Chapter 11
11
Sydney
“ T his is your car?” Wyatt asked the next morning, pointing at my large Range Rover.
“I like the dark windows,” I said.
I’d bought it at a time when anonymity meant everything. When I wanted a dark tank that could get me through the swarms of paps. While we were together John used my car to pick up his various girlfriends. The tinted windows hid his habits. I had to have the SUV cleaned and detailed after our “relationship” was over, to get the smell of the perfume out of the leather seats.
“Just doesn’t look like you, Tink.” he said. “You okay if I drive?”
“I can drive it,” I said, defensively. “I know it’s a big SUV, but I don’t have any problems driving it. Even in LA traffic.”
I hated driving in LA traffic, but I wasn’t completely helpless.
“Syd, me driving isn’t a guy thing. Well, maybe it’s a little bit of a guy thing, but it’s more of a control freak thing. I’m always the driver.”
That felt true. He’d driven Liam and me to dinner last night in Liam’s rental and then to the airport so Liam could catch his red eye back to Maine. We’d left the rental at the airport and Ubered back here.
At the restaurant, Wyatt stood in front of me like a bodyguard. Eyes on everyone, body tense like he was waiting for a threat. Like he’d take someone out if they made me the slightest bit uncomfortable.
It was overkill. But it was sweet overkill.
“Okay, but we can take turns,” I suggested. “It’s almost fourteen hours to Colorado. You’ll need a break.”
He took the keys from me and made his way toward the driver’s side. “Sure.”
He wasn’t planning on taking turns.
My husband liked hot sauce on his eggs and he liked to be in control.
Check and check.
We hopped in our seats. Our bags were in the back, including my old acoustic guitar and notebooks. I’d let Beatrice know the plan and she didn’t think it was the worst idea, to be away from the press. Especially now, since John had thrown gasoline on the fire.
“You okay?” Wyatt asked, glancing from me to the road and back again.
“What makes you think I’m not?”
“When you’re stressed out you try and make yourself smaller,” he said, and I looked down to see that I was sitting curled up against the door. My knees tucked to my chest. I laughed.
“That’s pretty perceptive of you.”
“I’m a perceptive guy,” he said. At first I thought he was joking, but I realized he wasn’t. Then I realized he was right. He was perceptive. He saw me so clearly and he barely knew me. Everyone he came in contact with, he sized them up almost immediately and he wasn’t often wrong.
“So? What’s got you upset?” he asked.
“Everything?” I laughed. “All of it. I feel like…” he was silent, waiting for me to finish my own thought instead of rushing in to put words in my mouth or tell me how he felt. “A paper doll.”
He looked at me and back at the road.
“Like I’m just this prop in other people’s lives. Other people’s stories. They dress me up, send me down the red carpet, send me to a party, a golf tournament, all to serve someone else. Or some idea of me that someone else has. I don’t think anyone sees me.”
Except you. I didn’t say it. I wouldn’t. How could I? I’d made all these rules.
But, of course, Wyatt wasn’t scared of my rules.
“I see you,” he said, his voice low and rough the way it had been in the ocean. My body went hot at the memory of his hand on my ass. His fingers on my nipple. My stomach did that flip thing that I always tried to write about and never seemed to capture. It felt like…longing. An ache. For him.
Being alone in a car with him for the next fourteen hours wasn’t going to help the situation.
“So, what games do we play to see who controls the music?” I asked him.
Wyatt chuckled. “You can put whatever you want on. I don’t care as much about the music as Liam does.”
“Then why did you play games?”
Wyatt glanced over at me. He was wearing a pair of aviator sunglasses that made him look sexier and slightly dangerous.
“Well, let me explain how it works. Especially when it’s two boys close in age. You compete for everything. I mean everything. Games, food, clothes, who watches what TV shows. Doesn’t matter if I don’t care what music we listen to, I always needed to make Liam earn the right. It’s in the older brother job description.”
“What about girls?” I prompted. “Did you compete over them?”
“Never. Well, until now. I should probably confess. Liam was crazy about you when he was younger.”
“He told me.”
“Fucker.”
I laughed. “He also told me that you were the best guy he knew and that you wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me while you were around.”
He laughed like he wasn’t surprised, but he was happy. “That’s the other thing family does. We stick together and support each other. No matter what.”
“Sounds nice.”
“It is,” he said, like he was sorry I had never had it, but he didn’t pity me. It was a fine line and he walked it well.
Our silence was comfortable until Wyatt let out a deep sigh.
“What?” I pressed.
“Huh?”
“That sigh. It felt like there was a lot in there.”
Wyatt was quiet long enough that I thought he wasn’t going to share whatever he was thinking. Which was fine. Fake marriage didn’t give me the rights to his private thoughts.
I wasn’t going to be disappointed if he didn’t think he could trust me with something that was personal to him.
At least I was going to try and not be.
“Liam and I learned something after our mom died,” he said, and I turned towards him, delighted he was opening up to me. “She left us a letter that told us she’d been married before our father. And had a kid. She walked away from both of them and never said a word about it. We didn’t know we had a half-brother until then.”
“Oh my gosh. Why did she leave behind her son?”
He shook his head, like the weight of the world was resting on him.
“Her ex was abusive. She was young, just eighteen, and struggled with undiagnosed mental health problems. She couldn’t figure out how to leave him and take the baby with her. She had no family to help her out and he had a sister she thought would step in. In the end, she thought her only option was to run. She did and she didn’t look back.”
“That’s awful.”
He shifted in his seat. “Yeah, Liam and I are struggling with the idea of how our mom, the mom we knew, could do that. Leave a child like that.”
“I didn’t mean what she did was awful,” I said, reaching out to touch his forearm. “You can’t judge something like that, because you can’t know her situation. Not truly. For her to make the decision to leave… that’s what had to be so awful. Did you ever meet him? Your half-brother?”
An abrupt nod. “We hired a private investigator. Met him at a bar in Boston. Me and Liam. Right before I flew out to Vegas, actually.”
“It didn’t go well. I can tell by your expression.”
“Nick doesn’t want anything to do with us. That’s his name. Nick. He was raised by the asshole until his teens, ended up stealing a car and going to juvie. Eventually he just ran away. But he met up with a good family who found him and took him in. Some famous chef. Runs The Robin’s Egg in Northern California.”
“Antony Renard is your half-brother’s adopted father?” Everyone in California knew the reputation of The Robin’s Eg g. “Well, if he eats like you and Liam, then he got very lucky.”
“Yeah,” Wyatt smiled. “I know it worked out okay for him in the end, but not until he was a teenager. Everything he suffered up until then…it eats me up inside.”
“Because you weren’t there to protect him,” I said nodding. “Even though he would have been your older brother.”
“Can’t help it,” Wyatt said. “He’s family. And like I said-”
“You stick together,” I finished for him. I couldn’t help that I sounded doubtful.
“That wasn’t your experience,” he said.
“So far from it. I don’t regret emancipating myself from my mom. She was toxic and manipulative and if I wanted to survive I needed to cut myself free.”
“That must have been hard.”
I shrugged. “Lots of things are hard. Finding out you have a secret brother is hard. But it would have been nice, you know? To have a mom who cared about me. But sometimes family isn’t the one you’re born into,” I said. “Sometimes it’s the one you choose.”
“Who have you chosen?”
“Beatrice,” I said.
It was a little embarrassing to admit that. Beatrice knew me best. I trusted her the most. Those things were true, only I paid her, which maybe just made her really good at her job and me a total loser.
“It’s obvious she treats you like she would a daughter,” he said.
“You think?” I asked, pleased it wasn’t all in my head. He nodded.
“I chose you,” I said with a cheeky grin. “I just happened to be a little drunk when I did it.”
“We should get you a ring,” he said abruptly. “I know we’re going to be out of sight for a while, but when you do show up at the ACAs, you should have a ring on your finger.”
“I don’t know how I feel about that,” I said honestly.
“What’s to feel? It’s a ring.”
I shook my head. “It’s an engagement ring or a wedding ring. Whenever I thought about wearing one, it would have meant…”
“What?”
I sighed. “It would have meant I found my person. My forever person. I know what it looks like, all my ex boyfriends and stuff, but I promise you, when I thought about getting married it was supposed to be forever. Obviously, I screwed that up.”
“ We screwed that up,” Wyatt insisted.
“If anyone asks about a ring we can say we’re having something custom made.”
“Okay.”
“We should still play a car game,” I said, changing the subject. “To pass the time. How about we try to guess each other’s favorite things and then reveal the right answer. Like… what’s my real favorite movie?”
“You mean I got that wrong?” Wyatt asked. “It’s not Predator ?”
We were almost ten hours into the drive and, in a way, it felt like what I always imagined a honeymoon might feel like. Minus the beach and the sex and the couples massages and drinks with umbrellas in them. We were together, completely isolated from the world, with nothing to do but get to know each other.
Tell each other our most embarrassing stories. Our childhood nightmares. The names of our favorite pets. The first person who broke our hearts.
“Lydia Belmonte,” Wyatt answered right away. “She was getting bullied by this kid in our class and I jumped in to save her and she ended up kissing him after school anyway. It was so embarrassing.”
“Some girls just don’t appreciate the good guys,” I said and then paused.
That was not a bad lyric. A little tweaking maybe? Appreciate?
Some girls can’t handle the good guys?
“What about you?”
Yeah. There was no way I was telling him about Axil. That embarrassment was still too fresh even though it was seven years ago. “Hey,” I said instead, pointing to the sign for a diner at the next exit. “Let’s get some food.”
“I could eat,” he said. Which I already knew.
Wyatt stood outside the gas station bathroom every time we pulled over to refuel the SUV and I needed to pee.
He drank energy drinks, while I stuck to water, but with snacks we were totally in sync.
We always needed a combination of salty, chocolate and too sweet.
Which meant we were eating Combos and sour cream and onion potato chips, Reese’s Cups, full size for him, minis for me, and Nerd Clusters for both of us.
We’d crossed into New Mexico and the sun was setting behind us, making the landscape look like we were driving through a distant planet. He let me have total control of the music so my happy music playlist was playing softly in the background. We were currently enjoying the undeniable Zach Bryan.
“So?” He said. “What about sex?”
Good mood gone.
“What about it?” I asked in my squeaky mouse voice.
“Oh, I don’t know?” He glanced at me and back at the dark road. “When did you first have it? What do you think about it?”
“I don’t think about it,” I said, too fast and too…weird.
“Never?” he asked, like I was an alien.
Now I felt like an alien.
The truth was, I’d been thinking about it a lot the last few days. With him. That comment he made about taking me from behind? So hard I’d go blind? Was that real? Was that how he liked it? Did other women like that? Would I? If I was being honest, it seemed unlikely, but every time I thought about him like that… I got hot. And wet.
“What do you think about it?”
“You want to know the truth?” he asked.
“Always.”
“For years now, I’ve looked at sex as an assignment. Like executing a play in hockey. My goal is to get the woman I’m with, off. My reward for succeeding in that task is, I get to come.”
“That doesn’t sound very romantic.”
“I’ve had a lot of unromantic sex. Liam always falls in love with whoever he’s with while I tend to be more… guarded. Growing up my focus was on sports and grades. Girls at school basically had to throw themselves at me for me to notice. Once I went pro, a relationship was out of the question.”
“How come?”
“I didn’t want any distractions. I’m not gifted like Liam is athletically. Everything I achieve I have to work a little harder for. Dating, finding someone I wanted to spend my life with, starting a family, that all felt like too much work. Work and energy that would take away from my game. So I figured I would wait until after I retired.”
“That sounds very practical.”
“You don’t approve?”
I shrugged. “I’m not being judgmental. We just think very differently. I write love songs. I believe in romance and connection and happily ever after. That special magic that can happen at any time. Not when you decide you’re ready for it.”
“Sorry to disappoint you. I’m not very romantic or spontaneous. The most spontaneous thing I’ve ever done was marry you in Vegas.”
“Then I’m happy to be the one curve ball in your life. Maybe I was just the thing you needed.”
He’d taken off his sunglasses so I could see his eyes, but night had fallen around us and I couldn’t read his expression in the dashboard lights.
“Maybe,” he said, but I couldn’t tell if he was agreeing with me, or laughing. All of this getting to know each other we’d done, and he was still pretty much a stranger.
It was after midnight when we finally pulled up to the cabin. The Rover’s headlights illuminated a front porch in progress, the steps leading to the front door were newly built.
“It’s pretty rustic,” he said, as if he was seeing it through my eyes and I was disappointed.
But far from it. I couldn’t see much, but the cabin was tucked into a grove of trees and the moonlight made everything look…magical. Special.
“Does it leak?”
“No. New roof, but it’s not fancy. I come here to get away from everything, but I’m a guy. Like I’m sitting here wondering if I have more than one bath towel.”
“Dibs,” I called. “You can air dry.”
He chuckled. “Okay. You’re saying you can tough it out?”
“I’m not a princess, Wyatt. I grew up in a trailer park,” I got out of the Rover, happy to be on my feet. That was a long drive. “That said, you will be doing a spider check of the bathroom and my bedroom. Underneath the bed and everything.”
“I’m happy to serve as your spider guard.”
We made our way up the newly repaired steps and Wyatt reached for a key that was perched over the door frame. “Folks out here don’t worry too much about security. I only lock it to keep out the bears and any other critters that might come sniffing around.”
“Add bear and critter check to my list as well.”
“There is a generator that provides the electric we need,” he explained as we stepped inside the cabin. “Baseboard heating that I keep off when I’m not here, so it will be chilly until it warms up. But it warms up pretty quickly.”
I noticed the cold, but as soon as he switched on the thermostat, I could feel the warm air blowing through the heater vents along the floor boards.
He wasn’t kidding when he said no frills. It was an A frame cabin with a vaulted ceiling. All one open room. A kitchen on one side with a small fridge, a sink and a tiny counter space. A pot-bellied wood burning stove was in the corner beside a couch and a small television. There was a narrow hallway that led back to what I assumed was the bathroom and single bedroom.
“There’s space for a loft,” he said, pointing up at the ceiling braced by big beautiful wooden beams. “I just haven’t really needed it. I don’t get a lot of guests up here.”
“Liam doesn’t come very often?”
Wyatt shook his head. “Not enough night life for him. He’ll come out for a few days in the summer to fish, but he gets bored. Stay there,” he said, pointing to where I was standing in the middle of the space. “I’m going to get our bags from the Rover, then I’ll do your spider check.”
“Under the bed and everything,” I reminded him.
“Yes, princess. Under the bed and everything.”
I wasn’t a princess. Far from it. But I couldn’t help but think that the woman who was lucky enough to get Wyatt to fall for her would feel like a princess every day.
Too bad it wouldn’t be me.