Bad Boys After Dark: Dylan (Bad Billionaires After Dark Book 2)
Page 16
“Are anything but clear-cut.”
“Yes! You’re sex and fun and spontaneous moments all wrapped up into one incredible man. And I get so swept up in you, I worry…” She dropped her eyes to their joined hands.
“You worry…?” He dipped his head, meeting her gaze.
“I worry that if I lose control, if I allow myself to get swept up in us too often, the rest of my world will come undone.”
“Why? You’re still in control of everything.”
“No, not when you let someone else into your heart. Your heart is in control, not your mind.”
He smiled and leaned in closer, his breath becoming hers. “You let me into your heart?”
She laughed and rolled her eyes. “As if you gave me a choice with all your…”
“Just say it,” he said with a devilish grin. “My big cock.”
“Oh God! See?” They both laughed. “You make me laugh so much. You make me feel, Dylan. It’s been a long time since I felt anything other than the drive to succeed.”
He splayed his hands, a teasing grin playing on his lips. “I’m a bastard. I see that now.”
She groaned.
“Babe, tell me the deep dark secret that has you all tied up in knots about us. You mentioned your ex…”
“It wasn’t just Rob. We were young, and yes, he hurt me, and he broke my trust, and that helped make me closed off, or uptight, or whatever you want to call a workaholic who is afraid to cuddle. He might have been the mason that built my walls, and my best friend’s betrayal was like the concrete that held my walls together. But the bricks were already there. They weren’t the worst of it. I mean, you can’t let two assholes ruin you forever, right?”
“No one could ever ruin you. And as far as being afraid to cuddle? Maybe you’ve never cuddled with the right person.”
Her insides went soft. “You make me want all the things I’ve lived without for so long.” Her admission came easily, but with her next thought she sat up straighter, gathering her courage like a cloak. “Do you really want to know my deep dark secret?”
“Only if you’re ready to share it with me.”
She nodded, not knowing if she was ready or not, but she definitely wanted to try. “When I was seven, I came home from school and my mother was gone. She’d taken all her things and vanished. She didn’t leave a note, never called, and never looked back. My father told me that she’d been seeing another man. Some guy who came in and out of town on business. She fell in love with him, and when he was offered a job overseas, she went. She abandoned us. She paved the way and left a shitload of bricks that I carried around like the weight of the world for years. What happened with Rob just helped move those bricks from an unwieldy weight to a wall with a purpose.” Tears stung her eyes, but she refused to let them fall.
He put his arms around her, but he didn’t say a word. And that’s what she needed, because he enabled her to borrow his strength to admit the worst of it.
“For years it was easier to pretend my mother had died rather than believe she could abandon me—us—and never look back. She never tried to contact me, and I never tried to track her down, even when I was a teenager and wanted to tear her apart with anger. At first I was too angry to contact her, then too hurt, and as I got older, I realized that nothing good could come from connecting with her, because what could she possibly say that would make what she’d done okay? I channeled all of those emotions into my drive to succeed. But now I realize how wrong I was to pretend my mother had died. It demeans the real pain caused by losing someone you loved. I’m so sorry, Dylan.”
He looked at her with so much empathy that it nearly did her in. “Babe, we all grieve differently, and you dealt with your mother leaving in the only way that allowed you to survive what you’d gone through. Your mother’s leaving was no less of a loss than our losing Lorelei.”
She kept waiting for the other shoe to fall. For him to decide she had too much baggage or that her work was too consuming. “You’re unbelievable. How can you be so understanding? I mean, that’s a lot of baggage and a big part of the reason why I have trust issues, and if I’m being totally honest, it’s also why I have little faith in the idea that love can conquer all.”
His brows knitted ever so slightly, intensifying the caring look in his eyes. “It is a great weight to be carrying around. There’s no doubt about that, but, Summers, we all have our shit. I’m sorry for what you’ve gone through.” He took her hand in his. “But you don’t have to bear that burden alone. I’d be happy to talk with you about any and all of this and how it makes you feel anytime you’d like.”
She dropped her gaze, fighting back tears. She’d kept everything—the hurt, the loss, the anguish of wondering why her family wasn’t good enough for her mother—for so long, just knowing he wasn’t running from her would have been enough. He couldn’t know how big a gift he’d just offered her. Not that she needed to spill her guts any more than she already had. But knowing she could made her feel like, with Dylan, she could strip away her walls completely.
“You have trust issues. I have wasted life issues,” he said, bringing her gaze back to his handsome face. “I think we’re even.”
“Doesn’t it worry you that I might never be able to fully commit to a relationship?”
“There’s a difference between not committing and being committed without a label.”
She thought about that for a moment.
“Are you going to be with other guys?” he asked.
“What? No! That’s not what I meant at all. I just meant…It’s scary for me to really let go and trust.”
He shrugged one shoulder, and a coy smile lifted his lips. “So you’ll play hard to get, and you’ll call me your special friend.”
She laughed softly. She wanted more of this, telling truths and not hating them so much they made her sick. “You make it sound so easy, but I’ve read all about abandonment issues and I know I have them. I’ve got big, huge baggage when it comes to trust, and my ex did nothing to make them easier.”
His jaw tightened, and anger simmered in his eyes, but when he spoke, his tone was calm. “Do you want to talk about him and what happened? It might make me want to tear him to shreds, but I am curious.”
She shook her head. “I thought I loved him. He knew how to play the game, how to act like he cared and try to make me feel special. But I see now that I loved the idea of him. I overlooked the facts. He never cared if I studied or worked long hours because he had a secret life to keep him busy. He never asked me to make time.” Like you did.
Dylan looked her in the eyes and said, “I will never have a secret life. I want more of your time, but I respect your career aspirations.”
“I know. I trust you, Dylan. But at least I don’t have the one insecurity a lot of people whose parents have abandoned them have. I don’t feel unworthy of love.”
“Because you’re very worthy.” He took both of her hands in his and softened his tone. “But, babe, you ask me a lot, why you? And every time I see you, every time we talk, or kiss, or just look at each other, all I can think is, how can you not know how incredible you are?”
Her stomach twisted. She had never put those two things together. She saw herself as one of the best sports agents around, she knew she was attractive because people told her so often enough, and she was definitely smart. She worked damn hard to be all those things, and yet she did ask him that often.
“That was harsh,” she said. “But I think you’re right, and that weakness—needing to ask that—sucks.”
“No, Summers. It doesn’t. What sucks is that your mom put her happiness before her children’s. But this, us, communication, learning about each other? That’s beautiful, even if it’s hard. And now maybe you can look in the mirror and see what I see instead of doubting that you’re the best woman on the planet for me.” He kissed her then, a warm, languid kiss, underscoring his emotions. “And don’t roll your eyes or tell me I’m using lines.”
“And I hope one day you will.”
She was almost there. In answer, she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his. He pushed his hand beneath her hair, cupping the base of her skull so he could deepen the kiss. Heat warmed her veins as his other hand pulled her tight against him, and she squeezed her thighs together, trying to quell the ache their kisses always stirred. This was not supposed to be a sexual date, and she desperately wanted to take it there. The force of his kiss told her he did, too.
When their lips parted, he touched his cheek to hers and said, “I’ll help you carry your baggage if you help me carry mine.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I want that with you.”
He drew in a deep breath and blew it out slowly as they drew apart. “Ready to hear my deep, dark secret?”
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“Oh, yes I do. Trust me. I’m not a perfect guy.” He swallowed hard, and when he spoke, his tone was serious. “The reason I rehab my kitchen so often is because when we were growing up my parents’ kitchen was cramped and Lorelei used to say that when she grew up she’d build a new kitchen every few years. Even at her young age, she knew that what she would want would change over time.” He shrugged. “I keep trying to get it right. You want to talk about fucked up? That’s fucked up. Like I said, we all have our shit and we deal with it differently. It doesn’t mean I can’t stop refinishing my kitchen. I choose not to. I like to try to get it right because it keeps my sister’s memory alive. My brothers think it’s bat-shit crazy, but it’s not. It’s just how I deal with her being gone.”
“It’s not crazy to want to keep those memories alive. Do you keep pictures of the renovations every time you change your kitchen so you can remember them?”
He shook his head. “No. Maybe I should.” He paused, turning a serious gaze on her. “Do you know why I express my feelings so readily?”
She shook her head. Her heart was filling up to near bursting. Dylan hadn’t just suffered a tragic loss; he’d dealt with it. That was something Tiffany had never had the guts to do. She buried it, built walls around it, then parked a Mack truck on top of it.
“Because before she died I was a carefree motherfucker. I was the guy who made everyone laugh. Everything rolled off my back. And after we lost her, I got so angry I couldn’t stand to be around myself. And a few weeks later, rather than be angry all the time, I shut myself off. I didn’t let anyone get close to me for a long time. My parents weren’t speaking to each other, and then they went from silence to fighting all the time. Hiding was easier than dealing with anything. But in the middle of the night, I’d wake up hearing Lorelei whispering in my ear, like she refused to let me fall into oblivion. I would get up and walk around the kitchen, glad she wasn’t there to hear our parents fighting.”
He pushed to his feet and paced. “How fucked up is that? Being glad that my dead sister wasn’t around. The fighting was so bad my brothers and I used to leave the house.”
“It’s not fucked up. You were thinking about protecting her.”
He scoffed. “No one could protect anyone from the nightmare that had become our lives. We couldn’t even talk about Lorelei. If we tried, my father blew up. He couldn’t take it. A part of him—a part of all of us—died along with her. To this day my father’s a miserable bastard. But Lorelei has always been there in the silence. While my father was storming around the house, fighting with my mother about everything and nothing, Lorelei was in the glances that passed between me and my brothers; she was the haunted look in my parents’ eyes. She was in the very air we breathed. She became the silence because we weren’t able to talk about her. It was awful to keep all those feelings bottled up.”
“I can’t imagine.” Only she could, because hadn’t she been doing the same thing with her mother? She never talked about her, and when her brothers brought her up, she left the room.
“One night I went down to the kitchen. It was pitch-dark, and I was pacing, trying to remember stories Lorelei and I used to laugh at, and happier times, you know? Her face had begun fading from my memory, and that scared the shit out of me. The kitchen is where I felt closest to her. I’m surprised I didn’t wear a path in the floor. Anyway, I didn’t know my mother was sitting at the kitchen table. She must have watched me for half an hour or more before she finally said something. I nearly jumped out of my skin when she said, ‘Dilly, you have to keep living. Your sister adored you. Don’t honor her memory by losing the best parts of yourself.’”
He looked up at the night sky, his hands fisting at his sides. “I can’t believe I’m breaking down like a fucking pussy in front of you. I’m not usually this way.”
Her heart ached for him. She thought it was hard to open up, but now she realized that for a man it must be ten times as difficult to show that beyond the strength, beyond the ability to take and plunder, he was only human, too.
“I think it makes you even stronger, and your mother was right, Dylan.”
“I know she was,” he said through gritted teeth. He drew in a deep breath, his clenched fists unfurling. “My mother and I talked for the longest time. After that, she joined me in the kitchen during my midnight visits, and we talked about Lorelei. To this day, when we’re together as a family, no one talks about her. It’s too painful. It’s like we all know that the minute we bring her up, we’ll fall apart. But back then, when we were right in the thick of our loss, and everyone else was asleep, my mother and I talked about everything. Life and death, my sister, my father, who had become so angry and so mean that one stormy night Mick confronted him. And somehow, at sixteen, Mick got him the hell out of the house for good. Talk about brave? Man. My brother has balls of steel. But I think my father was so broken by then, he couldn’t stand to be around himself, either. He really is a brilliant man. Despite his grief and anger, he knew he was tearing our family apart, and I’m sure that was hard for him, too. I think he needed Mick to push him out, so in his mind, he felt like it was okay to really leave us. Because you see, summer girl, my father had already left us emotionally, just not physically. It was too hard for him to see the reminders of Lorelei through us, and in the house.”
Her heart broke for Dylan and his family. She knew his shrewd older brother well enough to imagine him standing up to their father, in the same way she could see Dylan doing everything within his power to hold on to Lorelei and to respect his family’s need not to speak of her, when it was the one thing he needed.
“Dylan, do you have any relationship with your father now?”
“Not in any real sense. We see each other every now and again. But he’s cold and he’s so different from what he was like before Lorelei died. I think the man I knew as a kid is long gone. At some point you have to save yourself, like you did after your mother left. Eventually, I found my way back to being me, only different. Brett calls me a ‘touchy-feely chick.’ And yeah, I am very in touch with my emotions. But I’m not carefree anymore. I know I seem it, but I’m not blind to how I handle losing her. I know I take on the worries of sick kids and try to make them feel better as a way of making up for not being able to help Lorelei. But hey, that’s better than drinking, acting like a bastard, or locking my emotions away. Seeing those kids smile, knowing I bring even a few minutes of joy to their lives, that’s a win-win, right?”
Win-win. She found herself thinking that’s what it was like being close to Dylan, too. She’d never met anyone who was so in touch with, and honest about, who they were. Most people, like her, hid behind their weaknesses. Dylan exposed them and used them to help others. And he made her want to do the same.
“Absolutely.”
“My greatest fault,” he said, “is that you’ll get too much of me.”
“I want too much of you, Dylan.”
As their lips touched, all her fears scrambled away like rats seeking water, leaving only Dylan. Sweet, honest, breaking-t
hrough-my-barriers, Dylan.
Chapter Seventeen
“NOW DO YOU want to start that list?” Tiffany lifted their joined hands and smiled at Dylan. It was almost eleven o’clock Saturday morning and they were in the elevator on their way up to the third floor of one of Phoebe’s buildings to check out office space. She’d just told Dylan about her office criteria, which he had to admit, was quite specific.
“Because you prefer a certain side and floor of a building?” He drew her closer. “Yes. I’m starting a list of quirks I like about you, and I’m calling it The Many Faces of My Summer Girl.” He went for her lips, and at the last second brought his mouth to her neck, which he knew drove her wild.
She fisted her hand in his shirt as she had last night. They’d lain beneath the stars for hours, talking and kissing, groping, and trying to keep to their no-sex rule. It had been sheer hell. She had left her phone off the entire time they were on the roof, and when he’d called her this morning at eight to see if she wanted to have breakfast together, she’d already been working for an hour. She’d been too tied up with last-minute contract revisions to meet then, but they’d met for an early brunch, and having to wait had made it that much sweeter.
And sweet you are. As it turned out, she hadn’t been working after all. She’d been making a scrapbook for Dylan’s kitchen renovation ideas. This way you can keep pictures of what you’ve done and ideas for future renovations. It was the single most meaningful gift anyone could have given him, and it spoke volumes about how she felt about him.
“I missed you last night, Summers.” He kissed her again. “I want you in my bed every night.”
“You are possessive, aren’t you?”
He brushed his scruff over her cheek, earning a delicious moan. “I never was, until you.”
She looked at him with disbelief in her eyes, and all those possessive urges reared up in force. He backed her up against the elevator wall with another kiss.