by LJ Evans
As we drove out, a man came from the back door where we’d exited, but I didn’t get much more than a glimpse of him as Nash hit the gas and sped off down a gravel road. Past the pool and the carriage house was a large expanse of lawns and rose bushes of all sorts of varieties and colors, and beyond those, we hit a wall of trees. They had the strangest white flowers grouped similarly to hydrangeas but with an almost furry appearance. The air filled again with the smell of lemon…no… lemonade. It was heady and overpowering. My stomach wasn’t sure how it felt about it, but I knew, on any other day, I would have enjoyed it.
“What are they?” I asked.
“Australian lemon myrtle,” Nash said. “The flowers are edible. Both the flowers and the leaves are used in the manufacturing of essential oils that are sold at the General Store.”
I didn’t know how to respond to any of it. His knowledge of plants. A general store. What more would I find to unravel here?
Beyond the trees, we broke into fields of plants, green shrubs that I didn’t know but still held the scent of lemon. Some had white and purple flowers, but many were just rows and rows of vegetation. Beyond that was a manmade pond so large it was almost a lake. It was surrounded on the far side by weeping willows, their long strands draping into the water’s edge. A light breeze picked up, bringing other scents to me before we were suddenly in the middle of a huge field of lavender. The purple and violet blooms were fading this late in the season, but it was still a beautiful show of color that carried for acres on both sides of the gravel drive.
As we drove, people in the fields or on other carts put their hands to their foreheads, squinting in the sunlight, and then waved. Nash didn’t even see half of them. He was lost in his memories, and I felt the need to bring him back. To somehow comfort the turmoil swirling within him. As we left the lavender behind and came upon what seemed to be acres more of greenhouses, I taunted him playfully, “You’re doing a great job as a tour guide.”
His hands squeezed even tighter on the steering wheel before loosening. “It may have been a mistake coming here. We can leave tomorrow. Get a hotel.”
I put a hand on his shoulder. “Nash.”
He didn’t even glance in my direction.
“Nash, stop. Just look at me.” I couldn’t keep the beg out of my voice or the pity that came with it. It wasn’t the right thing, because Nash Wellsley, the poster boy for the SEALs, certainly didn’t want my pity, but it caused him to pull over in front of a greenhouse. He turned off the cart, staring at the rows of buildings with his hands still clenched on the wheel. His jaw was ticking, a small tell I was discovering for the first time, maybe because Nash had never had this much history and emotion piled on him at one time with me, or anyone else, around.
“My ancestors failed at cotton. They couldn’t make it profitable in the way their neighbors with enslaved people could.” His voice was deep and steady regardless of the emotions I knew were roaring through him.
“They didn’t own slaves?”
“They did originally, but when Nathaniel Wellsley inherited it all from his father, he freed everyone because he believed in the rights of all human beings. A handful stayed to work the land with him as paid employees, but the South was not a safe or kind place for them, so most left for the North. He hired other locals—white, black, or any other color—willing to work for the low wages he could pay, but even then, it was pretty much impossible for the estate to pay for itself. Nathaniel used far more of the wealth he’d inherited than he ever earned. But he was unique in that he was one of the first landowners to look outside of cotton or tobacco for sustainable growth. Perfumes from France were high on the import list at the time, and Nathaniel decided there was no reason why we couldn’t make them here. He started everything you see now.”
“How very progressive,” I said.
He finally looked at me with a small smile. “We’ve branched out a lot since then. The fields are used for both spices and essential oils. We make a host of personal care items and organic foods. We have a small plant.” He pointed in a western direction. “The season and which field is being harvested determines what we’re producing. The lemon scents come from lemon balm, verbena, geraniums, and the myrtle. It and lavender are what we’re known for the most. Here”—he waved at the rows of greenhouses—“we also grow flowers that are sold to florists across the South. There’s a whole greenhouse devoted to roses, which is one of the things Thomasville is renowned for. We take great pride in winning the rose festival competition regularly.”
Maribelle had teased him about being a tour guide, and while he did sound like he was reciting from a manual, I could tell it had taken him a lot to say those words. To disclose a past he hadn’t shared in years.
“Well, with the uptick in essential oils in the last decade, your family seems to have made a good decision,” I said lightly.
He snorted. “Took them centuries to become profitable.”
“This… this is all pretty incredible,” I said quietly.
He looked into my face for the first time since leaving the house. He stared for a long time, as if measuring my honesty.
“Why don’t you tell anyone?” I asked.
He ran a hand over the scar which went across his collarbone and out to the edge of his shoulder. It was raised red skin that blurred the tattoos he had there. Some of the tattoos made more sense to me now. Graceful curving lines not unlike the flowers and trees we’d seen as we’d driven around the estate.
“In high school, everyone knew. Everyone knew because Carson was friends with the dean of the military school I attended. I’m sure it was the reason I’d been accepted to begin with, because I didn’t have the grades to get in at the time. Carson was a frequent visitor during my time there, showing up for all the fundraising events, sponsoring chess and debate teams as well as sports.”
“He was really involved for an uncle,” I gently prodded, but I was already putting the pieces together enough to know that Nash’s parents had clearly not been a part of his life at that point.
“He liked to be important,” Nash said. “When I got accepted to Canoe U, I promised myself no one would know. I wasn’t going to be liked or sought after because someone thought I came from money—or whatever the hell people thought I came from. By that time, I wanted nothing to do with any of this.”
He flung a hand out toward the fields and the greenhouses.
“Can I ask why? It’s obviously a tradition that’s been passed down for generations,” I said.
“There’s more to our existence than adding to the family’s coffers. It’s time the Wellsleys sacrifice for something greater than ourselves.”
His almost speech-like words spoke to the intelligence he rarely showed, his language carefully chosen versus the smooth jibes and jests he was known for.
When I didn’t respond, he asked, “Do you want to go in one of the greenhouses? Or shall I show you the plant and the general store?”
My phone buzzed. I grimaced at Mac’s words.
MAC: Where the hell are you?
Nash read the words over my shoulder and chuckled. I sent him a withering look.
“I told you he was going to be upset,” Nash said with a shrug.
I sighed.
“Maybe we should go back? I have a lot more to do for Brady, and I have a feeling the sound of Mac’s bellowing might scare the birds and the bees,” I said with a weak smile.
Nash looked like he wanted to say no, but instead, he turned the key, causing Betsy to stutter back to life. He made a U-turn in the gravel and headed back toward the house. The scents of lavender and lemon chased us, and by the time we pulled back in, I was sure the smells would embed themselves in my brain, reminding me forever of this day. The day I found out Nash Wellsley was a deeply layered man.
At the manor, Nash took me in yet another door, this one on the far side of the house, which led into a glass and wrought-iron conservatory full of mor
e flowers and plants. The room was warm and muggy. Nash barely glanced at any of it as he strode through it to the interior of the house and up a back staircase. It was hard to imagine him on the run, hiding from someone, but that was exactly what was going on.
The walls were covered in a gorgeous wallpaper which looked as if it had survived the Victorian era, even though there was not one curl or tear. The stripes and swirls were littered with old portraits. Paintings of people who had to be his ancestors. I didn’t have time to absorb them because Nash’s stride was quick and pointed. He eventually stopped, opening a dark, carved door for me.
“This is you,” he said.
The room had a huge canopied bed done up in white, pale greens, and hints of yellow as if a daisy had just bloomed. The canopy was a graceful splash of lace not unlike a bride’s veil. It was delicate and beautiful. Even the furniture was graceful and dainty, made of curling wrought iron painted green, adding to the feel of flowers on their stems. The colors were equally soothing and energizing, the peace and calm of the whites and greens sprinkled with the cheery yellow.
“It’s right above the conservatory,” he said. “If you look out, you can see inside the glass roof from the window.” He pointed to a window seat, where the white eyelet lace cushions were covered in pale-green pillows with the same pop of yellow.
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
He looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time and gave a curt nod. “I suppose it is.”
“That door”—he pointed to the opposite wall—“leads to a private bath and a walk-in closet.”
He stood at the door for a moment before turning to leave, pausing to say, “You don’t have to work here. There are plenty of rooms downstairs.”
“Where did you study as a kid?”
He looked away again. “Before I knew better, I studied in the library while my uncle worked, plotting my next chess move.”
He grimaced as if he hadn’t meant to tell me any of that, but it had spilled out anyway.
My phone rang instead of buzzing. The ringtone I’d set for Mac, “Warrior” by Kid Rock, was strident and loud in the quiet house.
“I’ll let you get that,” Nash said, and he left, shutting the door behind him. It was an even more somber version of Nash than I’d ever seen before. As if this house had suddenly turned him into someone else.
“Hey,” I said, steeling myself for Mac’s ire.
“Thank God,” he said. His tone, full of relief instead of anger, had me stalling my sassy reply. “Where are you?”
“I told―”
“Don’t even. Georgie just got done texting Brady. You aren’t with him. He’s on his way to someplace in Vermont.”
Damn. I hadn’t expected them to figure it out so quickly. Georgie, of course, would have checked in with her longtime friend after hearing that the shows had been canceled. My brain had been overloaded with emotions since yesterday; otherwise, I would have already told Brady to just let it slide if they thought I was with them.
“You’re stalling. Trying to find a way to tell me the truth. What the hell is going on, Dani?”
There was the anger. “I just didn’t want everyone to worry.”
“It’s too late for that.”
I sat down on the window seat, looking out at the view of the conservatory, the pool, and the lemon-scented trees we’d driven past. It was stunning. A painting or a picture in the making. One you’d hang on a wall in your very best room, and yet, it was something Nash had hidden away. A family he hadn’t shared.
“Dani.” Mac’s prodding brought me back to him, and I just let the truth slip out of me.
“I was poisoned.”
I’d wanted to figure out a way to spin the words before I’d shared them with anyone, but I couldn’t.
“What?” Mac’s voice dropped. “Are you okay?”
“I am now. Fiona got into the restaurant we ate at yesterday and added ipecac syrup to my drink. So, I was pretty sick for most of the afternoon and into the evening.”
“Where the hell was Nash?” Mac’s voice was all growl.
“Don’t blame him. He was there with five other members of the detail. She must have disguised herself or something, because the place was pretty small, and none of us saw her.”
“That’s exactly what Nash is paid to do for a living.”
“Stop. He already feels bad.”
“He should.”
“Mac, really. You’re being ridiculous. It was a spur-of-the-moment stop that none of us expected her to be at. They were all standing guard like we were some British nobility or the president or something.”
“Where is Nash now? Where are you?”
This was the moment I dreaded. Even though he was younger than me, Mac had always done the big-brother-watching-over-his-sister thing, and I knew exactly where his mind would go when I told him the truth.
“I’m with Nash at his home in Georgia.”
Silence.
“Nash has a home in Georgia?”
I couldn’t help a sputtered laugh. “Right? Get this. It’s his childhood home. And it’s a frickin’ huge estate. An antique, Georgian mansion with hundreds of acres of fields and a manufacturing plant that makes essential oils and that sort of thing.”
“Nash? Nash Wellsley?”
I laughed again, and it helped to lighten the tightness that had begun to gather again in my chest. “He said I shouldn’t have expected him to spawn from the devil, but that’s almost what I thought, because who can possibly imagine him as a child?”
Mac chuckled a little. Then, silence settled down again.
“So, you’re not alone?” he asked.
“Back off, little brother. But yes, there are other people here—an uncle and a woman who Grandma would seriously invite to tea at the clubhouse.”
He breathed out a long sigh into the phone. “It’s just… There’s been this weird vibe between the two of you lately, and I don’t want to see you hurt. Not again. Not after…”
His voice trailed away. Not after Russell. I had been more hurt by Russell than I’d expected. The casual dalliance we’d had, which had progressed to the point of my keeping a couple of sets of clothes at his apartment, had been more serious than I’d intended. The fact that he’d met his ex-girlfriend instead of me on the night Fenway assaulted me had cut a little hole into my heart, which I’d never thought I’d given to him. No one had seen the holes except Mac and Georgie.
“Nash isn’t going to hurt me like that, Mac,” I told him, but what I didn’t say was that I wasn’t going to let him. Sure, our bodies were attracted to each other. The sex had been off the charts. The kisses had been the same way, but both our hearts were caged with barbed wire and iron. There was no way either of us was getting through. At least, that was what I told myself.
Nash
DEMONS
“Don't get too close,
It's dark inside.
It's where my demons hide.”
Performed by Imagine Dragons
Written by Mosser / Grant / McKee / Reynold / Sermon
I retreated from Dani to the room that had always been mine. A room I’d grown up in but had not maintained a single aspect of my childhood. Instead, it had been redone in deep blues, burgundies, and whites that Maribelle had insisted wasn’t because I’d joined the Navy, and yet still bled America like a theme song.
It was masculine and sturdy, and in many ways, it reflected my personality, but it still wasn’t a room I’d call home. It took me all of a minute to unpack my bag. I was reluctant to throw my dirty clothes in the hamper because then Maribelle would have whoever was helping her in the house these days wash them. I was uncomfortable with strangers handling my clothes after doing them on my own for so long.
I pulled aside the heavy curtains and looked out, trying to see the estate from Dani’s eyes. My view was almost the same as hers from three doors down. I was farther away f
rom the conservatory, but the room still looked out at the pool and the myrtle trees whose scent was in full bloom in the early fall air.
I was hiding. It was ludicrous.
I wasn’t afraid of Carson. I’d never been afraid of him. For most of my life, he’d been the largest person in my entire world. I’d strived for his respect and his approval more than either of my parents. I’d adored him. Until that adoration had slowly been rotted away by disillusionment and hurt to reveal him as the uncompromising and cold man he truly was.
The man who’d failed in the moonlight even more than I had.
These days, I avoided him and this place simply because I didn’t want to deal with the expectations he wouldn’t set aside. I refused to have another argument about responsibility and privilege when we clearly saw those concepts through different lenses. Plus, I wasn’t ready for him to see the world I’d built beginning to crumble at the edges. Not while I was desperately trying to keep it from cracking apart completely.
He would see those shattered pieces and carelessly toss them to the wind as he’d once tossed a dog and a boy who hadn’t been able to stop crying. He would see the breakage as proof that it was time to come back. Proof he’d been right all along when I wanted to still believe he wasn’t.
That I would never need him or this place as I once had.
I didn’t give myself any more time to think. I left the room, striding toward the room I knew he’d be in just like I knew what his response would be to me being here. We’d danced together too many times for me not to know. I’d battled him on the chess field and the hunting field from the first time I could hold a gun or an ivory pawn. I could plainly see the six steps he was already taking.
As predicted, he was in the library with an unlit cigar in his mouth. He’d never light it indoors these days without facing Maribelle’s wrath. The only thing different than the image I’d had in my head was his placement at a chair in front of the fireless fireplace instead of the monstrous desk that had always been his. Beside him was the ancient chess set we’d used for so many years—my chair at the table empty. He was staring at the board and the ivory pieces whose edges were smoothed from centuries of use.