Chapter Thirteen
“Wow,” I said as I stepped out of the elevator onto level one. I hated how many times I had stood stunned, with “wow” the only simple word that came out of my mouth around Henry. But here I was once again. There was still so much of this building to be discovered.
“This is the games room?” I asked.
Henry chuckled stepping out of the elevator behind me, his hand lightly brushing my lower back. “I know, I shouldn’t really call it a games room, I guess it’s more of a games floor.”
A games floor would have been a much more appropriate term.
The whole floor was too large to see where it started and ended, but I did see some kind of library.
It was stunning, and the style was very him.
Gold and black shelves, filled with books and arranged in a kind of maze.
And from where I was standing, I was next to a black velvet armchair and ottoman, hidden in the middle of the shelves.
Directly in front of me were more shelves of games and toys.
I stepped forward and touched what looked like some sort of kid’s robot, sitting alongside the usual game room suspects, Scrabble, and a very elaborate chessboard.
As I touched the little robot’s hand two bright red eyes lit up on its round face.
“I made that,” Henry said. “Actually, it was the first thing that I ever made, when I was fifteen. Before I got into digital tech, I played around with some physical pieces. To be honest I wasted a lot of the money that was left to me, building things and not actually making anything come to fruition, but… they live here now.”
“I don’t think that you’ve wasted any money,” I scoffed, “I have no doubt that all of this has led to where you are today… besides, he’s cute,” I whispered in Henry’s ear as I took in the rest of the floor.
To the right of me looked like the ultimate relaxation area, which I believed were for both Henry’s books and games.
A large low coffee table sat in the middle of various, grey and gold bean bags and to the right of that, was a whole gaming area.
A full screen set up with headsets and consoles, even a whole car you could sit inside as well as some arcade games along the far wall.
Ah-ha! I suspected that he was a gamer. I was honestly surprised that I hadn’t seen a set-up of something like this back at his penthouse in New York but now I knew where he hid it all.
“What else are you hiding in this place?” I asked.
“In this place as in this level, this place as in this house, or this place as in Miss Bentley as a whole?”
“All of the above,” I said.
“Well, I can show you this floor and I can show you this whole building,” he said as he paused, spinning around so quickly my eyes were still gazing either side of me, easily distracted by my surroundings.
I didn’t realize he had stopped walking.
Henry grabbed hold of my shoulders stopping me in my tracks, as his eyes met mine again.
“But as for the whole island, I don’t know if we’re going to have the time for all of that over the next four days.
That’s going to need to be another trip. ”
“Yeah maybe,” I sighed, “I mean, there’s a rose that I have to accept first before you go ahead and inviting me back here, Mr. I wouldn’t get too ahead of yourself if I was you.”
Henry dropped his gaze. “That you are right,” he said, his professionalism taking over.
Surely, he knew that I was going to say yes.
Surely, he knew how much I loved this, us, everything.
He was my unicorn, the one that I had been searching for all along.
But he also left me in anticipation before and this was a way to give him some cheeky payback.
I had the upper hand, but I could see myself giving up everything in a matter of hours. At least I hope I did.
“Are you still cold? Can I get you anything?” he said.
“Not at all, I’m warm and relaxed,” I replied, following him over to the beanbags.
I gazed out the large window, which took up the whole front of the floor.
The sun was now completely hidden behind the clouds and the rain was heavy.
It made me wonder how long it was going to last for or how much it would end up affecting the middle of the island.
I was dying to get out there for a hike.
But then again, if the rain stayed like this, I guess it was more of a reason to stay indoors with Henry.
I lounged down on what must have been the most comfortable bean bag.
It felt like a golden cloud, one on which I could easily fall asleep.
It wasn’t until now that I realized how tired I was.
So much had happened already today. My body had been running full of adrenaline with the excitement of it all, the newness, followed by a little too much sun and water.
I was about to drift away… until I noticed the mini bar of spirits where Henry began mixing things into a cocktail jar.
God, this man could read my mind. A late afternoon drink, relaxing with him.
My holiday could end tomorrow, and I could already confidently say that this was the best holiday of my life…
not that I had exactly taken many. But four days of this was going to be incredible.
“Oh, what do we have here?” I said picking up a very fitting gold box, that rested in the corner of the table on top of a box of Jenga and Connect Four.
Henry turned around shaking the silver cocktail jug before pouring the light green liquid out into two glasses, handing one to me, as I pulled the box in front of me, taking a sip.
“For my margarita girl,” he said.
“Is that another way of saying basic bitch?” I asked. He laughed.
“No, not at all, I’m quite partial to a Marg, I would say basic bitch if your favorite drink was an espresso martini,” he said.
I nodded. “That’s fair… but I don’t understand how you have never seen this box before, when this is your house after all. The fact that they are sitting here is very convenient, I must say.”
“Miss Molly, I would never lie to you. I can honestly say that I have never seen that box before. And although, yes, you are right, this is my place. I am probably the one that is least here. Whatever it is, it could have been left here by one of the many business conferences that has been held here. This is usually the most common floor for people to come to and wind down. Why, what is it?” he said leaning in closer as I shuffled through the cards.
“They're conversation cards, and quite in-depth ones I must say.”
“Oh, how interesting, hit me with one,” he said smiling as he took a sip from his drink leaning back in his chair.
“What don’t you think that you know enough about me?” I asked.
“I hope that I never know enough about you. I hope that I discover more and more things about you every single day. If we’re not growing, we’re dying.”
“True…” I said slowly. It was a common adage that I had used at work with my business clients but hearing it come out of his mouth made it sound so much smoother.
Not just because I had become completely infatuated with him.
More than that. Whatever this was with Henry had moved so much further than infatuation.
What he said out loud was what I felt… and this just gave me more confirmation that all of this was real.
Of course this was real. How couldn’t it have been?
He had bought me a wardrobe, offered me the rose of commitment, shared with me his deepest secrets and still I was questioning it all.
Why was it that I only thought that feelings were real until we were locked into a set commitment?
Until the world knew that we were choosing life together?
Until we made it goddamn Instagram official?
And yet I should be feeling this way because we were days away from being at that stage.
All I had to do was to accept that rose.
For now, I couldn’t wait to see if I could uncover even more about my incredible dream man.
“I like how you think…” I said, picking up some of the cards.
“Well, this is a long way from thinking that I found out everything that there is to know about you from the moment that we first met,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “I guess you’ve found out a lot more since then, but I don’t know if there’s much more,” I joked. Henry leaned forward, taking some of the cards.
“Give me some of those,” he said.
“Okay, I’ll go first,” I said, immediately speaking out the first card on the top of my pile. “If you could relive any moment in your life, what would it be?” I asked.
“There’s nothing that I would want to relive again. Not at all,” he said bluntly.
“Not at all?”
“Not at all, and I can say that confidently, because I hope that you believe me when I say that there really isn’t anywhere else, I would rather be than right here, right now, with you.
This is a moment that I would like to stay in for some time,” he said, holding my gaze with every word.
My body felt weak as I raised my glass to my lips, hoping it would cover the heat that I felt rising to my cheeks.
“I really do mean that, Molly. I feel very lucky that you’re here with me.”
I nodded. “I know I feel it, and I feel the same.”
He smiled, gazing down at his pile of cards and if I wasn’t mistaken, his cheeks were now blushing too.
“Oh, interesting, this is a two-part question. First is, if you could add three events that you knew were going to happen in your future or if you could change three events about your past which would you choose?”
What would I choose, I knew that I would choose him.
I knew that I would choose a new career, one that would reignite the fire and energy in me that I had let flatten.
But then thinking about all the things that I would have changed in my past, my heart instantly sank and I felt a lump rising in my throat.
I didn’t need to say anything else for Henry to jump out of his beanbag, and run around to my side of the table, taking a seat down next to me.
He wrapped me up in his arms before any tears could fall.
I wanted to sniff them back. I wanted to paint a smile on my face.
The last thing that I wanted was to ruin any part of this moment.
This very moment that only minutes before he was telling me, was one of his favorites.
Two tears fell from my eyes before I sniffed the rest away.
“I’m sorry, Molly. I shouldn’t have even asked that question. Of course, I already knew the answer to it. It was completely uncalled for.”
“No, it’s fine,” I said shaking my head and wiping my cheeks.
“It was a good question. I’m fine, I’m fine,” I said, sniffling.
“You know it’s just something that I will never quite understand.
I have been through years and years of therapy, and I can go for so long feeling fine and then still, twenty years later and sometimes it just hits me as though it all happened yesterday.
I can never tell when it’s going to happen, but sometimes it just takes over me, as though even after all this time it will never get any better. ”
“I understand more than you know,” he said. And after knowing what he had been though, other than my sister, he was the only person that could say those words and actually mean them.
“You feel like that sometimes too?” I said loosening myself from his hold, so I could turn to face him.
He nodded. “Absolutely, and I’ve come to accept that it is a part of my life, it’s an emotion that is imbedded in me and sometimes comes out.
It’s not something that I can ever escape.
It gets the better of me, whenever life begins to get a little too much and things become overwhelming, it starts out as a sick feeling and then it can just completely take over and I’m that little boy, curled up on the street, staring up at the stars.
So I guess that I’ve come to accept that it’s just something that we must live with, something that can take over in moments and it can feel like you haven’t made any progress at all…
but there have been some things that I focus on and have put into place in my life, to at least ease some of the pain or help me ride the wave a little better. ”
“Like what?”
“I think about the life that I have now, and I give myself grace knowing that I can only control what I can. There are so many bad things that happen in this world, and the ones that happened to me did, but they are situations that I couldn’t change.
And as horrible as it was losing my parents so young in the way that I did at the same time, if that didn’t happen to me, I don’t think that I would be the man that I am now.
And I’m really happy with who I’ve become.
To get myself out of it, I think of the positives, give myself grace and then do something for myself that makes me feel really good.
It sounds self-indulgent I know but… it’s helped… it might help you too.”
I had had similar thoughts to Henry’s many times.
I wouldn’t have become the person that I am today without everything that had happened.
It was also another reason why I didn’t like the fact that I felt stuck inside the life that I had been blessed with, when in the same accident my parents had theirs taken from them.
“What makes you feel good? What do you do when you just want to do something for yourself?” I asked.
“It varies,” he said. “It could be as simple as making myself a drink. Vegging out in front of the television, or sometimes it means going to play basketball with some of the kids from the boys’ home or I go and visit the hospital up the road from my building.”
“The hospital?” I said confused.
“Yeah, I invest a lot of money there as well.”
“Oh,” I said.
Then he leaned into my ear and whispered, “But I love to walk the halls and smell the blood, too.”
My body stiffened. It was far cry from the sexy image that I had of him sucking on my shirt. But before I could answer any more questions, the elevator dinged as Jackie walked out with a large tray in her hands. “Dinner is served.”