CHAPTER 32 Rowan
CHAPTER 32
Rowan
I want to talk to Charlie, but he’s at work. There’s too much to think about with Remi’s illness, so I shove it from my mind and instead think about Charlie.
I fantasize about walking into his office, which I imagine is on a high floor of a skyscraper, and blowing him under the desk while he takes a call.
No, I imagine him ordering me to suck him off. God, that would be hot. The command voice? I shiver.
Then I scold myself. I need to focus on things that aren’t sex for a while. Because, as much as I want to be naked with Charlie all the time, I have other things to deal with.
When I arrive at Charlie’s house this time, I park properly in the driveway. My old car now lives in his garage. Once this newfound wealth and security sinks in—if it ever does—I’ll give it to charity. The security guard who followed me to and from lunch takes up a spot on the street. I decide to ignore his presence. I don’t know exactly how I’m supposed to handle being accompanied everywhere, but that seems like the simplest option.
What should I do about where I live?
I want to connect with my family and find out who they are. Maybe going to the Montecito house will give me clues. I could see if Charlie wants to come up with me, but a strong part of me wants to see the place on my own. To find out who I might’ve been if I hadn’t been abandoned as a newborn.
And there’s a restless excitement inside me at the idea of finally having something that feels like it might be mine. A real home . Though, for it to be home for me, maybe I should bring Charlie up there after all.
Then again, I don’t want to force him into living with me if that’s not what he actually wants. It’s one thing for him to rescue me from eviction, but it’s another for me to take over his life indefinitely.
Even if we are mated for life and he’ll eventually come around.
To distract myself from my thoughts, I redye my hair. It was getting too pale. Then I wait for Charlie to finish work.
Finally, I hear the garage door, and I stand up from the couch where I’ve been watching The Titan’s Bride anime. (The manga is better.)
I feel rather like a dog waiting for its owner to come home. “Hey,” I say when he opens the door, shifting my weight on my feet.
Charlie walks straight over to me. “How did lunch go?”
God, I love how interested in me he is. How he cares. I wrap my arms around his slim waist and bury my head in his chest. Then I back off fast. “Shit, I just dyed my hair. I don’t want to get pink on your shirt.”
He waves me off. “You’re more important.” He puts his hands on my jaw and kisses me—and this is the typical murderous Charlie kiss, not a sweet, light one. The kind that claims me. My favorite kind.
After he’s done and we’re both panting, I blink a few times. “First off, lunch was fucked up, because I get a father, only to find out he’s got terminal cancer,” I blurt, because I’ve been holding that in .
“Oh, shit,” Charlie says, giving me a heavy nod. “I’m so damn sorry.”
“Yeah. It’s hard to know what to feel. I don’t know him, but it’s … it’s just wrong for him to be taken from me so fast. Or that he’s likely going to be. If things go the way his doctors say. And why wouldn’t they, because he’s rich and can afford good doctors.” I’m breathless from saying all that. And while I’m not retreating behind my mental walls—this is Charlie, and he gets all the parts of me—I’m still on edge.
“I think we might need to get you some therapy,” he says quietly.
My first reaction is to nope the idea. But then, I huff, “You think? Maybe.”
“You might need to talk to a professional.” He grins. “You can afford it now.”
“That might be true. I’m still at the start of processing all this. Like, I now have a father, and it’s not any normal father, it’s a famous rich one—not just rich, but in this entirely different world—and then he’s going through health problems, and there’s all that. Lunch was … very weird. I’m not used to things being given to me, period. But this was so far beyond … I mean, a fancy lunch, okay, that’s something you might treat me to. If you wanted. Not that everything you’ve already done isn’t— I’m just saying, that’s, like, normal stuff for other people, right? Nice food, maybe clothes …” He is not getting that jacket back. “But with Remi, it’s like ‘Go out and charge yourself a fancy car. We’ll get you a house.’ If I said I wanted, I don’t know, a plane or a yacht, I bet he’d text someone and it would be done by the end of the week. When I woke up yesterday, I couldn’t afford to rent a shitty apartment. What even is this?”
He wraps me in his arms, and I inhale his comforting scent. “I understand that. It must be very disorienting. Tell me what happened.”
And so I do. We go to the couch, and I sit down with him, my ass perched on his legs, and I start talking. After I tell him about lunch, I bring up me moving. “I think I want to go up to the Montecito house for a while. I want to find out more about my family, and maybe I’ll get some answers there.”
His arms tighten around me. “Then do that. I’ll miss you, but this isn’t about me.”
“It is about us, though. It’s time for me to stop mooching off of you and start mooching off of my father instead.”
“You haven’t mooched off of anyone,” he says sternly.
“Well, if I’m going to, it makes more sense for me to be spending his money. Especially if he already has the house just sitting there.”
“And family is supposed to take care of each other,” Charlie says.
“That’s what the stories say.”
“Then let’s just take it one day at a time,” Charlie says, kissing my forehead. “What about the car? Do you like the BMW?”
“I’m keeping it for now, but maybe I’ll go pick a car I want.”
“What do you think you’d pick?”
I snuggle into him. “I have no fucking clue. Do I get something practical?”
He shakes his head. “You know the answer to that. You get something fun that suits your personality. He can afford it. Go wild.”
“Sometimes I want to blend in.”
Charlie actually laughs. “No, you don’t. You wouldn’t have this hair and this body art if you wanted to be the same as everyone else.” He pauses. “Well, you might have chosen to hide the scars in a less flamboyant way. You know, I’ve been learning a lot from you. I always wanted to accomplish the same thing as my peers. Now, though, I don’t know what I want. Except you.” His words make my whole body warm up.
“So I have a place to stay. I’m just … a little scared, I guess.”
“If anything goes wrong up there, or you don’t like it, you can come back here,” he says immediately. And my heart tugs even more strongly toward him.
I nod.
“So this is what you want?” Charlie asks quietly.
“To live away from you? No. To live in a place where I don’t feel like I’m mooching? Yes.”
“When are you going to go?”
“I’m not sure. He was readying it for me tonight.”
Charlie’s hazel eyes bug out. “Seriously?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I think my father doesn’t like it that his offspring has been living so badly. And now he wants to make up for it.”
“Do you think he’ll ever be able to do that?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I think he will. Though I don’t know why I believe that. It’s not like anything good has ever happened to me before.”
“I’m good,” Charlie says.
“Well, yeah, but you came as a result of a kidnapping. Or carjacking. Or mugging.” My eyes widen. “That must be why I trust my father: He kidnapped me. Maybe good things only happen to me in connection with crimes.”
“Uh, no,” Charlie says firmly. “We’re not going to have that be part of your personal narrative.”
“What if I say … I trust things more if they come out of adversity?”
“Well, that can certainly be true. Some of us think that if things come too easy, they don’t matter.”
“This is coming pretty easy,” I murmur.
He snorts. “No, it’s not. You lived two decades without a family. You suffered through more living situations than you can count, and some of them were pretty bad. No stability whatsoever. Whatever ‘easy’ is, it’s not that.”
“Fair enough.” I kiss him. “So do you think I should go? ”
“Yeah,” he says. “I think you’re too curious not to. You don’t have to stay if you don’t like it.”
“Do you want to come with me?”
“I do, baby boy, but I think this is one you may want to try without me.” This time he kisses me. “How about this? Call me if you need me.”
“Deal.” I hop off his lap. “Want to help me pack?”
“Sure.” I hold out a hand, and Charlie takes it. “Do you want to borrow my luggage?”
“Nah. I’m probably going to end up tossing everything, anyway. Better to use a trash bag and avoid the middleman.”
At the end of the packing session, I’m taking very few things. I go to throw the rest of my clothes in the garbage, but Charlie says to keep them here.
Something about that makes me smile.
Maybe I do already have a home: with him.
The BMW’s GPS navigates me through a neighborhood of verdant hedges and winding streets to a tall gate.
This is where I live now?
With a guard following close behind, I pull up and roll down the window to press a call button—my father didn’t give me any keys or anything—but it opens automatically. I have no idea if it recognizes the car or if someone’s watching. I have an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach, and my breaths are quick.
You can do this, Rowan.
I drive half a block to an immaculate house. It looks more like a hotel than a home. Big, interesting. It’s nighttime, but there’s landscape lighting, and the front area is all illuminated. The place has white stucco walls draped in bougainvillea. Red tile roof. The front door has a large glass panel. Like it’s safe to have someone peep inside, because no one who’s not supposed to be here could get past the gate.
I park in the circular driveway in front of the house. Three people come out to meet me, all with smiles on their faces.
“Are you Rowan?” the younger man, probably around my age, asks. He’s wearing a white button-down shirt and black slacks. A woman who looks to be in her forties follows him, along with a man about the same age.
“I am.”
“I’m Hector Gutiérrez. These are my parents, Matilda and Lionel.”
I shake all of their hands.
“I’m your assigned driver,” Hector says, waving at the guard who followed me up here. “I’ll also be your security when you’re in Montecito.”
“And I’m the housekeeper,” Matilda offers. “My husband, Lionel, is the groundskeeper.”
“Nice to meet all of you. This place is incredible.”
We step up to the front door, and I can hear the ocean.
“It is nice,” Hector agrees. “You get used to it, though.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this.” I feel like a breathless princess in a movie, but right now, I’m entitled to be. Because I’m Cinderella, and this is a goddamn castle.
Matilda ushers us inside, and I gasp at the foyer. It’s … gorgeous. A grand staircase—on two sides—goes up to a second story, but the back wall is all glass. In fact, the entire back wall of the house might be glass. An illuminated pool is right outside the back doors, and I’m pretty sure there’s direct access to the ocean beyond.
The floors are shiny wood, and everything seems expensive but comfortable. While my style, if I ever had money to spend—oh wait—is more modern, I can still appreciate the quality and workmanship here .
“I’ll show you to your suite.” Matilda heads up the stairs, and I follow. “And then you can explore as you wish.”
“I’ll park your car, and Dad and I will bring in your things,” Hector says.
While I want to argue with him, that is his job, I guess. Get used to having people help you, Rowan.
“Thank you,” I say.
At the top of the grand staircase, Matilda leads me along a hallway that has windows looking out over the front of the house.
She opens a door on the ocean side, and I finally do gasp. I can’t help it. It’s just so extravagantly beautiful.
The suite is the size of Charlie’s entire house. It’s comfortably furnished, with a huge bed with downy white sheets that look really fluffy. Tons of pillows. Framed black-and-white photographs of Santa Barbara on the walls. The furniture is modern pale wood, and there are upholstered chairs in a navy material, a TV with a video game system that Matilda shows me (it’s concealed in its own custom cabinet), and a bathroom the size of Montana.
Oh, and the room has an entire wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, the curtains currently drawn against the darkness.
“You’ll enjoy the view. You can see up to Santa Barbara and down to Ventura.” Matilda smiles. “Plus the pool and the beach.”
In short, this is amazing.
We find a place for Wilbur in my bedroom, hanging in front of a window. Matilda assures me she’ll keep an eye on his water levels, though I’m used to taking care of him and don’t plan to stop now.
Next, she shows me my father’s suite—in the other wing—before taking me back downstairs to tour the kitchen, living room, other bedrooms, home office, movie projection room, gym, and a bunch of other rooms I can’t even keep track of. She tells me that I can ask for whatever food or snacks I want. I open the fridge, and it’s already stocked with most everything I can imagine.
After I’ve had some homemade potato leek soup and a green salad, as well as a piece of cherry pie, in a kitchen nook that’s big enough to be its own dining room, I go up to my room and pace.
The ocean’s loud.
Apparently Remi owns acres along the beachfront.
So no one’s here. I’m all alone. Hector, Matilda, and Lionel live in a coach house on the property.
I flop down on the overstuffed bed, still in my clothes. I should be doing better than this. I should be feeling good. I finally have all the things I could ever dream of.
It’s lonely as fuck.
I feel better having Wilbur in my room, at least. Wherever I go, he goes.
Only now, there’s someone else I want with me. A someone who talks back.
I realize I have a choice. I could wallow some more, or I could fix this.
Charlie answers immediately, again proving why I’m in love with him.
“Charlie,” I whisper, my voice breaking.
His voice is soft and deep. “Baby, what is it?”
“This place … I’ve been rootless my whole life, but I’ve never felt as lonesome as I do right now. There’s no one else here.”
“What’s the address? I’m on my way.”