Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Tyler
Reese is wearing a dress I’ve never seen. Navy, fitted without being tight, a neckline that shows her collarbones and nothing else. She’s put her hair up, which exposes the whole line of her neck, and I have to remind myself to look at her face when she comes down the stairs.
“You clean up nice,” she says.
“So do you.” I’m in a navy suit my grandmother bought me two Christmases ago on the grounds that a man requires proper formalwear. I’ve worn it three times. “Ready?”
“No.” She takes a small clutch off the table by the door. “Let’s go anyway.”
My car is at the curb. I don’t drive it often, since I’d rather ride with Bo or walk when the weather allows, but tonight seemed like the occasion.
Reese stops when she sees it. “That’s yours?”
“Graduation present. From my grandmother.” I open the passenger door. “She has strong opinions about what a Wu should drive.”
“Your grandmother sounds intense.”
“She is.” I wait until she’s in before I close the door. “She’s also why I know how to survive tonight.”
Reese runs her fingers over the leather while the engine comes up. “You don’t seem like the flashy car type.”
“I’m not. She didn’t ask what type I was.” I pull away from the curb. “She decided what I needed and provided it. That’s her love language.”
“Sounds familiar.”
She’s looking out the window with her jaw set, and I let a few blocks pass before I say anything.
“Your parents aren’t going to be happy I’m there.”
“No. They’re not.”
“Good. Their displeasure means we’ve already broken the plan they came with.”
That gets a small smile out of her. “You really have thought about this.”
“I told you. I think about most things.”
The Bellingham Club is exactly what I expected. Old brick, white columns, grounds trimmed to within an inch of their lives. The valet takes my keys with the particular deference reserved for expensive cars, and Reese’s hand finds mine on the way to the entrance. Her fingers are cold.
“They’re going to ask about you,” she says. “About us. About the team.”
“I know.”
“They’ll be cruel in ways nobody else in the room would notice. They’ll find the soft parts and press.”
“I know that too.” I squeeze her hand once. “I’ve been managing people like your parents my entire life. They aren’t going to surprise me.”
The ma?tre d’ takes us through a dining room full of the low murmur of old money. Chandeliers, white linen, the particular ring of good silver on good china. I catalog all of it on the way through, because information is armor and I’ve never once regretted having more of it.
James and Margot Callahan are already seated in the private room.
James is tall and silver-haired with a posture that suggests either military service or a lifetime of believing himself the most important man in any given room.
Margot is beautiful in a preserved way, her face smooth and empty, her blonde hair swept back.
Margot’s smile freezes when she sees me.
“Reese.” James rises and buttons his jacket. “We said to come alone.”
“You said it was a family matter.” Reese’s voice holds steady even though her grip doesn’t. “Tyler is family.”
The silence that follows is a tactic, meant to stretch until somebody gets uncomfortable enough to fill it. I don’t.
“Tyler Wu.” I put my hand out to James. “A pleasure, Mr. Callahan.”
He shakes it. Brief, firm, assessing. “Wu. Any relation to the Boston Wus?”
“My grandmother is Margaret Wu.”
Margot’s eyebrows move a fraction. The Wus are older money than the Callahans, and my grandmother made sure I understood that breeding cuts in both directions.
“Please, sit.” Margot gestures at the chairs across from them with the smile back on and brittle at the edges. “We weren’t expecting a guest, but I’m sure we can accommodate.”
I pull out Reese’s chair before I take my own. A server arrives with water and menus, and the choreography of it is as familiar as it is suffocating.
“So, Tyler.” James settles back. “You row with our daughter.”
“I do.”
“What’s your major?”
“Physics and economics.”
“Ambitious.” He makes it sound like a diagnosis.
“Practical. Physics tells you how systems work. Economics tells you how to profit from knowing.”
His eyes narrow. He isn’t accustomed to being corrected at his own table.
“Tyler’s one of the top students in the program,” Reese says. “Three PhD programs are recruiting him.”
“How nice.” Margot’s tone puts it somewhere near the opposite. “And how long have you two been seeing each other?”
She leaves a gap before the last three words. I file it.
“We’re getting to know each other. The team spends a great deal of time together.”
“I’m sure it does.” Her smile sharpens. “Eight men and one woman. I imagine all sorts of things develop.”
Reese’s hand tightens on her glass.
“The team dynamic is professional,” I say. “Reese is an exceptional coxswain. Her technical work is why the boat is fast.”
“Technical work.” James says it the way you’d hold something at arm’s length. “Is that the term now?”
The server comes back for our orders, which buys Reese a moment to put her face back together, though the flush has already climbed her neck. We order, the server goes, and Margot waits until he’s out of the room before she starts again.
“Reese tells us you’re quite focused,” she says. “She mentioned you see things differently than most people.”
“I’m autistic,” I say.
Margot’s expression shifts before she catches it.
“It isn’t a secret, Mrs. Callahan.”
“Of course not.” She touches the stem of her water glass. “Reese only mentioned that you see things a little differently.”
“I do.” I take a drink. “For example, the two of you have asked me three questions about myself tonight, and not one of them because you wanted the answer.”
Reese goes very still beside me.
Margot smiles. “And what do you think we wanted?”
“To find out whether I’d embarrass easily.” I set the glass down. “I don’t.”
For the first time tonight, her smile slips.
James clears his throat. “I’m sure Margot was only trying to get to know you.”
“Then I’m happy to start over.”
Reese makes a sound that could be a cough if I hadn’t spent enough time with her to know she’s trying not to laugh.
Margot looks at her. “Something funny?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.”
That kills the almost-laugh, and I dislike her more for that than I did for trying to embarrass me.
The appetizers arrive. Margot moves us onto weather, campus news, a charity gala she’s chairing, and every few minutes she slides another blade in sideways.
A remark about Reese’s choices. A question about whether the team is really the right fit.
Nothing anyone at the next table could identify as cruel, which is clearly the point.
Then she examines her salad with great care. “Speaking of the team. How is the new dorm room? You never did send photographs after the move.”
Reese’s fork stops halfway up. “It’s fine.”
“Funny. I called the housing office last week to confirm your meal plan, and they mentioned you’ve barely swiped into the dining hall all semester.” Margot’s smile arrives fully formed. “They also said your keycard hasn’t been used at the residence hall in weeks.”
I watch the pulse jump in Reese’s throat.
“Where exactly have you been sleeping, sweetheart?” James asks, in the voice of a man who already has the answer.
“With the team.” Reese lifts her chin. “I didn’t feel safe in the new dorm either.”
“So your solution to being stalked was to move in with eight men.” Margot sets her fork down. “And you didn’t think to mention it.”
“Would you have listened? Or would you have used it to drag me back to Westlake?”
Neither of them answers.
An older couple appears in the doorway before Margot can recover, and the change in her is immediate.
“Bill! Jessica!” She rises and air-kisses both of them. “How lovely.”
“Margot, you look stunning as always.” Jessica turns to us. “And this must be your daughter. She’s beautiful. Who’s this handsome young man?”
“This is Tyler Wu.” Margot’s voice has gone warm, nearly proud. “A friend of Reese’s from university. His grandmother is Margaret Wu.”
“Oh, how wonderful!” Jessica beams at me. “The Wus are such a lovely family. You two make an adorable couple.”
“Thank you,” I say, because that’s the expected output.
They talk for another few minutes and move on, and the warmth goes out of Margot before they’ve cleared the doorway.
“You see how easy it is,” she says to Reese, low and hard. “To present well. To behave appropriately. To not embarrass your family.”
“My choices aren’t embarrassing.”
“Living with eight men isn’t embarrassing? Reese, people are talking.”
“People always talk.”
“Not like this.”
“Then say what you mean, Mother.”
Margot’s mouth tightens. “Fine. Do you enjoy having the entire rowing community think you’re sleeping your way through the boat?”
Reese’s face goes hot, but she doesn’t look away. “Do you actually care what I’m doing, or do you care that somebody might know about it?”
“I care that you’re humiliating yourself.”
“I’m not humiliated.”
“You should be.”
“Margot,” James says, though there’s no real warning in it.
“No, James. Apparently she needs it said plainly.” Margot leans toward her. “Do you imagine we don’t know what happens in that house? Our daughter, the team whore, spreading her legs for anybody who asks.”
Reese flinches like she’s been struck.
I set my fork down. “Mrs. Callahan. I’m going to give you an opportunity to withdraw that.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Apologize to your daughter.”
“Who do you think you are?” James starts to rise.
“Somebody who’s watched you spend the last hour hurting her because she stopped doing what you told her.”
“Young man—”
“I’m not finished.” My voice comes out harder than I intended, but I don’t take it back. “You invited her here to remind her what she owes you. You’ve insulted her, threatened her, and now your wife has called her a whore because she made a choice you don’t like.”
James’s face has gone red. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I know exactly what I’m talking about.” I stand and button my jacket. “Reese is not a problem to be managed or a reputation to be maintained. She’s a person, and a remarkable one. The fact that you can’t see that says everything about you and nothing about her.”
I hold my hand out to her. “We’re leaving.”
She takes it. Her fingers are shaking and her chin is up.
“If you walk out that door,” Margot says, “don’t expect us to—”
“To what?” I turn back. “Cut her off? Disown her?”
Margot says nothing.
“You’ve made it perfectly clear what matters to you.” I look at Reese. “Come on.”
I don’t wait for the answer. We walk out through the dining room, past the quiet tables and the turning heads, and the valet has my car at the door inside two minutes.
Neither of us speaks until the club lights have disappeared from the mirror.
“Pull over,” Reese says.
“What?”
“Please.”
There’s a turnoff a mile on, a small overlook above the city. I put the car in park and leave the engine running. She’s crying, not sobbing, just tears going down her face while she swipes at them like they’ve personally offended her.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“Don’t apologize.” She laughs, wetly. “God, don’t apologize. That was the most incredible thing anybody has ever done for me.”
“They were hurting you. I don’t tolerate that.”
“I know.” She turns to look at me with her mascara ruined. “That’s what makes it incredible.”
The city sits below us doing its impression of scattered glass. I give her time to wipe her face, though I don’t think either of us is ready to go back yet.
“I should tell you something,” I say. “About what I want from this.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t experience attraction the way most people seem to. Sex isn’t a priority for me. It isn’t that I can’t or don’t. It’s that it’s never the first thing I’m thinking about, and it has never once been the thing driving me.”
She waits, which I appreciate more than she knows.
“I’ve been with people. It was fine. Pleasant. I never understood why everyone made such an enormous production of it.” I look at the steering wheel. “Until you.”
“Until me?”
“The night of your heat. At dinner, when Beckett and I had our hands on you under the table.” I make myself turn my head.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about it. About the sounds you made and the way your body answered.
I’ve never wanted to be close to somebody the way I want to be close to you, and I find it frightening. ”
“Tyler.”
“I don’t have a reference point for this.” I take her hand. “I’ve never wanted somebody this way before. But I know I want you, and I want to work out what that means with you.”
She doesn’t answer right away. Her thumb moves once over the side of my hand, and then she unbuckles her seatbelt and leans across the console.
When she kisses me, I’m ready for it.
I’ve thought about this. I know the mechanics and the technique, but none of it matters when her mouth is on mine, and what I do with my hands has nothing to do with anything I planned.
I bring one up to the back of her neck and tilt her head to get deeper into it.
She makes a sound against my mouth, and I learn the shape of her lips and what happens when I catch the lower one between my teeth.
I do all of it slowly, because I have never in my life done anything by halves.
My other hand finds her waist and pulls her closer despite the console being where it is. When we come apart, we’re both breathing hard.
“Wow,” Reese whispers.
“I don’t do things I’m not prepared to do well.” My voice has gone rough.
She laughs, bright and surprised. “No. You really don’t.”
I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “Ice cream?”
“What?”
“I promised you ice cream. There’s a place on the way home.” I put the car in gear. “Thirty-two flavors.”
She’s still laughing. “You’re serious.”
“I’m always serious.” I’m also smiling. “I’ve been waiting on the salted caramel for months.”
Her hand finds mine on the gear shift and stays there.
We sit on the hood in a mostly empty parking lot and eat. She gets chocolate chip cookie dough. I get the salted caramel, which is worth the wait and not the best thing about the evening.
The lights are still on when I pull up to the team house, and there are shadows moving behind the curtains. All of them, waiting up.
“Thank you,” Reese says. “For tonight.”
“You don’t have to thank me.”
“I want to.” She leans over and kisses me again, softer. “See you inside?”
“A few minutes. I need to sit with it.”
She nods like that makes sense to her, which it might.
I watch her go in and stay where I am for another ten minutes, running the evening back. The way her parents looked at her and how casually they did it. The way she shook and didn’t break. The way she kissed me like I was worth wanting.
I’ve never been good at feelings, but I am extremely good at learning.