Chapter 37
THEN: Freshman Year, November
Bennett
About a half hour later, we arrive outside the large brownstone in Beacon Hill.
I’ve always loved my father’s home, the warmth of the red brick exterior and the vibrant, well-styled interior. It’s an older historic home that was passed down to my father through his father’s side of the family, one of many Reiner family properties.
The Reiner family history traces back through decades of investment group funds, massive sports team owners, and one major private manufacturer—but it started back in the 1880s with massive success in mining businesses.
And the Reiner family always had sons. Jonathan Reiner, my grandfather, had three sons—Jacob, Jonathan, and Adam, my father.
At this point, no one in our family technically needed to work for a living.
But my uncle Jacob entered the family business of investment banking.
My dad played one year in the NHL and went back to law school after his injury, starting his own immediately well-respected firm.
It was only Jonathan who rebelled against the Reiner family rules and disappeared from family photos altogether.
Overall, most of my family is cold and distant. But my father is different, always has been.
“You’re—” Paloma pauses and clears her throat. “This is your house?”
“My dad’s.” I nod, rubbing the back of my neck a little self-consciously. “He’s . . . his family is generationally wealthy.”
“Yeah.” She snorts, stepping up at my side, eyes still running over the ivy-laden brick. “No kidding.”
I reach for my keys, but before I can slot them into the keyhole, the door opens.
My dad is standing on the threshold, suit still on, sans jacket, sleeves rolled to his forearms.
“Bennett?”
I nearly swallow my tongue at his tone. “Sorry. I didn’t call—I just thought—”
“No, no. You’re fine. I’m glad to see you.” He reaches forward for a tight, solid hug, before pulling back and glancing toward Paloma still in the doorway, with Seven sitting at her feet. It was her suggestion that we bring him.
“This is Paloma. We’re—I’m going to cook for her, if that’s okay.”
My dad’s eyes brighten, and a smile replaces his previous anxious expression. “Oh, absolutely. I’ll let you show her around and just be in my office if you need me, all right?” He grins at my date politely before backing away from the door with a quick, “Pleasure to meet you, Paloma.”
If she says something back, I don’t hear, too focused on thinking of whether to show her around first or feed her.
But knowing I won’t be able to focus on anything else until she’s eaten, I guide her toward the kitchen.
Paloma follows me through the long corridor, coming to a brief stop at the sight of my father’s one-and-only NHL jersey framed in the living room.
“Seven?” she asks.
My throat feels tight, skin heating. “Yeah.”
Adam Reiner, lucky number seven . . . my hero as a kid. My hero now, who I named my dog after. She’s the first one to catch it.
Paloma sits at the countertop while I start on our meal—braised beef with a quick garlic butter pasta and roasted vegetables.
“Do you want something to drink?” I ask, wiping my hands on the towel over my shoulder once everything is cooking. “We have a few things up here, but there’s an entire wine cellar downstairs.”
Her cheeks flush red, hands freezing where she was previously tapping her nails over the marble. “I don’t drink, really.”
“Me either,” I say, feeling another strange stir of relief wash over me. “How about sparkling grape juice?”
It feels silly to suggest it, a children’s drink for a New Year’s party, but she lights up.
“I’ve never had it. But it sounds good.”
I pour her a drink, the light pink liquid bright against the big crystalline glass, and hand it to her by the stem. While the beef cooks, I offer to show her around.
We trail slowly through the three-story building. I let her stop and ghost her fingers over the extreme number of baby pictures lining the walls and bookshelves. Before we leave the main level, I take her to the plot in the back where my dad cares for my herb garden.
Anna was the one to show me how to do it. She’d come over every day for a week, still in her work clothes, arms up to the elbows in soil as she helped me set it up so I could grow my own vegetables and herbs to cook with.
I’d mourned the little garden when I left for Berkshire, but my dad tended to it as if it was his second child.
It’s too chilly in the evening to sit outside, so I take her back into the kitchen to check the food, then upstairs through the secondary living room, the library, and then—
“My bedroom.” The words are rough in my throat. Paloma pushes the door open farther to one of my two childhood bedrooms.
This one is more me than the one at my mother’s house. My bed is tidy, blue and gray flannel bedding tucked tightly with a white sheet just folded overtop. Two or three hockey trophies serve as bookends for the overflowing tomes of poetry and literature study littering the bookshelves.
“This is . . . quite the collection,” Paloma says teasingly, hands touching the spines of my books carefully before her chin turns over her shoulder. “You’ve always loved poetry?”
I nod, hands shoved in my pockets so I don’t reach for her.
The sight of Paloma in my room, golden lamplight dancing over her skin, her hands on my books—it makes something wild rouse within me. Something on the edge of feral. Terrifying enough that I ache for space, room to breathe without the scent of her in my nose.
“Stay here,” I command lightly. “I’m going to bring the food up and we can eat in here.”
I’ve said the right thing by the way she relaxes and slumps onto the end of my bed. I want to stretch her out across it, desperate to kiss her hard—harder than usual. To explore more of her. To beg her to show me how to make her feel good.
Instead, I nearly take the hinges off the door with the way my shoulder hits the frame as I stumble out into the hall.
By the time I return to my room with our plates, Paloma is laying against the pillows on the headboard, one of my books open under her fingers as she reads.
I can imagine coming home to this sight for years. And that thought is exhilarating and terrifying in equal measure.
“Which one did you grab?”
“Dog Songs by Mary Oliver.” She giggles. “I’m reading to Seven.”
Seven is asleep on her thighs, one of her hands on his head. I sit below her, putting her plate on the bedside table and mine on the floor beside me.
“Read to me.”
She does, her words low and soft as she reads “Little Dog’s Rhapsody in the Night.”
“‘Tell me you love me,’ he says. ‘Tell me again.’” She paces over the poem perfectly, making my heart pound louder, harder in my ears. “Could there be a sweeter arrangement? Over and over he gets to ask. I get to tell.”
My affection for her fills the room until there is barely space to breathe. We eat and I let her give her opinion over each poem as she turns through them, listening more than speaking.
No one but her could make me feel this way in the aftermath of my spiral, to still make this feel romantic and intimate.
She’s the only one who would do exactly this with me, that would make sitting on the floor of my childhood bedroom with poetry and an old record spinning feel like a special occasion.
Only her.
Hours later, she helps me take the plates down and clean them. Our arms brush each other periodically, gooseflesh littering my skin beneath my flannel. I want to kiss her again. I almost do—
But my dad enters the kitchen just before I can work up the nerve, the moment fading like smoke in the air.