Chapter 31
Gwen
Arthur hadn’t spoken in over an hour. His hands sat at ten and two, and his eyes moved from the road to the mirrors and back. That was it. The sum total of Arthur Penn since he’d started cleaning the little concrete box where I’d thought everything had changed between us.
Turned out it had changed. Unfortunately, it had changed again for the worse.
I scrolled through my phone mindlessly, so I had something to look at that wasn’t him or the landscape.
Maybe Lance would have some advice.
I almost laughed. Text my ex-boyfriend to ask about the man I’d slept with last night, who also happened to be his best friend and business partner?
That’s the worst idea you’ve ever had, Gwen.
I opened my messages and typed before I talked myself out of it.
Gwen: Hey
Lance: Hey back
Gwen: Quick question. Does Arthur usually go quiet before a big job?
The message went blue. I stared at the screen, my stomach turning over a few times. Why had I sent him that?
Three dots appeared. Bounced. Stopped. Started again.
Lance: He gets quiet when he thinks he’s screwed up
Screwed up? What did that mean? And did I have it in me to ask Lance what he meant?
Gwen: Can I do anything to get him talking?
Lance: Try a joke
Lance: The worse, the better
Gwen: You’re not serious
Lance: Trust me
I stared at the phone, then at the flat fields, clusters of trees, and the occasional stone farmhouse sliding past us. A joke? My mind went blank. And what was I supposed to say after embarrassing myself with a horrible joke?
Arthur slowed and flicked on the turn signal. “This is the spot.”
I leaned forward as Arthur turned onto a narrow lane bordered by overgrown hedges. It opened into a cracked parking lot where weeds pushed through every seam, and beyond it, the skeleton of a roller coaster rose against the sky.
A gray Peugeot sat in the far corner.
Arthur pulled up next to it in the Land Rover and got out. He found the keys under the floor mat while I transferred the sword case and my messenger bag.
I pulled out a duffel that had been sitting in the back seat and rummaged through it.
The contents were a jumble, but I found women’s jeans, a navy hoodie, and plain underwear.
Two pairs of running shoes sat side by side on the seat, with socks stuffed into them—clearly a pair for me and a much larger pair for Arthur.
“You changing first?” he asked.
I pulled out my clothes, then handed him the duffel and shoes. “I’ll be quick.”
He gave a nod, and I climbed into the Peugeot’s back seat.
Changing in the car was somehow worse than hiding in the bathroom this morning.
How had we gone from him telling me he cared to this?
To a silence I couldn’t find a way around.
Today, all I got were nods and pointing.
Last night, it had been slow strokes of his tongue.
His fingers inside me. His cock inside me, bringing me to heights I’d never experienced before.
A pulse ran through my core, and I zipped up the jeans. I had to stop thinking like that, or I was going to combust on the drive back to England.
When I got out, Arthur was in the Land Rover’s back seat. The Peugeot was too small for him to change.
I leaned against the hood of our new car. Above us, a bird perched on the roller coaster’s highest rail, unbothered by the rust and the stillness.
Part of me wanted to peek through the window for a glimpse of bare skin. Not that I needed to. I had a perfectly vivid memory of Arthur Penn’s glorious body from last night. The defined chest, the bruised ribs, how his stomach muscles tightened when I ran my fingers down his—
Stop it!
The door opened.
He stepped out in fresh jeans and a dark green sweater that made his sharp edges seem softer. Probably because it wasn’t covered in blood and dirt. He stowed the Land Rover’s keys in the sun visor, closed the door, and came back to me.
I completely failed at not soaking the sight in. “Whoever did the shopping picked the perfect color for you.”
His gaze dropped briefly to my hoodie. “Blue looks good on you, too.”
The compliment sat a little stiff between us, like neither of us could manage a normal exchange anymore. I tugged at the hem of my new hoodie. “How did Merlin get the sizes so right?”
“He’s a man of many skills.”
“No bra, though.” I groaned inwardly. Why did I point that out?
Arthur averted his eyes, and the flicker of ease I’d coaxed out of him disappeared.
Great work, Gwen. Really well done.
We got into the car.
A few minutes later, Arthur gestured to his phone in the center console. “Can you call Merlin? Put it on speaker.”
I picked up his phone. He started to rattle off his passcode, but I’d already punched it in. He glanced at me.
“You told it to me yesterday.”
“You have an amazing memory.”
Merlin answered. “Go ahead.”
“We’re in the Peugeot,” Arthur said. “Where are we going?”
“Roscoff to Plymouth won’t work,” Merlin said. “The earliest available sailing leaves tomorrow morning.”
“I don’t want to retrace our route anyway. I don’t want to be predictable.”
Keys tapped in Merlin’s background. “How about Caen to Portsmouth? They have an overnight crossing departing at twenty-three hundred.”
“Twenty-three hundred works.”
“I’ll book it. One cabin or two?”
“One’s safer.”
My stomach tightened. We’d be sharing another room.
“Agreed,” said Merlin. “I’ll send the confirmation through. Anything else?”
“Lance is flying into England tonight. We need a different airstrip than last time and somewhere safe for the crew.”
“I’m on it. Drive safe.” Merlin hung up.
Arthur’s shoulders had dropped during the call. Conversation bounced between them faster than it ever did between Arthur and Lance. Arthur might have been avoiding me despite sitting beside me, but with Merlin he was in perfect form. Trust loosened him.
It’s now or never, Gwen.
I set the phone on the console. “What do you call a bear without any teeth?”
He glanced at me before refocusing on the road.
“A gummy bear.”
Nothing. For two full seconds, nothing.
What a stupid idea, Lance.
But then his mouth twitched. He pressed his lips together, but the corner betrayed him. “That’s terrible.”
“I know.” I laughed, partly to encourage him and partly because I thought about the boy who’d told me the joke last month. We’d been waiting in line at a bodega near my apartment, and he’d been so proud of his silly joke.
“Where on earth did you—”
“The son of a friend of mine.” I tucked one leg up on the seat and turned toward him. “He’s twelve and thinks dad jokes are the best thing in the world.”
He frowned. Why a frown?
“Listen, I…” I stopped. What was I doing? Talking to him. “I’m struggling here.”
The frown softened into concern, his brows knitting the way they always did when he asked if I was all right.
“Last night happened. Not just…” Was I actually going to say this? “Not just the sex, but everything we said to each other. I don’t want to pretend it didn’t.”
He didn’t respond, so I kept digging myself into a deeper hole.
“This morning, every time I tried to get close to you or talk to you, you found something else you needed to do.” I tried—and probably failed—to keep my voice level. “I’m not asking you to have it all figured out. I’m just asking you not to pretend nothing happened.”
The muscles in his jaw ticked, and his eyes stayed fixed ahead.
I fiddled with the hem of my new hoodie as my brain urged me to say more. What else was there? Really? “It’s not about your money, if that’s what you think.”
“Fuck, Gwen,” he sighed.
Had I pushed too hard? Should I have let it go? Did I ruin my chance at patching things up?
He let out a long breath and shook his head slowly. “My parents have been married for thirty-nine years.”
That was not what I’d been expecting.
“They have several beautiful homes and over a dozen luxury cars. Their dinner parties draw politicians, billionaires, and pop icons. My mother wears this—” He stopped to swallow deeply. “She has a smile she puts on for events. It’s perfect. Warm. Convincing. But it’s not real.”
I tucked my leg tighter and pivoted toward him as much as the seatbelt allowed.
“My father runs everything. The company, the houses, the social calendar, the image. We can’t forget the image.
” He rolled his eyes. “Everything goes through him, and everything has a price. He’ll do something generous—give a gift, book a trip, make a donation—and seem like the hero.
But he’s not, because he’ll use it. Not right away, though.
No, he’s patient. But eventually, every bill comes due. ”
“And your mother?”
He raked his teeth over his bottom lip. “She stopped pushing back a long time ago. I don’t know when exactly, but by the time I was a teenager, she simply went along with everything. Smiled when she was supposed to smile. Showed up when she was supposed to show up.”
The light was turning gold outside, the sun dropping lower over the fields stretching in every direction.
“And that’s what love looked like to you?”
“That’s the only version I had.”
“That’s why you left when I hesitated after one of us kissed the other for the first time?”
His mouth curved faintly. “I thought maybe you felt like you owed it to me.”
“It was definitely not that.”
He grew serious again, but he stayed with me instead of retreating behind the wall he’d built this morning.
I’d spent the past three years being wary of men I got close to, waiting for them to turn into Lionel.
Waiting for every green flag to turn red.
Even with Lance. He had an easy grin he aimed at hotel clerks and restaurant servers and, for a while, me.
After Lionel, it had been safer to be with a man who didn’t let me go deep enough to find the real him, because it meant there was nothing real to lose.
That sounded too much like Arthur’s parents.
“Can I tell you what else I’ve seen?”
“Maybe?” His gaze cut to me, then returned to the road. “Am I going to hate it?”
“At the cottage, you told me about Hettie. About learning to cook at her side. I remember you tapped your chest and said the recipe was still in there.” I put a hand on my own chest, and the warmth I’d felt while he talked about her came back.
“You cook for people, like she did. You provide for them. You’ve never once asked me to repay any of that kindness, and I’d be willing to bet you’ve never asked anyone else to repay it, either. ”
“I guess.”
“You think love has to come with a cost, don’t you?
With strings attached?” Go all the way, Gwen.
Be honest with him. “I think your parents taught you to hide what you felt, so you had nowhere to put all your love. Now you’ve got a reserve of it built up inside of you, and you can’t help but give everyone else what you missed. ”
Arthur grimaced, and he didn’t speak for a long time. It felt like an hour, though it was likely no more than two minutes. At last, his hand left the steering wheel and found my knee. He gave it one slow squeeze and said, “Thank you. That means a lot.”