Chapter Twelve #2
An impossible fantasy of real privacy—of no eyes and ears—suddenly doesn’t seem so crazy.
But never did it involve him. Didn’t involve being in this tiny space in a convenient tropical storm where we could very much be stuck in the dark and lose complete contact with the outside world. At least for however long it lasts.
I slowly walk farther into the room when he scans me up and down. Heat crawls up my face.
“You’re shivering,” he says softly.
He’s right, but it’s not just from the cold.
“I’ll go find some candles, just in case.” I fumble into the kitchen and through half-filled drawers, desperate for anything to do other than stare at the all-consuming, half-naked man sitting just behind me.
The growing storm I see from the large window above the sink mirrors the one inside me as I gather different kinds and types of candles along with a box of matches. Violent, destructive, and perhaps inevitable.
When I walk back into the living room, I’m met with him offering a glass of wine he’d found. An array of rations are splayed across the coffee table in the middle. “Not quite like the five-star spread that was out there, but…”
I accept the glass, handing him the candles and matches in exchange. “It’s fine.” The sight is actually impressive.
“Come sit.” He gestures for me to sit on the couch with him.
As if on cue, the lights flicker again—once, twice—then die completely. Light from the afternoon sky is the only thing that keeps the place from being pitch black.
I panic. “Oh, god. Scott?”
“It’s okay,” he assures.
I can’t help but sigh in relief as he takes a gentle but firm hold of my hand and guides me as to the couch.
“Thank you.” I feel with my hand for the cushion before sitting down.
Probably sensing I was okay, he lets go of my arm. He sits down beside me.
He stands back up, looking around the living space. He then goes into the kitchen, coming back a few minutes later with a handful, plus matches and emergency supplies.
“How can you see with such dim lighting?”
I hear him chuckle. “Years and years of practice.”
When he sits back down again, he lights a match. A bright tiny flame appears in front of me. I capture a glimpse of Scott’s face as he begins to light each candle I’d found before setting them down on the table beside the food.
My eyes adjust slowly to the candle glow. I’m relieved to be able to see again. Outside, the storm howls as though in victory.
I’m quick to notice Scott’s pants are just as rain soaked as his shirt, clinging low on his hips, water trailing slow paths down the ridges of his abs and into the parts beneath the fabric. Every muscle is etched sharp in the dimming light.
Scott is looking around the space like I am when he stands up with one of the taller candles in hand, walks over to a corner of the space, and holds the candle up to a camera I didn’t realize was there.
Damn, they hide those things better than I thought.
As if satisfied, he moves on to the next one in his line of sight. Then the next.
“What are you doing?” I can’t help but feel hope surge through me.
“Confirming something.” When he reaches the camera that captures the threshold of the bedroom, he smiles. “Exactly what I thought. Cameras are down.”
I almost don’t believe his words. “You’re sure?”
He nods as he retreats to the couch. “No recording red light. No hum. I don’t even think they have a surge protector. Safe to say the storm shot their wiring to death.”
I glance down at the portable mic clipped to me, frowning. “But they can still hear us.”
When I look back at him, he seems to be contemplating something, as if an opportunity has landed in his lap.
“What is it?” I ask.
He doesn’t say anything. Instead, he reaches behind him, yanking his own mic off, and turns it off.
I look at him with wide eyes. “What are you—”
He shushes me with a finger to his lips, then points to my mic, gesturing for me to give it to him.
I hesitate. In part, because I know it’s a bad idea. But at the same time…
I peel the mic from my body and place it in his palm. He’s quick to switch it off and set both our mics on the table like discarded restraints.
“Won’t they try to contact us and try to get to us if they don’t know what’s going on?”
“If this storm is as big as it is, chances are they’re having issues over at the villa, too. We’ll have at least a couple of hours to ourselves.”
Awkward silence falls between us. It’s palpable.
Scott remains sitting, his gaze locked onto mine. Candlelight carves shadows across his bare chest. Water still beads down from his hair and onto his skin. I should look away, but I can’t. Can’t reject what he’s silently asking. He, and this situation, make it impossible.
He looks at me like he’s bracing for something worse than the hurricane outside.
“You deserve to at least have closure.”
I shake my head. What would be the point? “It was so—”
“Don’t tell me knowing why doesn’t matter to you, because I know it does. You can’t lie to me, little one. You, and this, have everything to do with why I’m on this show.”
I shrug, trying to feign indifference. “So what? You’re just going to say it regardless of how I feel?”
“I’m going to say it because I know how you feel.”
I hesitate. “I don’t—”
“I never left because I stopped wanting you,” he starts anyway. “I left because I didn’t want to lose you. Creating distance was the only way I knew you’d be protected, be able to live your life peacefully.”
I tilt my head in confusion from his riddle of an explanation. “You left to not lose me? Creating distance to protect me? That doesn’t make any sense.”
He sighs. “I didn’t talk much about him to you back then because I didn’t want to put you in the middle of our beef or to worry about me.”
“Him? I don’t understand—”
“It was Vincent.”
“Vincent? Like your father?”
He nods.
I vaguely remember back then Scott mentioning him. But those times were few and far between—and usually he was venting to me in anger and frustration. The very few times I’d met the man, he was rather condescending, but Scott ran enough interference to make our few interactions civil.
“What about him?”
“He was the reason I had to leave.”
Silence lands heavy after his words as I process what he just said.
Did I… Did I hear that right?
He leans closer, meeting my eyes. His eyes are filled with pain, raw, unguarded, like something inside him just cracked wide open.
The candle flames waver between us.
“During the spring break before I left, he’d found out about us. Exactly how he did? I have no idea. I just know that when we got back from that trip, he told me to break if off with you and that I had until graduation to, as he put it, find a more suitable match.”
I’m taken aback with shock and disgust, but I let him continue.
“As you probably had guessed the few times you two met, he cared very much about what high society thought. And his thoughts when you weren’t around often bled into my love life. Into how he felt about you and your family.”
“What an asshole. I knew he was a piece of work, but that’s awful.”
Scott gives a small grin of amusement. “Exactly what I said to his face when he demanded I take another girl out to dinner on your birthday instead of you because he wanted to do business with her family’s company. I refused.”
I can’t help but beam at him for protecting me like that. When the world seemed absolute bliss with him, it was chaos, unbeknownst to me. And even then, even when he was given the easy way out, he chose me anyway.
He then sobers. “By the time graduation rolled around, and he found out you and I were still dating, he went crazy. Blazing mad that night. He then gave me an ultimatum. Dump you right there and then, or you and your family would, as he said, suffer and blame me for it.”
“Suffer? How?”
He hesitates as though suddenly uncomfortable.
“Financially, socially. He’d cripple you to the point of bankruptcy and utter ruin.
Blacklist your parents from ever working in their fields again.
Knowing the money and connections he had, I couldn’t take the chance that he was bluffing. Not that time.”
I gasp in horror. “What father would do that to his son?”
“That was Vincent Bennett. Always used to getting what he wanted, and was willing to play dirty to get it.” Scott pauses. “I didn’t want to give in, but I didn’t want to lose you either. But I knew that if I didn’t do as he said, you’d suffer. I was scared you’d blame me over time.”
I shake my head profusely.
He looks at me with sad eyes. “You would have eventually, Lyla, because even your college scholarship was on the table.”
All I can do is listen and feel tears sting my eyes. “So you left.”
Tears fill his eyes, too.
The room tilts. I press a hand to my chest. The more I piece together, the more everything starts to make sense.
Why he vanished as if into thin air, why I never heard of or from him ever again.
I’d spent ten years wondering what happened.
And just as long convincing myself I wasn’t worth an explanation and would have been better off to have cried, hurt, and bled alone.
“W-where did you go? Where have you been after all this time?”
“I joined the Marines.”
“You what? How long?”
“Ten years. Spent about six months after I left home in boot camp and SOI training. Then deployments for the next one hundred and fourteen months.”
I sit there in disbelief. You can’t make this shit up. “Why didn’t you send me any letters? Call me?”
He takes both my hands in his. “I couldn’t be sure what my father would do if he found out I’d made contact with you.”
“Then…why are you here if you’re worried about my safety like this?”
His mouth forms a genuine smile. “He’d died six months ago. I’ve been back in Dallas for four months.”
I’m shocked even further. “He died?”