Chapter 22
Twenty-Two
Deja
Ithought I was accustomed to rich people shit.
I mean places like the Asterburg mansion don’t faze me anymore.
After a few months at Briarwood and seeing some of my friends’ houses, I decided my house was nice, but those bigger houses with movie screening rooms and fountains and statuary were what rich people lived in.
Never mind they were all built in the last thirty years and the appointments weren’t necessarily as grand as you’d expect from looking at the outside of the house, this was still it.
I imagined celebrities like Oprah and Rihanna living in houses like that.
And then I drive through the gate of Rourke van der Hoff’s estate and I see how rich people really live.
The driveway to Rourke’s mansion winds through a thicket of trees.
Maple and oak flank the road, their leaves a riot of orange, red and gold.
I catch glimpses of manicured gardens through the trees.
Symmetrical flowerbeds are dotted with the last blooms of annuals about to face their deaths at winter’s hand.
My mind supplies the soundtrack, something like Henry Purcell’s Fairy Queen prelude.
The circular driveway is lined with boxwood hedges and stone benches.
As we pull up, I see Rourke descend the stone steps from tall mirror-like glass doors, through which I see scrolling ironwork.
The ironwork pattern is repeated in the fanlight and more subtly on the iron and frosted glass awning above the door.
I step out of the car and can’t help but gawk at the size and grandeur of Rourke’s home.
The mansion is constructed of white brick and limestone, the latter giving the building a soft yellow hue.
Rourke bounds down the steps wearing an ugly AF sweatsuit that I’m sure costs hundreds of dollars.
His hair is mussed, and his eyes red as a demon’s.
“I’m going to scream like a girl,” Rourke says, dapping Brandon. “Deja Marcus is at my house.” He fans himself with his hands the way girls do when they’re meeting a hot celebrity.
“I didn’t come here to be mocked, van der Hoff,” I say, with mock seriousness.
“Oh, I know why you came here.” He chuckles knowingly. “Come on inside.”
“Can I just leave my car there.”
“Of course. Butler can move it for you if needed.”
“You have a butler?”
“Oh, no,” he says, shaking his head. “His name is Kyle Butler. I guess you could call him a household manager. He wears a lot of hats around here. We only have him and Selena—she’s the housekeeper—as permanent staff.
“Welcome to my humble abode,” he says, leading us through the door.
I have to wonder if Rourke van der Hoff owns a dictionary.
Of all the words that could describe what I’m seeing, humble is not one of them.
A gallery runs from one end of the house to the other, lined with eight-foot-tall windows.
Each one is dressed with ivory and gold silk brocade drapes.
The flooring is some kind of dark stone, polished to a sheen.
There’s an enormous marble-topped, gilt console table along the wall and above it a gigantic mirror with a fussy gilt frame.
Oversize stone urns scattered at regular intervals serve as plant pots for small palm and citrus trees.
Through the double doors nearest to me is a room with the same grayish-black stone floors and a light-colored Persian rug.
Beyond it I can see another room with a polished wood spiral staircase and a dazzling chandelier.
I could go on like this for a long time describing the inside of Rourke’s house, but my point is that Rourke lives in a house that could be a museum or hotel. It’s that lavish, that perfectly styled. It even smells good, like someone sprayed orange blossom scent in every room.
“Did you get the package I had delivered here?” Brandon asks, speaking for the first time since our arrival.
“Yeah,” Rourke says. “It’s in your room.”
“I’m going to go check on it,” Brandon says.
“Can I give you a tour?” Rourke asks.
“Sure.” As Rourke’s guest I need to be polite and do whatever he asks within reason. He is doing us a favor, provided I get mentally comfortable enough to actually take my clothes off in a schoolmate’s house.
The house has 8 bedrooms and 11 bathrooms, plus a library, two dining rooms, conservatory, formal living room, kitchen and so on.
It would take him all afternoon to show me the whole thing, so he just hits the most important ones—like the kitchen and the powder room.
He tells me we can come join him on the third floor if we want to chat and takes me to the room Brandon uses.
The room is as large and lavish as everything else in this house.
A king-size fourposter with brocade bed covers, a seating area, a walk-in closet, a marble-lined ensuite with separate tub and shower.
I thought my bedroom was big; you could play soccer in here.
Brandon doesn’t look up when I come in, his attention focused on several red objects spread across the bed.
When I get close enough to see what he’s looking at, I freeze.
I can recognize most of the objects: rope, a gag, two sets of leather cuffs, something that looks like a feather duster, a riding crop, a blindfold, and a tasseled whip-thing.
There are a few other pieces I don’t recognize.
Everything is made of leather-like material except for a small piece of jewelry.
“Surprise,” he says, smiling at me over his shoulder. I smile back nervously. He said he wouldn’t go so easy on me the next time we were together, but I wasn’t prepared for a full on BDSM experience.
“Um, okay.”
He cocks his head to the side looking disappointed by what he reads on my face.
There’s an angry energy around him, an intensity that I wish I knew the source of.
It’s not aimed at me, but I can still sense how strong it is.
He was carefree and happy yesterday; today his smiles never reach his eyes.
He wants something from me, I can tell. This is how he is before he starts one of those coercive episodes.
I step back involuntarily. He shakes his head and starts putting the objects back into a cardboard box.
“Are we okay?” I ask, my voice wavering more than I would like.
“Us?” he says, “Yeah, we’re fine. Me?” He sighs, sitting on the edge of the bed and staring at the floor. “I could be better.”
“What’s going on?”
He pats the bed next to him, and I sit, letting him pull be closer to his side. His hand cups my hip possessively.
“Are you doing anything tomorrow afternoon?”
“Not really.”
“Can you go somewhere with me?”
“Where?”
“I want you to meet my mom.”
Contradictory emotions arise in me. I’m thrilled that he likes me enough to want me to know her, but also surprised.
He barely ever talks about her, and she’s never come to see him or pick him up from school or the house like I would have done in her shoes.
As angry as Brandon is at Devin for what he sees as his betrayal of her, I’m not certain Brandon is close to his mother.
“Are you sure,” I ask, trying to read his expression. It’s dark, his eyes still on the floor.
“I’m sure,” he says. “You’ll understand me better, after.”
I nod. I’m worried about him. I’m only just starting to understand this boy even though he’s already dug his hooks into my heart.
Man, I should say, though he seems to flip-flop from one to the other daily.
So do I, for that matter. Being eighteen is interesting.
I feel simultaneously like an adult and a child, chaffing under my parent’s authority, but terrified when I have to navigate things on my own.
“Are you going to tell her I’m your…”
“Girlfriend? Yeah.” Excitement surges through me. His girlfriend! Have I ever been thrilled to have someone call me that? The word seems to glow when he says it. Then a less happy thought occurs to me.
“Won’t she tell Devin?”
“No,” he says with a sadness that confuses me. “We don’t have to worry about that. Do you want to go upstairs for a bit. Unless you feel comfortable enough already…?”
“This place is gorgeous and amazing,” I say, “but I think I should get to know Rourke better. If this works out, we can always come back another time.”
I don’t miss the way his jaw tightens, but he doesn’t argue. He pulls me to my feet and takes my hand.
“Let’s go,” he says.
We find Rourke in the bar on the third floor, which is well, a bar.
It looks like someone took a whole ass pub with a huge oak bar, hundreds of mugs and glasses, upholstered bar stools, high top tables, a vintage jukebox, a dartboard and leather club chairs and slotted it into the house.
There are more varieties of liquor than I think I’ve seen in my life. All the ones I recognize are expensive.
“You guys want a drink?” Rourke asks when we walk in. He’s pouring a can of seltzer water into a glass. He slices a lemon while we watch and squeezes some of the juice into the glass. He cuts a thin slice as a garnish.
“I’ll have a light beer,” Brandon says. I ask for a diet soda and the juice for the rest of the lemon. I’ve already decided I want to come back here, but the last football game of the season is tonight, so I don’t want to consume any alcohol.
Instead of taking one of the many empty seats, Rourke tells us about the history of the house as he walks around the corner into a large game room.
There are vintage arcade games, though I can’t tell if they work or are just for decoration.
The centerpiece is a huge sectional sofa and the biggest flat screen I’ve ever seen.
It’s on mute playing the pause screen from a video game.
“Do you live here by yourself?” I ask Rourke.
“Pretty much. My dad’s here a few days a month and the housekeeper lives in the carriage house. She has a kid. That’s pretty much it.”
“That sounds kinda lonely.”
“Nah. I’m used to it, and I have people over on the weekends.”
“So if we come over during the week…?”
“Yeah, you probably won’t run into anybody. You don’t even have to talk to me if you don’t want to. I don’t get why you don’t want people to know you’re together, though.”
“It’s because we live in the same house. My parents would freak out. They might ask Brandon to move out and…”
“I don’t really have anywhere else to go,” Brandon says. I look at him with surprise. He could still live with his mom, couldn’t he, but it would be pretty hard to live in Old Town and go to Briarwood. Even Mello is staying with a family in Twin Oaks during the week.
“My lips are sealed.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“Don’t worry about it. We’re cool. Wanna get high?”
“Ah…”
“She doesn’t smoke,” Brandon says.
“I’ve got a vaporizer,” Rourke says.
“Maybe another time. It’s the last game of football season tonight and I have to cheer.”
“Oh, no. That’s so important.”
“Ha ha. There’s a thing after with the football team and, more importantly, our coaches. I can always get high tomorrow.”
“I didn’t say no,” Brandon says, raising his hand.
I shake my head while the two of them chatter about the strain they’re about to consume and prepare the device.
I’m kind of annoyed with Brandon at first, but I can see some of the tension easing from his shoulders after a few deep inhalations.
I take his hand and he squeezes my fingers, turning his head to smile dreamily at me.
I scoot closer, momentarily forgetting where we are.
He does the thing I love, holding me by the throat and crushing my mouth with a hard kiss.
For a minute, I’m completely lost but then I remember where I am and pull away from him.
I turn to Rourke, ready to apologize, but he doesn’t seem to be bothered. I’m relieved he’s not being smirky either. Brandon stands up and pulls me to my feet.
“We’re gonna head downstairs,” he says, still holding my small hand in his much larger one. Our palms kiss, feeling more intimate than such simple touch has a right to.
Rourke nods in acknowledgment and picks up the game controller.
He watches us go without comment and only when he can’t see us anymore does he start playing.
Formula 1 engines roar as we skip down the stairs to the second floor.
Like kids, we race each other to the room, shoving and grabbing, hoping to get an advantage.
I win, but obviously cause he let me. No way I can outrun a guy six or seven inches taller than me who can spend up to 90 minutes running back and forth across a field.
He closes the door and sweeps his eyes over me, from my disheveled braids to the tips of my sneakers.
“Strip,” he commands.
“No.”
“Are you trying to earn a punishment?” There’s a dangerous edge to his voice, one that would create both fear and excitement in me if I was in the mood. But this isn’t what I want right now.
“Time out,” I say, forming my hands into the letter T.
He sobers immediately, the malevolent air falling away to leave mild confusion behind it.
“I’m sorry,” he says, “I misread the signals.”
“That can easily happen when we haven’t discussed what we’re doing. I saw online you’re supposed to have a safe word and we’ve never even talked about that.”
“Okay,” he says. “You’re right. We do need to actually talk…sex.”
I slip my shoes off and start removing my pants.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Just getting more comfortable. You should too.”
He doesn’t move, just watches me remove my sweatshirt and tee, leaving me in just bra and panties. He takes his pants and jacket off, but not his t-shirt.
“Are you hiding something?” I tease.
His blush surprises me. “It’s nothing bad, just a little embarrassing.”
Now I’m really curious. He rolls his eyes and pull the T-shirt over his head.
Written over his heart in cursive is the name Lindsey.
It wasn’t there at the end of the summer, so that and the boldness of the ink tells me he got it recently.
I couldn’t see it in the dark when we made love, but in the afternoon sunlight it’s bold against his pale skin.
“Oh, wow. You are such a momma’s boy.”
“And proud of it. Now can I get a kiss before we start our serious conversation.”
“Okay, but it better be worth my while.”
“Brat,” he mouths.
He pushes me back onto the bed and follows me down, letting some of his weight rest on me. My legs hang off the bed awkwardly and I pull them up, hooking them over his thighs. He rubs his face in the hollow between my shoulder and neck, lightly sucking on the skin there.
“Is this the kiss,” I ask, running my hands along his sides, learning the shape of him, what inch of skin is more sensitive than the rest. I count his ribs, shallow nubs up his torso, the broad muscles of his back, tight as he holds most of his weight up on his forearms.
“This is the prelude.”