Chapter 26
CHAPTER 26
CAROLINE
On the morning of my first full day in Canada, I peeled myself out of bed at a gentle ten a.m. There were no signs of Gerry, but Chase was up and waiting for me with coffee and a very persuasive pitch for staying for a week in Canada—sightseeing and shopping.
I couldn’t refuse.
No, I could , I just didn’t want to.
The first destination on the agenda was somewhere that sold spectacles, as we’d sexed his into an early death.
We found a glasses store in the city and the salesperson took one look at Chase and immediately fell in lust.
I couldn’t blame her.
“Welcome to Peep You, I’m Jan,” she said to Chase. “If you need any help, just say the word. Doesn’t matter if I’m with another customer. Just signal me, and I’ll come.” She shook herself. “ Over , I’ll come over.”
I might as well have been wallpaper. And I got it. I’d ignore me too if Chase walked into my workplace .
Chase, as per usual, was oblivious. “Thank you, Jan.”
“No, thank you .” Jan pushed her round tortoiseshell frames back up on her nose. She was the spitting image of Lyssa’s idol Iris Apfel, right down to the bright stacked bracelets. “The best thing about high-performance visual aids is being able to see the beauty of the world with perfect, anti-glare clarity.”
I rolled my eyes. Jan had all the subtlety of a fistful of bells.
“I’m a poet.” She beamed at him.
As we browsed the shelves, I thought of a poem of my own.
There once was a woman from Toronto
Who fell in love with my man pronto…
“Caroline?” Chase called, two frames in his hand and a third on his face, the tag sticking up over the bridge. “Do you like these?”
“Sure,” I said, going over and tucking the tag down. “They look great.”
“Which pair would you like for me? I want you to pick.”
I looked at him for a long minute, then turned and searched the aisles. It took three rows, and hopefully Jan got in some good eye banging while I was busy. Eventually I found what I wanted and took them back to Chase.
When he saw what I held, he frowned.
“These are?—”
“The same as your broken ones,” I finished, as I slid them over his nose. “I know.” I met his gaze through the familiar surround of round wire frames. “But these have little clear thingies that go over your ears. You can feel them, and you’ll know I picked them. But I don’t want to change a thing about the way you dress, Chase. You don’t need to style yourself to fit me. You already do.” Heedless of the other customers, and Jan, I put my palm over his heart. “Because of this.”
It fell short of what I really wanted to say, those words that were trapped somewhere in my chest, tied down with stress and what ifs . But it was a piece of it. A piece I could freely give .
Chase’s eyes were full of feeling as he reached out and stroked a finger along my cheek.
“Besides”—I grinned—“who am I to mess with ‘ the beauty of the world ’?”
He kissed me in the store.
The week in Canada that followed was a dream. Chase and I spent nights tangled in soft sheets and days lost on asphalt streets.
I wanted to see everything in Toronto, and Chase was an excellent tour guide. He hadn’t lived here since he was a boy, and his mom was currently cruising around the Mediterranean, but he had an easy familiarity with the bustling, colorful metropolis.
Guiltily, he revealed he kept an apartment in the inner city, a few blocks from his mom’s place. The fact it must sit empty most of the year made me feel itchy, but when I suggested offering it to artists or academics on residency when he wasn’t in town he seemed receptive.
I had to admit though, I loved being somewhere without roommates or housekeeping. We could have sex on the couch, in the shower, and, my new personal favorite, over the kitchen counter.
After pastries on the terrace, we walked to every market and gallery within a ten-mile radius, and I saw the insides of more fancy buildings than I ever had in my life.
In the evenings, I tapped into the local performers’ grapevine (Jessica) and dragged Chase to nightclubs for small shows that were too cool to advertise in open forums, delighting whenever I found a place he didn’t know existed. I took him to gigs down rickety stairs and up hidden elevators. Wary of audience interaction, Chase made us sit so far in the back it was hard to see the performers, but I didn’t mind. I liked showing him my world .
Besides, Chase could see the performers perfectly, even from a distance, through his brand-new glasses.
CHASE
I held myself over Caroline, sheets twisted around our limbs, her beautiful body bared. I loved to see her this way, mussed and a bit dazed. Nobody else got to have her like this, only me.
“How do you want to do this, Floss?”
I didn’t mean to phrase myself like a Dungeon Master. But she didn’t know that.
Her eyes met mine and she licked her lips. Her pink hair was splayed on my pillow, her floral perfume was all through my bedding, and her very specific, intimate scent was on my fingers. This woman was leaving her mark on me in every way possible.
I was happier than I could ever remember being. With Caroline, it didn’t matter if I acted in contradictions, it didn’t negate my values. I could be a good man with her, and a bad one too. I could be all facets of myself, not just the parts that were most unlike my dad.
“You don’t have to ask to kiss me,” she whispered. “You don’t have to ask anymore. If I don’t like something I’ll tell you. You don’t have to ask to hug me or strip me or to do that thing with your tongue I like. In bed like this, I’m yours.”
“Mine.”
She didn’t slap me. She nodded.
I kissed the column of her throat and she wrapped her legs over my hips, trying to pull my cock toward the soft, slippery apex of her thighs where she wanted me. Needed me. And I loved to be needed, especially by her.
Making her wait all day for this was worth it. My brat was, for once, pliant. “I know calling you mine is problematic,” I said between kisses.
“I don’t give a Fred Astaire, Chase. I trust you.”
“I adore you,” I replied simply.
Caroline gripped me tightly, hearing the too-earnest note in my voice. “You do?”
She heard what I wasn’t saying as much as I was. But this was as close as I dared to go for now. “You don’t have to worry anymore.” I kissed her head. “I’ll look after you.”
She stayed quiet.
“Say something,” I prompted, starting to worry.
She shook her head, blinking rapidly. I wondered if I’d made a terrible mistake, if I’d been too obvious, too intense. In other words, too Sanford .
Shit .
I made a herculean effort to bottle the panic and concentrated on the feeling of our bodies, pressed together like this, my cock hard and desperate to be inside her. “Never mind now. Just tell me what you need to get that sweet pussy slick.”
“I— I— need you,” she stuttered. “I always need you.”
Satisfaction burned in my gut. “Yeah?”
I sat up on my haunches, looking down at her. My messy, perfect little hellion. Loose with the truth and armed with a moral compass I could barely comprehend, but I was obsessed with her anyway. I rolled my hips, stroking her until she was moaning. Caroline gripped my arms and tried to pull me down to her, rolling her hips to press her wet heat against my cock. Usually that would be the final straw for my self-control, but I wasn’t done admiring her. And if she wasn’t able to put into words how she felt about me, I would make her give me all her other confessions instead.
“Elaborate,” I demanded.
“I like how you stare at me. You’re always so polite to everyone, so aloof. But you stare at me like you’re imagining stripping me down and fucking me on the floor. ”
Despite my state, I barked a laugh. She only used a real swear word when she was really unwound. “I probably am.”
She reached up and cupped my face. “My horny Mr. Moral.”
I lined my cock up with her entrance. Slowly, eyes locked, I pushed as her body pulled me in. Even though she couldn’t say it, I could see her heart in her eyes. She felt something for me. I knew she did.
“I don’t have any more words, Chase,” she whispered. She kissed me then, and it felt like stretching out in the sun in Majorca. I’d held back as best I could, but I was only human. I came way before she did, but kept playing her body until, shuddering, she followed me over the edge. After, under the covers, she kept kissing me as if she couldn’t bear a lack of contact between us for too long. I wrapped her in my arms and she curled her legs around me, nestling into my body like she was a part of me.
Entwined like that, we fell into the night.
Those days with her in Canada were the best. If I’d known how numbered they were, I would have tied her to my bed or cut up her passport. Or both.
CAROLINE
I woke up because I needed to pee. I always drank a lot of water because Lyssa insisted I do it for my skin, but it meant I had the bladder of a child and got up multiple times per night. When I tiptoed back from the bathroom, Chase was awake too. I thought he’d drop back to sleep, but instead, we started talking. I lay on my front, my chin on Chase’s chest as he ran a hand up and down my arm. It was the wee hours of the morning, but neither of us were showing any signs of wanting to go back to sleep. Who cared if we were tired later? We didn’t have anywhere urgent to be! I was unemployed and he was rich.
After last night, neither of us had the energy for more sex, so in the cool blue light of the early morning, I finally asked the question I’d been tossing over.
“Was your parents’ divorce the first one for your dad?”
“It was. I was six, so I don’t really remember them together. Dad moved to New York afterwards, and Mom and I stayed in Canada. When I turned ten though, Dad wanted me to go to school in New York. He was with Joe’s mom then, and Joe was about three. Mom didn’t want to only see me on break, so she moved to New York. Dad bought her a place around the block—a townhouse, like she wanted. I spent the week with Dad and weekends and holidays with Mom. That was the deal. A year after that, when Dad left Joe’s mom, Joe got the same deal. Well, sort of.”
“Sort of?” I asked softly.
“Cody Trunk, Joe’s mom—I call her Dr. Cody, she’s a pediatrician now—she couldn’t stay in New York. She was a grad student at NYU at the time, and she got accepted for premed at Johns Hopkins. Joe was only four, and she went. I know why she had to. I understand. I’m not sure that Joe does.”
His body, so languid and relaxed before, was now tense, like he expected me to say something judgmental, but I kept my mouth shut. I knew he wasn’t his dad.
I wondered if he did.
“Dad paid for Cody’s school. Residency. Everything.” His mouth twisted. It looked like a smile, but it was missing any humor. “Dad always paid—it was his thing. That’s why none of his exes have ever set his building on fire. But I digress. Joe had to stay with us and go to school in the city like me. When he got old enough, he flew to see his mom as many weekends as he could, but it was hard. I know he resented that my mom lived around the block, but he didn’t like coming to my mom’s with me either. He often… floated. I know I shouldn’t complain about this?— ”
“It’s grueling.” I reminded him of the word.
“Yes. Very grueling.”
“I know you love Joe. I think he loves you too. But neither of you say it, and you’re both bad at showing it. You try to dictate his life and he antagonizes you.”
Chase sighed, but he seemed to take that in. It wasn’t really my place to give him instruction on this—he hadn’t asked—and I was hardly the poster child for perfect family relationships because I’d been putting off visiting mine for years. But it hurt to watch Chase try to show his brother love with the worst demonstration possible, instead of just saying the words. Chase had such a huge heart, but he always tried to trade favors for it instead of just… giving it. I don’t know why he thought being loved by him wasn’t enough. There wasn’t any need to sweeten the deal. It was already a boon.
“Your dad really messed you up. I know everyone’s parents kind of mess them up, but this is something else. I feel for you. And even for Gerry.”
His body, so relaxed before, tensed.
“I don’t,” he said shortly.
It was hard, but I let the silence sit. The hardest part of messing up with someone you cared about was letting things marinate when you wanted to talk, to explain, to apologize. But right now, it was almost as if I had some kind of sixth sense that was telling me that shutting up was the thing I needed to do.
“How did you meet him?” Chase asked eventually.
“Gerard—Gerry—saw my flyer at his club and thought I looked like Teddy. He came to my performance and it was clear my career was tanking, so he used that as leverage to get me to… well, you know.”
“He took advantage of the situation. Of you.” Chase tensed as if he meant to get up and turn a medium problem into a massive one.
I put a hand on his chest. “No, I did it willingly.”
“It’s not willing if you don’t have any other options. ”
“Well. Yeah , Chase. That’s the whole thing.”
He flinched, and then went quiet. It took an eternity, but he finally asked the question that anyone who wasn’t him would have asked much, much sooner.
“How much money did you need from Gerry?”
“You have to understand, I was out of time. Dad was going to lose Levitate. It’s not just his business, it’s his life. There was rent and suppliers’ expenses, and insurance too. Sweet Dolly , the insurance. There’s nothing wrong with the business, it’s a great café, but Dad got pneumonia last year, and we had to close for a while. I was—” I cleared my throat, the guilt eating me alive. “I had auditions lined up and Mike couldn’t keep the place going all on his own.”
“Just tell me how much.”
I played with the covers. “It wasn’t the bills. It was the interest on the aggregated loan.”
“Caroline.”
“Your stepbrother gave me fifty thousand dollars.”
Chase was silent for two minutes. I counted.
As the silence stretched, I wondered if he was going to flip out on me, or have his stepbrother arrested. Maybe he thought fifty thousand was too much to pay, or maybe he thought I’d sold myself short.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and that was it. He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and tugged me close, dropping a kiss on my head. I snuggled back on his chest, my face rising and falling with each breath he took. “We’ll fix it.”
We . Hilarious.
I changed the subject. “Your mom is here now, in Toronto, right? Sonya said she was.”
I felt him nod. “She moved back a few years ago. She always wanted to come back.” Then he sighed deeply. “My mom is very traditional. She never expected the divorce. After Dad bought her the town house a few blocks down, she pretended everything was the same. She’s never dated anyone else, never acknowledged any of Dad’s other wives. Never really acknowledged Joe.”
“Yeesh.”
“Yeah. Yeesh.”
“But she loves you.”
He smiled. “She’ll love you too.” He rolled onto his side and leaned his temple on a fist. Even in the dark, I could see the sparkle in his mismatched eyes. “And your family? Will they love me?”
My brain skipped like a track being played through cheap club speakers. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to think. I just didn’t know.
Unexpectedly, a movie my brother and I used to watch all the time when we were kids popped into my head. In it, a child ghost befriends a live human girl. Casper asks Kat, all hopefully, “Can I keep you?”
My brother thought the line was embarrassing, but I didn’t. Any other lonely, fish-out-of-water kid would have recognized themselves too. Casper asked even though he already knew the answer was no.
“Kevin Holliday is a big softie,” I said. “He’s a human snowball. We don’t have the candy snowballs in Aotearoa, but if we did, they’d be my dad.”
“And you have a brother. He liked to punch your teachers.”
“That’s Mike. His interests include rugby, darts, talking with his mouth full, and miniature horses.”
Chase was trying very hard to take everything in stride, because he didn’t even blink at that, and it was an unusual grouping.
“Can I ask about your mom?”
“Ah.” I rolled onto my back and told the ceiling, “I always hate this part.”
“What part?”
Do it like removing tit tape. Fast.
“She died when I was young. I don’t remember her, and I don’t like to talk about it. It makes me feel abnormal when I shouldn’t have to, and it makes other people feel guilty and then I have to comfort them. Dad and Mike are my family, and they’re more than enough. Actually, Mike is far, far too much. Everyone thinks their brother is annoying, but Mike is six brothers’ worth of annoying. He’s very protective. One of my cousins, Hannah, shacked up with Mike’s best friend earlier this year, and Mike acted like she’d married into the mob.”
“Had she?” Chase asked, his voice carefully mild.
“No.” I laughed. “We don’t have mobs. And Dean’s not in a gang, he’s an interior designer. Unless you’re wallpaper, or Hannah, Dean won’t notice you exist.”
“Interesting,” Chase said.
“For about two weeks after he found out about Hannah and Dean doing sexy deeds, Mike stopped talking to Dean. Mike never shuts up, so that’s like ten years of silent treatment from a normal person.”
“What won him over in the end?” Chase asked. “I’m taking notes.”
My brother would hate Chase. He was too rich, too privileged, and too direct—especially by New Zealand standards. Chase also didn’t know what Red Band gumboots were, and wouldn’t be able to tell one end of a miniature horse from the other.
Still, I wanted the two of them to meet, and to watch Chase try and win Mike over as I commiserated with Hannah about how hard it was to bring a man home; or maybe I had to wipe the smirk off Tessa’s face by promising to be unhelpful if she was ever in the same boat, bringing a partner home to us.
It was a potent fantasy.
“Well,” I said slowly, “Mike changed his tune when Dean started coming with Hannah to social things. Dean can be reclusive and Mike’s the opposite.”
“Confidence runs in your family, hmm?” Chase tapped a finger on my nose playfully. “Tell me more about growing up in New Zealand. I want to know about your dad’s café. I’m trying to build a picture.”
As the moon slid over the dark, knitted blanket of the night, I told Chase about some of Levitate’s regulars, like Mr. T, who always ordered Dad’s steak and mushroom pie but pulled all the mushrooms out even though we sold plain steak pies. I shared memories of growing up in rural New Zealand, about the fights that Mike had gotten into, and the silly things I’d done as a baby burlesque artist. I even told him about the ‘concerts’ I headlined in the living room when I was thirteen; where Mike operated the flashlight lights, and Tessa ‘mixed’ the music as I performed emotive contemporary dance routines to a handful of neighbors we’d been able to bully into paying a fifty-cent admission price.
These memories were objectively humiliating and I never shared them with anyone. But Chase was charmed, and I enjoyed seeing my home and childhood through his eyes, as something enchanting and quaint, rather than lonely and slow. Eventually, he fell back to sleep, but I stayed awake, watching him like a creep.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the kids’ film with the round, translucent ghost, removed from his own time and besotted with a human.
Casper knew he was never going to get the romantic ending.
I should have too.