Chapter 53
A LITTLE OF YOUR LIFE, A LITTLE OF MINE
Daphne
I am my own worst enemy.
And that’s why I’ll have no control over the TV remote at the hotel we stop at somewhere in southeast Missouri the first evening after I failed to give away the entire bag of money in one day.
Not having control over the TV remote is why I end up breaking my own rule and having sex with Oliver again.
Swear it’s only that I need a distraction from his terrible television choices.
The next day, different bet, different states, but same results.
We refill the bag of money from the other bags in the trunk, and when I fail to find ways to empty it entirely through giant tips and random donation drop-offs and trading the cash in for gift cards that we can use online or mail to various places, like nursing homes and hospitals and schools for the staff, I lose control of the air conditioner for the last-minute vacation rental that Oliver books somewhere in Iowa.
I teach him to boil water for mac ’n’ cheese—yes, yes, he already knew how to boil water, but he humors my attempt at playing teacher so well that we have sex on the kitchen floor.
Then again in the creepy basement.
No cool lady cave there.
Except mine.
My lady cave gets thoroughly banged into ecstasy by the wonder cock in Oliver’s pants while I sit on the washing machine during the spin cycle.
And I tell myself this was a necessary lesson since he did not, in fact, already know how to operate a washing machine, though he could’ve looked it up on the internet.
Saturday—today—it’s the same thing all over again.
Except this time, I bet him a night of sleeping in a tent if I give away all of the money.
And I do it.
So now we’re setting up camp at a secluded spot in a wooded state park somewhere so far northwest in Iowa that we could probably see both Minnesota and South Dakota if we climbed a tree and peered off into the distance.
“How’s it feel to be down a couple million?” I ask Oliver as he watches me setting up the tent I insisted we get. It’s proving to be smaller than I anticipated a four-person tent would be.
Damn.
We’ll have to cuddle or something.
Horrors.
I’ll probably have to fall on his dick for us to fit.
Fuck me, I have issues.
He smiles at me from his spot on a picnic blanket on the ground, where he’s splayed out on his ass with his legs spread and his elbows behind him, propping himself up under the shade of the trees.
My stupid heart does the same thing it’s been doing all day long and starts singing songs about rainbows and stars and frolicking in meadows made of marshmallows and cotton candy.
Bea told me once that her vagina is a hopeless romantic.
Mine’s apparently stuck in a fairy-tale world.
“Lighter,” he tells me. “It feels—I feel lighter.”
“It doesn’t bother you that literally no one realized how much cash you were handing or leaving them the past few days?”
He shakes his head. “Don’t want the thanks. That part—it’s awkward. I don’t like it.”
“You’re not awkward.”
I get a raised eyebrow of doubt.
“You’re different. From when—from who you were when we were younger.”
“When you don’t have any memories of me?”
I grin. “Clearly. Now you’re memorable.”
He jerks his chin toward the tent. “That’s built for four people?”
I study the small domed shelter. “I think they put the wrong tent in the box.”
He snickers.
Oliver.
Snickering over getting a half-size four-person tent.
“Have you always had a sense of humor?” I ask him when I shouldn’t be asking him anything besides please gather sticks so we can make a fire to make dinner.
And then he does something even worse, and he answers me with a heavy sigh and a soft, “No.”
“I was kidding. Being obnoxious. Poking at you. Ignore me.”
“One of my earliest memories was meeting the cast of Les Mis in Paris.”
I plop back on my own butt next to him. “I know we grew up special, but that’s special special.”
“My mother wanted me to be cultured, and the best way to do that was to do cultured things. Not fun things.”
“No Panda Bananda on Ice for you, huh?”
His brows furrow, wrinkling his forehead, and I realize he looks younger today.
Not as young as he is, but far younger than he did a week ago.
“Kids’ cartoon show,” I explain.
He shakes his head. “Definitely not then.”
“Clearly. Panda Bananda didn’t start until a few years ago, and you’re seventy-eight, so…”
He smiles again.
This one’s a soft smile.
Filled with affection.
Shiiiiiit.
I need to tell myself this is a one-sided crush on my sister’s ex who happens to need a lot of sex right now.
That when I go home, I’ll realize this was all for fun and not emotional at all.
That I’m not honestly attracted to Oliver, and he’s been humoring me because he feels bad that I will never see as much money as he’s had in his trunk ever again in my entire life, and possibly never experience another penis as good as his either.
“What’s your earliest memory?” he asks me.
“My grandma had this parakeet that would recite Shakespeare. It pecked me on the arm and I got sent to the kitchen to sit with her cook, who was this terrifying woman even older than my grandma, but she gave me fresh chocolate chip cookies after she patched up my arm.”
He shifts on the ground and skims his fingers over my biceps. “Is that why you got tattoos? To hide the scars of all the birds that have pecked you after you annoyed them?”
Oh my god, he’s funny.
I’m grinning while I nod at him. “Yep. First it was parakeets, then it was ravens, then this fat robin one time, and then a hawk…”
Dammit.
His smile’s growing too. So is the warmth in his eyes. And he’s leaning closer to me. “If you didn’t walk around wearing squirrel pelts, I’m sure the hawks would leave you alone.”
My hand flutters to my heart. “I would never.”
“But the robins… What did you do to piss off a robin? Steal its worms?”
“I found its nest and wore it as a hat.”
Again, I truly would never. I’m making up stories. He’s making up stories.
This is the easy kind of fun that I have with Bea’s brothers too. Each of us trying to get more outrageous than the other, telling tales of things that never happened, occasionally slipping in something real.
But Oliver isn’t one of Bea’s brothers.
“Daphne?”
“Yes, Oliver?”
His gaze flickers over me, warm and friendly and affectionate, and I realize he’s about to say something profound.
Something intelligent and kind, probably about our trip, how much he’s needed it, how glad he is that I’ve been with him.
My pulse kicks up again, sending the barest wisp of I have it so bad for him adrenaline faster through my veins while I watch him watching me, like he’s weighing the exact right words to use.
His chest rises on a large inhale, and then—“Are you sure I can trust you to cook me dinner over a fire tonight?”
I deflate like a freaking balloon.
I know I’m something more to him than his ex’s little sister—you don’t bang a guy senseless every night on a road trip without graduating above that title, and he did tell me he likes me, even if I’m not sure he meant it the way I want to take it—but I hoped I’d be more than chef and tent-keeper too.
“That depends on how much more crap you give me about all of the birds that have attacked me over the years.”
His smile pauses halfway. “There—there haven’t been other birds, right?”
“Only people who help build a fire to cook dinner get answers to that question.”
“You’re so mean.”
If you’d told me two weeks ago I’d feel like the luckiest woman in the world when Oliver Cumberland teased me about being mean, I would’ve laughed until I choked.
But the glint in his hazel eyes and the curve of his lips and the way smiling makes him almost look his own age—this isn’t a road trip effect.
This is just Oliver.
Being who he’s free to be when it’s the two of us, alone, in the middle of nowhere.
No family expectations. No job expectations. No worries about anything at all.
Goddess knows he wouldn’t put on airs for me. Pretend he’s happy when he’s not. Bend over backward to put my comfort ahead of his own.
And that—that knowledge that I like him, this man that he’s becoming, the man he’s always had inside of him, the man he’s finally free to be, coupled with the knowledge that this can’t last—means as much as I’m happy for him, I’m sad for me too.
My smile back is forced as I push up off the ground and head to the car for the rest of the supplies we picked up at ValuKart, and yes, I’m running away from my own feelings.
“If you have any energy left, go gather some sticks for kindling. We need smaller stuff if we’re going to make this firewood work. ”
I hear rustling behind me, and I know he’s following directions.
“You make fires often?” he asks me.
“When I go camping.”
“You camp often?”
“I got into it maybe a year after my parents cut me off. Some of my coworkers invited me. I try to go with them a few times every summer now. It can make your neck hurt, but also, there’s nothing like sleeping in the fresh air under the stars to put your life in perspective when things are shitty.”
“Are things shitty now?”
“No. Just a general observation. And things don’t have to be shitty for camping to be amazing. Tonight, for instance. Tonight, camping will be amazing because we’re doing it because I won.”
“Only because you left fifty grand at that pinecone museum. They won’t know what to do with fifty grand.”
“They figured out how to do enough with pinecones to make a museum. I think they’ll figure out how to efficiently use fifty grand.”
I move things around in the trunk to give myself space to spread out a tablecloth and prep dinner here instead of on the ground, oofing when I attempt to move the last and biggest duffel of cash.
“Why is this last bag heavier than the other two?” I call to Oliver.
A noise that sounds like a snort of laughter answers me, so I glance back at him.
He’s gathered a good pile of sticks that he’s holding in both hands, and he’s laughing.
Giggling, really.
Full-on snort-giggling.
That’s as much permission as I need, as far as I’m concerned.
I unzip the hard-sided case and pop it open.
Half of it is cash.
The other half, though, buried underneath the cash—
I tilt my head as I start combing through the bubble-wrapped items, peeling back the tape and unwrapping enough bubble wrap to identify what’s inside.
“That was my grandmother’s favorite music box,” Oliver says over my shoulder. “She got it on her first trip to Italy. And that one”—he points to a long, skinny thing wrapped in bubble wrap—"that one’s my father’s favorite Maurice Bellitano.”
“Will he notice it’s missing?”
“Eventually.” He grins broader. “Like he’ll notice this too.”
He reaches past me to grab a wine-bottle-shaped bubble-wrapped object.
I choke on my own tongue when he unrolls it and shows me the label.
“Is that real?” I whisper.
“High probability.”
“What does that mean, high probability?”
“If this is what I think it is, this came from my grandfather’s cellar, like most of what we had before my father’s misguided foray into showing up your father’s wine cellar.”
“But you’re not sure?”
“One way to find out.”
“Find an expert?”
“Drink it.”
Spoken like a true billionaire.
He giggles again. “How do you think it’ll pair with hot dogs?”
Spoken like a true billionaire having a mental breakdown.
As if that’ll stop me from smiling back at him. “Only one way to find out.”
I don’t drink much that costs more than twelve bucks a bottle these days, but I’ve had good wine.
Good wine.
This bottle?
If it’s truly a 1947 Chateau Cheval Blanc, my father would absolutely die at the idea of us drinking it with campfire hot dogs. His father probably would too.
“What else did you take?” I ask him.
“Sentimental things and a few things that can be used as blackmail in the event they try anything to get me to come back.”
“Oliver Cumberland, you are devious.”
He grins at me. “Bad to the bone, baby.”
I can’t explain why that makes me desperately need to kiss him, but it does.
Oliver is not bad.
He’s utterly perfect.
And I have at least one or two more days before I need to think about reality again.
Home. Job. Him not being mine.
Maybe three or four days.
I can wait three or four days to contemplate having to get back to the real world.
Especially if he keeps kissing me back like this in the meantime.