Chapter 13
Theo picked me up at eight. Or more accurately, his driver Jorge pulled up, and I climbed into the back with Theo.
He talked about Fleur, and how she was settling in.
She still didn’t remember much, just little snippets.
The thing about salt was weird. She kept coming back to it, as though salt had somehow caused her to end up in Theo’s pool.
She also seemed to think she knew Theo, but couldn’t place how or why, and he was sure he’d never met her before.
For now, she seemed content in the pool house, watching TV and eating random food Theo prepared for her.
Fries and ice cream were her favorite, mostly because Theo liked it too.
Then he talked about Bentley doing typical Bentley things, like tossing a hair drier into Theo’s bath while he was in it.
Theo said it casually, likely because attempted murder was a daily occurrence in his house.
I let him talk, enjoying his breathless download of information. Once Theo relaxed, he talked endlessly, hardly stopping for breath. I liked it. It meant I didn’t have to come up with small talk that would bore both of us.
Sweet, Davis’s man, had unsettled me in ways I didn’t want to bring into the evening. Tonight was about having fun, living a little, getting my smile back. Theo’s good humor and casual flirting were combining to put me at ease.
His car pulled up outside a club off the main downtown strip. All kinds of beautiful people came and went from the front door.
My heart swooped and nerves kicked in. I wasn’t sure I belonged here.
Theo took my hand, and my head and heart got all light and wobbly.
The place didn’t have a sign—buildings that have to tell you their name are trying to get you in, but this one didn’t care what I did.
It just had a long stretch of black frontage, smoked glass you couldn’t see through, and a single brass door handle worn gold from better hands than mine.
A velvet rope blocked the carpeted entrance, more suggestion than barrier, where a doorman built like a polite mountain stood and looked at me, then Theo, and nodded us forward.
Light leaked out warm and low every time the door swung.
Music and laughter tinkled from inside. Outside, it was all expensive cars and heels on hot sidewalk and people who’d clearly never once stood outside a place wondering if they belonged inside.
I was wondering exactly that myself.
“You good?” Theo asked, opening the door.
“Yeah, yeah.” I smiled but it fell off my face a bit too fast.
He leaned in, lips brushing my cheek. “Nobody cares who we are here.”
He was right. Nobody looked over as we entered. It was all very casual, apart from the thousand-dollar clutch bags, designer shoes, sparkling jewelry, and faces that all looked as though they should be trending on IG.
Was it too late to back out?
My heart raced.
A live band played some kind of garage rock revival, and the singer hollered into a mic somewhere at the back of the bar-hotel-club situation. Our area, near the bar, was quieter. Theo steered me toward the barman and ordered us drinks.
He didn’t tell me to relax, but I could see him thinking it while leaning on the bar top.
I was thinking it too. I could function in polite society.
I used to move through scenes like this.
Expensive watch, designer suit, polished Oxford shoes.
People had flocked to my side back then, but it hadn’t been me they’d liked.
Not really. They’d been afraid. We’d all been afraid. Davis made sure of it.
“Owen?”
“Huh?”
“Your drink.”
“Oh right, yeah. Thanks.” I wrapped my hand around the tall cool glass of something purple, sparkly, fruity, and fancy. Theo smiled, like he might laugh at my social awkwardness at any moment. “I uh . . . I don’t get out much.”
I should have worn better shoes.
“It’s alright.” He tilted his head. “For once, I don’t have to pretend I wanna be with someone.”
I blinked. Did that mean he didn’t have to pretend he wanted to be with me, or that he didn’t want to be with me and wasn’t pretending?
He looked good. I’d noticed in the car, but it was more obvious now under the bar’s lights.
His long-lashed dark eyes caught the atmospheric lighting.
His lips were soft, bitable. Not bitable .
. . No idea where that thought came from.
Emotive. Yeah, that was the word. He wore black pants with some kind of designer belt that wasn’t really holding them up, and a slim shirt that fitted to his waist. The sleeves were oversized, cuffs draping.
It should have looked ridiculous—it would have on me—but Theo made everything look good.
I poked at the little skewer of fruit in my drink. “What is this?” I asked.
“Dark and sweet, like me.” He clinked his glass with mine and took a sip.
Dark maybe, but sweet? I doubted he was that. I took a drink and tasted the sweetness with a hint of dark chocolate notes. I had no idea what the flavor was supposed to be, but I liked it.
“Good?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
We settled for a few minutes at the bar, acclimatizing, and then Theo asked, “So, what got you spooked today, pool boy? Anything to do with next door?”
He’d been dying to ask since picking me up.
“Uh, no, not next door. But do you mind if we don’t talk about it here, tonight?” My smile tried to fall off my lips again, but I wrestled it back on. “Another time, maybe.”
“I hear that. You wanna forget?” he asked, fingertip lightly circling the top of his glass.
“Yeah,” I admitted, hoping I didn’t sound as desperate to forget as I felt.
“How deep do you wanna go, huh?”
What was he asking exactly? His eyes had gotten all sultry and suggestive. It was difficult to tell what Theo was thinking when all his expressions were suggestive in some way.
I laughed a little. “Seems like that could be a dangerous question from you?”
“C’mon, you know me, an’ I think I know you.”
“Yeah? What do you think you know?”
“I know some dick burned you, and that’s enough. I’m not going to put you in danger. I’m not that guy. So, if you wanna forget, I won’t push it.”
Not that guy.
Those words cut to the heart of me. He had no idea how much I’d needed to hear them.
I’d known it, suspected it, maybe. Theo wasn’t Davis.
They were nothing alike, at all, but I’d been burned so badly my heart was ash, and I’d been carrying it around in an urn.
Hearing him say he wasn’t going to put me in danger, that he wasn’t that guy, lifted a weight off my shoulders.
I could put that urn down now. I didn’t need to be guarded around Theo, like I’d been around everyone for the last few years.
Did he truly have no interest in using me?
What would he use me for? I was nothing to him. Just the pool boy. He didn’t even much like the pool.
Theo’s sultry gaze softened. He leaned over and nudged my shoulder with his, and when he spoke, all the sass had gone, and he was just Theo, not pretending for anyone.
“Whatever you want,” he said softly. “You wanna grab a table and chat, I’m up for that.
You wanna get wasted, I’ll make it happen.
Drink, drugs.” His eyebrows bounced. “Think of me as your party fairy.” He swept a hand through the air dramatically.
“Making Owen’s dark little wishes come true. ”
“Dark little wishes?” I snorted a laugh. His nights out were probably wild and salacious. Two things I did not know how to be. But I didn’t want to be boring for him, and sitting at a table and talking all night seemed pretty boring.
Around us, the club hummed with life and laughter, music and conversation. A lot of people, noise, distractions . . . None of it was malicious, but it just felt like a lot.
After watching me take in the scene, Theo said softly, “You need a little time to adapt, that’s okay.”
I did need that, and I nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”
“Alright.” He hooked his arm with mine, the sudden contact briefly short-circuiting my thoughts, and steered me toward a table at the quieter end of the club. He was a very touchy-feely person. It didn’t mean anything.
“You don’t mind sitting out for a while?” I asked, after we’d taken our seats and put our drinks on the table with its single flower in a tiny vase.
He leaned back, relaxing, all liquid masculinity poured into a velvet chair. “I like it. People want a lot from me when I’m out. I can’t ever turn it off. You’re not like that. Don’t think I’ve ever just sat and people-watched before.”
“So, what you’re saying is I’m boring.”
He snorted. “Exactly. But in a way I am here for.”
“You like my boring?”
“Yeah, I like your boring, Owen. I asked you out, didn’t I.”
We fell quiet after that, relaxed, easy, smiling, drinking our fancy drinks. “You know, I think you’re secretly a good guy,” I told him. “But you hide it to blend in with your family.”
His right eyebrow twitched. “You have no idea how hard it is to be yourself when everyone around you treats you like someone else, like someone they think you should be. After a while, you start believing them.”
“You live for them?”
His smile faltered. “Every day.”
That had to be exhausting. “Can’t you leave? Start a new life somewhere? Your own life.”
“Can’t escape my blood.” He shrugged. “Is that what you did?”
“Huh?” I’d been sipping my drink when he asked, and had to put it down.
“Start a new life here?”
He’d caught that. Although it hadn’t been hard to figure out from my non-answers. “Trying to.”
“And I’m making things difficult for you?”
“Yeah, a little,” I admitted.
His face fell and all the laughter faded from his eyes.
“But we’re not talking about that tonight,” I quickly added. “Tonight we’re having fun, right?” I picked up my drink again and downed the rest in one potent gulp.
“Damn right,” Theo agreed, throwing back his own drink too, and then slamming the empty glass down.
“Let’s do this.”