re in yours, and you’re both at your most vulnerable. The trust required to sleep next to someone and truly feel safe is incredible. It’s a beautiful thing to be able to roll over and into their arms, and they’re not upset about being woken. They want you there just as much as you want to be, and I’ve never felt that before now.
I’m staring at Hayden, and his death-date tattoo is facing me. I’m about to reach out to touch it when I’m startled by the sound of the elevator doors opening in the atrium and the clack of high heels that follows.
“Hayden! Wake up, and answer your pho
ne!”
I’m about to kill him because some woman is stalking in here, looking for him, and I’m not wearing clothes.
I actually have no idea where my clothes are, so this isn’t going to go well.
I slink down deeper into his cloud of a bed when he calmly sits up and rubs his face.
“Shut up, Addison. I’m awake.”
He leans over and kisses me like he doesn’t have a care in the world.
“We’re awake.”
It’s unfortunate that he says that last part just as she’s walking through the door of his bedroom, and her eyes go wide when she sees me cowering behind him.
“Oh. Oh. I see you’ve had a busy morning.”
She stands there with her arms crossed, looking at me like she doesn’t have any shame.
“It has been,” Hayden answers without missing a beat. “Addison, this is Tate McKenna.”
She comes forward to shake my hand while I’m trying to hold Hayden’s sheets up with the other.
“Addison Rockefeller,” she says. She kicks Hayden’s sweatpants out of the way as she retreats.
I’m assuming she’s the sister he mentioned before, and apparently the one who knows Evanna, but I don’t see the family resemblance. In fact, she looks more like me than she does like him.
“Well, I’ll let you two finish up in here,” she says suggestively as she pulls the bedroom door almost shut. “But you’d better hurry. We still have to catch the helicopter to Kyler Place.”
“You take the helicopter, Addy. We’ll drive.”
“Suit yourself, lovebirds.”
Then she’s gone.
I’m sitting there, clinging on to the sheets for dear life, and Hayden doesn’t find anything wrong with this situation. I scoff, to which Hayden’s response is to roll over and kiss me, like that solves everything.
Except, it works, and I hate the fact that I let it.
“Addy?” I say once I’ve disentangled myself from him enough that my head isn’t cloudy.
“My sister. It’s complicated,” he confirms.
I wonder how a sister can be complicated. Then, I remember my own, and I don’t ask any more questions.
He reaches over me to check the time on his phone. “Well,” he says in that morning voice that’s going to drive me wild every time I hear it, “we’ve got an hour before we have to leave. I’d say that’s more than enough time, wouldn’t you?”
I’m out of bed before he can seduce me again.
“Maybe for you. I just met your sister while I look like an urchin, and I’m not going to meet your mother that way, too.”
Somewhere inside me, propriety takes hold. I also realize that I wouldn’t care what I looked like meeting his mother if I didn’t care about him.
But I know that I do—deeply. I just don’t want to admit it.
So, I lean down and press my lips gently to his, giving him the same kind of kiss that he gave me in the elevator last night when our hands were full. It’s the kind that tells him something my voice refuses to say, but my heart already knows.
Hayden’s holding one of my hands because I kept smoothing my dress down. I’m blithely aware of the fact that I’m wearing white, and I hate white. I added a red necklace to make it look like I’m a festive holiday person even though I’m not. I despise holidays that aren’t Halloween. I’m Scrooge.
Hayden has gathered as much, but his family knows nothing.
His family needs to like me.
I never thought I’d be grateful for the finishing classes Lara sent me to, but in this moment, I am. I need to impress the Rockefellers, which might be harder than impressing the Hales.
“Stop, Tate,” he says as he opens the passenger-side car door for me. “They’ll love you.”
I give him a look as I climb into the car. Every time I get into the front seat of a car, I think about the fact that my mother died in one of these. So did my father, but he was driving. My mother was in a seat just like this one when she took her last breath.
Hayden shuts the door and climbs into the driver’s seat.
Now, he’s where Denny sat.
I remember his tattoo and how his brother died in a car accident before his wedding. I wonder which seat he was sitting in.
Hayden starts the car, and I’m so distracted by everything that I haven’t realized he’s driving.
“Where’s Al?”
“We don’t need him.”
“You can drive?”
I realize this is a foolish question as the words are leaving my mouth, but they come out anyway.
He takes my hand and sets it on his knee before he reaches over it to shift the car. “Just because I have a driver doesn’t mean I can’t drive.”
He proves it by revving the car up and entering the street from the underground door with unreal grace. Then, he takes my hand on his leg and laces his fingers through mine.
He doesn’t say anything else. He just drives. I look out the window, praying to whatever entity is out there that I can do this and that I can do this well.
My anxiety is palpable, and he sighs as he turns onto the highway that will take us north to Kyler Place.
“My mother’s name is Lane. My father’s name is John. You’ve already met Addison.”
“What was your brother’s name?”
“John.”
“After your father?”
“Yes.”
He pulls the car down an exit ramp, and my heart starts to race so loudly that I’m sure he can hear it. This car is so quiet that I barely knew he started it in the garage. I hate this. I hate caring, and I’ve never cared in my life. When I met Casper’s mother, I was drunk. I was belligerent. I didn’t care, but I care now.
“Did he look like you?”
I can tell by his face that I’m asking sensitive questions, but I ask them anyway. I need a distraction, and I know he’s willing to give it.
“Yes.”
“But Addison doesn’t.”
“Addison isn’t my biological sister.”
“Oh.”
And then, we’re here. I recognize the grounds from the pictures that Catherine sent me when I told her I was going.
My heart keeps pounding, and I want to cut it out of my chest.
I didn’t know I had a heart made of flesh and blood until today.
It’s good to know but also awful to feel.
“Miss McKenna.” An attendant is opening the car door.
I’m forced into the sunlight. I want to shrivel up like a vampire and hide inside the car with Hayden until this is all over.
Except, he’s climbing out and handing another attendant his keys. Then, he’s pulling his sunglasses out of his perfectly tailored pocket. The suit he’s wearing is to me what lingerie is to men, and I’m not sure how I’m going to deal with this in front of his family.
He takes my hand and squeezes it again before leading me up the steps. I see Addison waiting at the door with a drink in her hand.
“Ah, lovebirds,” she says under her breath, so I just barely catch it. “They’re here!” she calls into the house. She stalks in while she eats an olive from her martini glass.
A whiff of perfume hits me as a short woman is suddenly straining his grasp on me when she leans into hug him.
“So, who is this you’ve brought?”
She kisses him on both cheeks, and I wonder how he doesn’t drown in her perfume.
I don’t have to think for long because then she’s air-kissing my cheeks, and I have to hold my breath and smile the way Cece taught me with our Great Aunt Lizzy.
“You know who I’ve brought. Mother, this is Tate. Tate, this is my mother, Lane.”
I call her Mrs. Rockefeller as I shake her hand and tell her I’m pleased to meet her. She doesn’t tell me to call her Lane, and I start to chew on the side of my lip.
“Son, welcome.”
A man steps into the room, and I immediately understand where Hayden gets his looks from. He’s tall and
debonair, and even though he’s aged, he has a certain sophistication about him that makes everyone else in the room look inferior.
He shakes Hayden’s hand and stops when he gets to me.
“Beautiful, Miss McKenna. My son’s claims aren’t exaggerated for once.”
He gives Hayden a meaningful look as he takes my hand and kisses it.
“Come, come.” Mrs. Rockefeller breaks the moment and leads her husband down the marble hallway. “Henry, you must tell us how the acquisition went yesterday.”
At first, I think I’ve heard her wrong because there’s no one in this room named Henry—that is, until Hayden speaks.
“I’ll let you know. I’ve scheduled part two of the meeting for next Friday. It was interrupted by other more important matters.”
He squeezes my hand, and I know he didn’t do what his mother is asking him about because of my breakdown in the rain.
“Ah, I see.”
She drops it, and I think she wants to drop me over the side of a cliff.
Addison whispers in my ear as she passes me to catch up with her parents, “Henry Hayden.” She winks at me before she turns.
“I guess I could have Googled that,” I tell him wistfully as we follow his family.
“I’d really rather you didn’t.”
I take a deep breath and prepare myself for what’s sure to be the most awkward day of my life with Henry Hayden Rockefeller’s family. I think I’d rather spend a day in the rain even if that rain was lemon juice and I’d been through a paper factory.
Instead of a meal and an interrogation like I expected, Hayden’s mother whisks them all off into a sealed family conclave and I’m left drinking by myself in one of the living rooms. The place is massive, and I have no idea where I am even if I wanted to explore.
It looks like a museum because it is. There are no tours today because the family has reserved it for their biannual meeting, and I wonder if I’m witnessing a cult. Hayden is normal. Addison seems normal, and so does John, but I don’t like Hayden’s mother. His mother doesn’t like me. She can sense the darkness inside me, the darkness that I can’t hide but Hayden can.