Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
Flynn
It’s never the right time to tell someone about your prison record. June doesn’t want her heart broken again so soon. But if I wait, she’ll feel like I should have told her. That is … if she ever speaks to me again.
As promised, we spend the next twenty-four hours in bed. Food delivery. Showers. Fluffy white robes. And so much sex I start to feel like I’m the one hallucinating. I’ve bought my fair share of condoms, but I’ve never had them delivered to a hotel room. Didn’t know that was a thing. But it is.
June’s literally my world right now. No job. No parents. No responsibilities.
“Where are you staying?” she asks, the following morning, freshly showered. We dress into our clothes from the other night.
“In a hotel not too far from the airport.”
“Got room for one more?” she asks, giving me a flirty grin while combing her fingers through her hair.
“Can I be honest?” I ask.
“Not if you’re going to break my heart.”
I roll my eyes as if it’s ridiculous, as if I’m not going to obliterate her heart when I vomit the rest of my past all over her fragile world.
“Other than finding you and groveling, I didn’t have a plan when I flew out here.
I don’t think living out of a hotel is an option.
I need a job.” I sit on the end of the bed and put on my shoes.
“Well, I can’t leave.” She frowns. “But if you need to go back to Minneapolis, I understand.”
“I don’t want to go anywhere without you.”
June’s frown morphs into a grin as she steps toward me, resting her hands on my shoulders. “I was hoping you’d say that. How do you feel about getting an apartment with me? You can get a job. I’ll go to my parents’ house to practice my cello. I can show you around L.A. What do you think?”
I lean forward, resting my forehead between her breasts. “I think I love you.”
“You think? Flynn, I’m going to need you to do more than think you love me.” She teases her fingers through my wet hair.
“You’re pretty intimidating. On that stage the other night, I was tempted to leave and get on a plane back to Minnesota. This girl loves me?” I laugh. “I was like, no fucking way.”
She tips my chin up. “You’re my muse. Falling in love with you made me want to play again.”
“What’s so inspiring about me?”
“You’re sexy, and confident.” Her head bobs a few times. “But not overly confident. Sometimes you get nervous, and I love those tiny glimpses of your vulnerability. I love your sense of humor. Your protectiveness. You say what you feel.”
“I stick my foot in my mouth.”
June grins. “Sometimes. And you’re giving.”
“I sold your car to afford this trip.”
Her smile widens. “You’re frugal and scrappy. And I know Rupert hired you because he saw something special in you, and I want that. I want what you don’t see in yourself. That’s inspiring.”
“Well,” I turn my head and kiss the inside of her wrist, “you inspire me too.”
“Yeah?”
I snake my hands up her dress and peel her underwear down her legs. “Yeah,” I whisper.
She looks at the alarm clock on the nightstand. “We have to check out in fifteen minutes.”
“Then you’d better stop talking.”
“So …” June rocks bath and forth on her heels after we get off the train. “I’ll go back to my house, check in with my family, and pack a few things. Text me your hotel and room number. And this afternoon we’ll start apartment hunting.”
I pull her closer to me when a group of guys slides past us in front of Union Station. The breeze brings the stench of something not so fresh from the garbage bin behind us.
“Or,” I say, “we can go to my hotel and I’ll change clothes. Then we can go to your house together.”
Her lips twist, nose wrinkled, but I don’t think it’s from the rotten smell. “It’s not a good idea for you to come to the house.”
“Why? Are your parents mad at me?”
She shakes her head, glancing around the area.
“No. It’s just however you felt about the Rawlings’ house, you’ll feel that times a hundred when you see their house.
Technically, it’s my grandma’s house, but after my grandpa died, my parents moved in with her.
And I lived there too until I moved to Minneapolis. ”
“It’s a big house,” I say.
She nods.
“I figured.” I shrug.
She nervously cracks her knuckles. “It’s the definition of wealth and excess.”
“June”—I adjust her bag on my shoulder—“your grandma has cancer. Do you really think I’m going to make a big deal about her house?”
She sighs, scraping her teeth long her bottom lip. “Fine. Let’s get a ride to your hotel.”
I grin, looking down at my phone to order a ride. “I’m going to go with the flow.”
“Are you capable of going with the flow?”
“Juju”—I take her hand and pull her closer to the street to keep an eye out for our ride—“I guess you’ll just have to wait and see.”
After I change into jeans and a T-shirt at my hotel, we get a ride to Beverly Hills. And June wasn’t wrong. Her house is mind-blowing. It looks like a small hotel, not a single-family residence.
I swallow my reaction to the two staircases going to the same place. It makes no sense.
“Stop,” she whispers, taking her bag from me and rolling onto her toes to kiss my jaw just below my ear.
“Stop what?” I force a toothy grin.
“We all go to the same place when we die,” she says. “None of this matters.” She pulls me up the stairs.
I kinda love that she said the thing I’ve tried to tell myself for weeks.
“Where is everyone?” I ask.
“Grandma is probably on the terrace reading or napping. My parents should be at the stables. My mom texted me this morning about it.”
This is a modern contrast to the Rawlings’ older home. Sharper lines. More glass and less marble. Sleek instead of ornate.
“Where are the stables?” I ask.
“In Hidden Hills where there are trails for riding the horses.” She opens a door to a corner bedroom with floor-to-ceiling windows and a private balcony.
She left this life for an apartment in Minneapolis?
“Have you ever been on a horse?” she asks from her closet.
I stare at the photos on the built-in shelves.
There’s not a single one of her with her cello.
Just photos of her with her parents. Several where she’s on a horse.
Another with Juni and maybe her grandpa?
There are a few with groups of girls, maybe friends.
It’s all so normal. Not photos of people rich with wealth, just rich in life and love.
I would have given anything for that life.
Family.
Friends.
Belonging.
“Flynn?” She steps out of her closet in shorts and a tank top while gathering her hair into a ponytail. “Have you ridden a horse?”
I shake my head. This is wrong. I have to tell her.
She’s all smiles and making plans to get an apartment with me.
She’s playing concerts to motivate her grandma to keep living.
This woman loves me, but I feel like a fraud.
Even if I’m not the same person who went to prison, it’s part of my story.
How can I ask her to be part of it, too, if she doesn’t know everything that made me into the man she loves?
“Babe.” She presses her palms to my cheeks. “Earth to Flynn.”
I wrap my hands around her wrists. “I have to tell you something.”
“You sound so serious.” She tries to laugh it off and pull away from me, but I keep her hands on my face.
Her smile fades. “Flynn, what is it?”
I close my eyes for a second. She loves me. Her love is the truest thing I’ve ever experienced. It’s why I don’t want to tell her. It’s why I have to tell her.
“I did something stupid when I was eighteen.” I open my eyes. “Because I needed money. I stole a car.”
Her brow furrows. “Like when you took Rupert’s car for a joyride.”
I slowly shake my head. “Like I stole a car and sold it for the money. And I spent a year in prison for it.”
The tension in her brow deepens. “What?” she whispers.
I can’t stop. It’s all or nothing.
“A year later, a man accused me of sleeping with his wife. He was drunk. And he, uh …” I swallow hard. “He said he was going to fuck me harder than I fucked his wife, and he tried to pin me down, but I fought back. And I just kept fighting until I realized he was pretty bloody.”
She draws in a sharp breath and tears fill her eyes as she slowly shakes her head.
“And who believes someone with my record? So I spent two years in prison for assault. The wife spoke on my behalf, so I pled guilty in exchange for a lesser sentence of two years instead of five.”
She eases out of my grip, and I don’t stop her. “Jesus, Flynn.” She presses a hand to her mouth and shakes in silent sobs.
I reach for her, but she takes a step back and shakes her head.
“I know you asked me not to break your heart again so soon, but …” I sigh.
“I’ve been trying to tell you this for so long.
At first, I didn’t want to scare you away, then I didn’t want to ruin what we had because I’ve never had anything like this.
And after the orchestra, when I found out about your past, I was angry, but it wasn’t because you didn’t tell me.
It was because you were hiding something extraordinary about yourself, and I was hiding something fucking awful, embarrassing, and so regrettable. ”
She turns her back to me, staring out the window while wiping her nose with the back of her hand and sniffling.
“I was selfish. And I’m sorry. But after I told you about my time in juvie, I couldn’t imagine not losing you if I told you everything.”
“You should have told me everything.”
“I know, I just …”
She turns. “You just what? You were afraid of losing me to the truth? Well, this no longer feels like the truth. It feels like betrayal. How am I supposed to trust you?”
“June.” I shake my head. “That’s it. I’m not keeping anything else from you. And I would have told you, but how would you have reacted? Because when I told you about juvie, you walked away.”
“Jesus, Flynn. I’m human. I had a human reaction. But I apologized.”
“Exactly!” I blow out a slow breath. This isn’t how I want to react to her.
She has every right to be upset. But I can’t help this feeling of desperation.
“You’re human,” I say. “And you were abducted. I can’t imagine what that was like for you, but I would expect your human reaction to be severe.
And I don’t know how to make this okay because apologizing for not telling you feels like I wish we weren’t together.
You would have run. And I wouldn’t have blamed you.
So here I am, apologizing for not telling you, but really I’m apologizing for hurting you again because I don’t know if I can be sorry for everything that’s happened between us. ”
Her red eyes bleed more tears as her lips quiver. “Jesus, Flynn. You should have trusted me.”
“You can’t say that. You didn’t trust me.”
“No!” She swallows hard, jaw clenched. “I can’t compare my secret to yours.”
“I’m not comparing secrets. I’m just saying you didn’t trust me, and I didn’t trust you.”
“N-no…” she laughs through a little sob.
“My family’s wealth is not about something I did or didn’t do.
It wasn’t a choice I made. But going to prison, twice, is just …
” Again, she shakes her head a half dozen times.
“What happens when there’s a knock at the door someday, and you’re arrested for something you forgot to mention?
” She balls her hands into fists. “Why didn’t you get a job instead of stealing the car? ”
I shake my head. “I … I couldn’t get a job. Nobody would hire me.”
“That’s bullshit.”
I rest one hand on my hip and rub my temples with the other. “I’m not lying. I’m not saying it was right. But you don’t know what it’s like to live the way I did.”
“Because I’m rich?”
“Because you were raised by people who loved you. And you’ve probably never lived on the street or out of your car.”
“That doesn’t make it okay to steal from people.”
“I know,” I whisper.
“Did you sleep with that man’s wife?” She crosses her arms over her chest.
I’ve lost her. And she has every right to be mad. But fuck, it hurts so much. After a few seconds, I nod.
More tears well in her bloodshot eyes, and she bites her quivering lip. I hate that I’m hurting her. But it was always going to hurt, and if I would have told her before she was emotionally invested in me, when it wouldn’t have hurt, she wouldn’t have given me a chance. That’s just a fact.
Does it make me selfish? Yes.
A liar? Yes.
But I think everything in my life has led me to her. I have to believe it.
One. Good. Thing.
I have to believe I’m deserving of one good thing.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” she whispers, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.
“Do this? What is this?” My words come out louder—more desperate—than I intend. “Talk? Be with me? Move in to an apartment together? Love me?”
“I … I don’t know,” she says, as if something inside of her has died.
Drawing in a sharp breath, I prepare to make another plea. But after holding it for a few seconds, I exhale in silence. It’s over.
Bowing my head, I step past her toward the bedroom door.
She reaches for my wrist. Her fingers wrapping around it feels like slow motion. It’s how my heart feels, stumbling over its next beat, looking for a steady rhythm, looking for purpose. No one has ever been this gentle.
Fuck every single tear that breaks free. I use my other hand to wipe them away. Her body shakes with more silent sobs. When she’s ready, I’ll walk away. But I won’t until she lets go. It can’t be me. I tried letting her go, but my heart is not capable of that.
“This stops now,” she says softly. “I bet you don’t know what it feels like to trust someone.”
“Don’t do this,” I say as emotions strangle my words.
“For someone to trust you.” She turns to face me.
But I can’t turn toward her. Not yet.
“I trust you,” she says. “And you can trust me.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose and hold my breath as the lump in my throat thickens.
“I trust that you love me.” She touches her palm to my cheek.
I grab it, holding it tightly as a sob rips from my chest.
“And you can trust me when I say you don’t have to cut yourself open and bleed for me. I will love your scars the way you have loved mine.”
My knees buckle, and I fall to them, hugging her waist while I cry more than I have ever cried in my life. Tears for the three-year-old boy whose mom abandoned him and every single moment that left one of those scars.
“Oh god …” I sob, my entire body shaking because I’ve never felt emotion like this—bone-deep.
I didn’t find June, Rupert, or Callie. Through them, I’ve found myself.