Chapter Sixteen #2
I sculled the glass of water and then dipped my spoon into the edge of the panna cotta, covering it in some chocolate before tasting the sweet dessert.
“Oh my God, Dylan this is amazing!” I said still with a mouthful of the sweet goodness that had now become an absolute flavor explosion in my mouth.
“I know right,” he smiled. “It’s the ultimate midnight snack.”
Dylan filled my water glass up for me again.
“You know, I probably should tell you the real reason as to why I am here or at least, how I got here. But I think that you might have more of a story to tell than I do. Dylan, you did it, you’re here, living your dream chef life.
I need to know everything that I have missed, how you got here…
.” But the more that I spoke I watched his lips drop and his eyes flicker dark again.
“This is not my dream chef job,” he said. “And as good as it is to see you, Molly, you really shouldn’t be here. You need to leave as soon as you can trust me, I mean it, okay. You need to find a way to get the hell out of here!”
“Dylan, what the hell are you talking about? You don’t even know why I’m here. Hell, you don’t even know who the hell I am anymore and you’re telling me to leave?”
Dylan’s wide brown eyes were glaring at me with such fierceness as he leaned across the table. His hand stretched out, almost touching mine.
“Molly, how did you meet him?”
“Henry?”
“Of course, Henry.”
“Through friends.”
“And do those friends know that you’re here? Does Elyse know that you’re here?”
“Yes, they do, but could you please explain why the hell I am getting this grilling from you in the middle of the night when this is the first time in a decade since I’ve seen you?
How do you know Henry?” I felt my voice raise as Dylan reached across the table to place a finger in front of my mouth, as if to silence me.
A shiver ran down my spine as the memories of our relationship, the ones that I had seemed to shut down since the moment that I left, flooded my mind.
Elyse loved Dylan because he was a male version of her.
He should have really become a detective instead of a chef.
Although, overall, I would say that he treated me well.
He hated any time that I spoke out of line, any time that I questioned the norm, or disagreed with him.
He hated it when I was loud. I loved Dylan, but the more time that I spent with him, the more of a silenced shell of myself that I became.
I’d planned my exit long before I had actually done it.
And it wasn’t until now that I realized I had fantasized everything that we had.
Mostly because I hadn’t found anything better to relate to it too.
That was until now. Henry never silenced me.
If anything, with Henry I had never felt so validated.
He didn’t feel awkward when I cried, and when I was excited, he celebrated it.
He saw all aspects of me, and he let me be me, in my highest form. I hoped that I did the same for him.
“I don’t think that you want to know the story of how I ended up here, and right now what is most important, is that you’re kept safe.
You need to leave here, Molly, trust me, you need to get out of here ASAP.
” Dylan pushed himself back from the table, staring back at me in pain as he ran his fingers through his hair.
“I do want to know, Dylan, that’s why I asked. I want to know what the hell you’re doing here and why you want me to leave so bad. Did things between us really end that badly that the first time I see you again you want me to get the hell away from you?”
I did not want to cry. I had cried enough today. And breaking down in front of Henry was one thing but breaking down in front of Dylan wouldn’t help. I sucked in a deep breath of air before spooning another mouthful of panna cotta, hoping that this would calm me down.
“It’s not that I want you to leave. It’s that I actually care about you, and I want to keep you safe, Molly.
I want to keep everyone safe who steps inside this building.
But I’ve failed at that and now I’m begging you, get the hell out of here!
” Dylan gritted his teeth. I was waiting for him to explode with anger.
This was far from the silent, poised Dylan that I knew so long ago.
He would never step a foot out of line or speak to anyone like this. What the hell had happened to him?
“What do you mean you wanted to save the others? Who are the others and what are you talking about? If this place is so goddamn dangerous, then why the hell are you here?”
Dylan’s eyes slowly darted around the kitchen.
As he leaned in closer to me, he pressed his body against the bench, bringing his lips so close to mine I was unsure if he had instantly changed his tune and he was about to kiss me.
His voice became barely a whisper as he said, “I’m talking about all the other girls that he bought here. ”
It was just a few words. Ones that I didn’t know were true or not.
Were they? The Dylan I knew would never lie, but Henry had blatantly told me that he had never bought anyone here before.
Did he work with a lot of girls? But it wasn’t just Henry that told me that he never had girls here, it was Lotte too.
“What others?” I said.
“What are you doing here, Molly? Please you need to tell me honestly. I swear to God I’m only trying to help you right now.”
“I was having a nice little getaway for a couple of days at my boyfriend’s island. Well, it was nice until you showed up and started spitting nonsense at me,” I said. Matching his energy and spitting back at him.
“He’s your boyfriend. He actually told you that he was your boyfriend?” Dylan asked and I nodded. I don’t know why that was so hard to believe.
“Yes, he’s my boyfriend, so now that I have told you my truth, I think that you better cough up yours and tell me why you are speaking to me like this.” I began to yell again as Dylan’s eyes had begun to well.
Dylan cleared his throat. “I can’t believe that you’re here. God, this could get me into so much trouble for even knowing you. If I even cross your path in the hallway, while you’re with him, you need to look the other way,” he said.
“Why would you get in trouble for knowing me? We’re all adults here.
Everyone has a past, and Henry sure knows that I have not been some innocent virgin angel in my life,” I spat.
Oh shit, why did I say that? Dylan’s cheeks turned pink, and I wasn’t too sure if it was because he could remember all the many times that we were intimate, or I had just told him a little too much about how my number had grown significantly since I had been with him?
“People go missing here, Molly. I shouldn’t be telling you this, you have no idea who could be listening in.
” Dylan shook his head again walking around the kitchen bench.
He stood close to me, reaching around the back of me.
His hand leaned under the top of the stool and he spun my seat towards him.
I was now facing him, our knees touching.
“What the fuck is going on Dylan?” I said, this time getting more frustrated, with the crazy words that were spitting from his mouth.
“I came to work on this island a couple of years ago. I was handpicked from Henry himself. Since the last time that I saw you, I was working at a brand new five-star restaurant in San Diego, when I first met Henry. A month into working there, Henry came for dinner. I had no idea who he was, but at the end of my shift, I was told that there was a customer who wanted to meet with me. I’d never had that in my career before, initially nervous, a couple of the team I was working with told me it was usual protocol when some of their wealthier customers come in.
So, I accepted the request and took a seat down opposite Henry who was dining alone.
He told me that the simple steak that he had ordered was one of the best steaks he had ever eaten in his entire life.
Next thing you knew, I was sitting down opposite him in the empty restaurant, drinking down a bottle of red wine, getting to know each other.
I thought he was an incredible man. We spoke about our lives, business, goals, aspirations.
By the time it hit midnight a little boozed up, I would have said that he was the closest friend that I had made in the city. ”
“Yeah, I never thought you ever wanted to leave Philly…” I sighed. It was the major reason as to why we broke up after all.
“I didn’t,” he replied bluntly before continuing his story.
“Anyway, by the time that it hit 2 A.M., Henry told me that he had just signed the papers to buy out the building that I was working in, the restaurant business was technically now his as well. It was quite embarrassing really, now knowing that technically he was my new boss and I had just told him that the restaurant that I was working at was really just a step in my journey.”
I had never seen this side of Dylan. I always knew that it was in him, I knew how good he was, but I was always the one that was dreaming bigger than him. He’d hid anything that I knew that he truly wanted behind fear and closed lips.
“That was when he said that he could promise me one of the best chef jobs that there was, he told me that I could cook for some of the most important people in the world that would be screaming my culinary name all over it. Half of that story was true,” Dylan said.
“Okay…. Well, that explains how you ended up here. But it doesn’t really explain anything else…. Are you trying to say that you’ve gone missing? That you’ve come out here and isolated yourself?”
Dylan took a step back, his hands curling into fists.
“Molly, I am being serious, I am really fucking helping you right now and I have already said too fucking much. There is always someone watching here. You need to stop questioning everything and actually listen clearly into the words that I have spoken.” I’d seen him angry before, but I had never seen him this mad.
The words he spoke stung just as fresh as they did any other time that we got into a fight.
I was the one who was always to be silenced.
I was the one who questioned too much. I was the one that never listened, yet I was also the one that never felt heard.
What we were and whatever we used to be really was an anomaly for the life that I lead.
Or used to lead, because being silenced, or drowned out by everyone else around me, that didn’t need to exist anymore, at least not in the life that I was building with Henry.
All of me was wanted here, loud and clear.
“Wow, you really haven’t changed a bit have you,” I scoffed.
“You know all this time, all of my memories of you have been nothing but fond. But now seeing you here the reality of what we were to each other is all coming back. Thanks for the drink and the dessert, but I think that I’ve had enough of a midnight grilling for tonight and I’m going to take myself back to bed. ” I had nothing left to say to him.
I stood up off my stool, turning by back to him, trying to make some sort of sense of what he was trying to say to me.
Dylan grabbed hold of the tie around the middle of my kimono, almost completely undoing it, but instead I grabbed it as his hold spun me around.
Within a single blink, I was held tightly in his arms pressed against the stainless steel bench.
His arms wrapped around me and I tried to wriggle myself free.
His lips were firmly pressed against my ear.
“I can tell you right now, I’ve dreamed of this very day so many times when I finally got the chance to lay my eyes on you again and I can tell you right now that this is the last way that I wanted it to go.
I hoped that I would find you somewhere in New York, probably find you sitting in the corner of a bar, enjoying a nice drink after a long day of work.
I’d hoped that you would see me, invite me to sit down.
I would be so excited to hear about all of your incredible adventures, your thriving career.
I couldn’t wait to hear all the stories about how you achieved everything you wanted, you were well traveled, and accomplished in business, heck, maybe you had even started your own rather than showing other people how to better theirs.
Then I would tell you how I’d expanded my horizons, how I had worked in various restaurants, accumulated my accolades and that now I had just scored an ideal role in New York City.
And that was the beginning moment, where we would reconnect again.
That was how I wanted things to go down.
The last thing that I wanted was to see you here.
It’s not safe here, Molly. It’s not. You need to get out, we need to get out.
I’ll find a way for you to leave, for us to leave.
Meet me back here at the same time tomorrow night.
” Dylan finally released me, taking a step back.
I pushed past him and ran straight towards the door.
Pressing the button to the elevator, grateful that the doors opened instantly throwing my body in there.
As soon as the door closed, I felt like I could breathe again.
What the fuck had just happened? And Dylan’s story, the story of what he wanted, was he still in love with me? Is that what this was all about?