Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
RHYS
When I wake up, my eyes feel sore and crusted with sand. I peel them open and blink into the half light of an unfamiliar room. Dark purple walls. Frilly curtains and a flower-patterned duvet that smells of lavender. There's a fretful moment of uncertainty and a grasp for recollection—to figure out exactly where I am.
And then it hits me.
It all hits at once.
The sweet scent of her. All my achy limbs. Dani’s side of the bed is cool to the touch, but her pillow still has a Dani-sized dent in it. I snuggle into the downy softness, a relieved breath shuddering out of me.I was an absolute train wreck last night—everything inside of me angry and tense, heart breaking all over her floor. It was insane (and maybe stupid) to go where I did. Never felt the urge before. But you hold tight on to every available lifeline when you’re falling apart. And I needed her entire being to stop me from skidding into the depths.
I roll onto my back, fingering the chain around my neck and the familiar ridges and curves of the Seneca pendant. The elderly Italian woman who clasped it around my neck in Rome on my sixteenth birthday freaked me out at first. She had the air of a fortune teller—head scarf, a lazy eye, and giving off cryptic vibes. And she refused to take any money, claiming it was a gift— for someone who looked like he could use a wise friend.
Engraved on the back is a Seneca quote that became one of my favorites: “Time discovers truth.”
How apropos that, last night, I had the years peeled back to reveal a different me—the quiet, shy teenager gone up in smoke, replaced by a man ready to live his best life, rising from the ashes with his beautiful phoenix. All this time, I’ve been waiting, wanting, and searching for a woman too impossible to believe in anymore. And then the universe delivers me to Dani. On the hallowed grounds of Nero Vino, no less.
It was all so dreamlike.
So fucking meant to be.
“Rhys?”
The door creaks open, and Dani’s there, dressed in nearly nothing. Her nipples shine through the black lace slip trimmed with red bows. Sexy as hell, hair falling in loose cascades around her shoulders. Once again, I’m a guided missile locked onto my target.
I can’t take my eyes off her.
“Hey there,” I say, my voice thick with sleep.
“I just wanted to check in on you,” her voice low and sensual behind that killer smile. “It’s almost eleven.”
“Almost time to wake up,” I joke. “Come join me?”
I lift a corner of the duvet, and she climbs in, my arms banding around her. The smell of her leaves me reeling, and I bury my head into her neck, dizzy with the sudden wave of desire.Last night, we talked and talked and talked. At the crack of 3 three a.m., we finally dragged our exhausted asses (hers still tingling) into bed and conked out cold. Sleep came easy because we staked our ground rules to ride out this mess. No engaging with media, especially social media. If friends, family, or foes tried to dig for dirt, we shut them down. Dani said a fire without fuel fizzles fast, and we need this reduced to ash as of yesterday.
“Did you sleep okay?” she asks.
“Like a rock.”
“Me too,” she says. “I liked having a bath with you. It felt good getting clean together.”
Right. The bubble bath. My skin smells like coconuts for a reason. But I can be excused for a momentary memory lapse. Dani left me with a functionless brain and a quivering mass of shot nerves.
She curls into me, her fingers weaving through my hair, massaging my scalp, turning me into mush.
“Your mom called and invited us for lunch,” she says.
“At the house?”
“One o’clock.”
Uncertainty ripples through me, paranoid thoughts crowding in. To step back in there after all this time—what would it feel like?
My body tenses against hers, and Dani asks, “Is that okay?”
“Yeah. But you don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”
Dani reaches out and fingers my pendant. She asked me last night if I ever take it off. All I said was no. One day, I'll tell her how Seneca's words carried me through the rough patches. He's the father I never had.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” she says, “but I think you need me right now.”
Call that the understatement of the year. Last night, we were both caught between a helpless surge of arousal and raw, new sensations. And when her moans turned into sharp cries, and I looked at where my body entered hers, both places, I knew life would never be the same.
She’s my new world, and I can only pray that I’m hers.
“My mom really likes you,” I say. “JC, too. And Sawyer,” I add, somewhat reluctantly.
She snuggles into me, the sun reflecting off her pale skin, making her glow like some kind of apparition. “There’s this other Trenton. You might know him. His name is Rhys. What’s the verdict with him?”
“Last I heard, he wants to light you up. All day, every day.”
Dani’s hand slips under the duvet to stroke my finger, the one that went rogue. “Tell him he makes me want to do things I’ve never thought of before.”
I smirk, loving this. “As the evidence shows, I’ve thought of many things.”
Last night, her body rewarded mine with a sweet release of passion, while I technically did nothing. Hardly fair to let the woman of my dreams do all the work, as capable as she is. When I roll her onto her back, I take me with her. Her lips mold onto mine, our bodies crashing together. I want to yell out in happiness.
This is it. Pure ecstasy.
I inch lower and spread her thighs wide, settling between them. Her eyes look down into mine as if nothing in the world existed outside the two of us. I ignore the pain in my chest that isn’t from facing more ghosts but the thought of future days without her in them.
I brush my lips against her wet folds, and Dani throws back her head with a low, sexy groan.
“I love how you respond to me,” I murmur.
“It’s cause and effect,” she says, her voice mellow. “And you are one hell of a cause.” She weaves her fingers into my hair again and draws me closer to her womanhood. “I want you inside me.”
“Trust me, I’ll get there.”
No one deserves the burden of making me feel whole, but Dani makes me so much more than the sum of my broken parts. If this giddy, uncertain feeling that won’t leave me alone is what I think it is, bring it on. Even if it's a big scary space of doubt filled with no guarantees. To feel love, however brief it might be, is better than never knowing the feeling at all.
But first, I need to dip my tongue into her center and slowly lick my way to the deviant pearls that got us into this mess in the first place.
“You have that glow,” JC says, “of a man getting serious action.”
“It’s called a tan.” I help myself to the grapes Mom’s housekeeper laid out for us, doing my best not to let my embarrassment show. JC can blab about sex like it's no big deal, but what happens between Dani and me under the sheets is our business.
JC munches on the banana he just peeled, his mouth twitching into that smile that is a free pass for almost everything—bottomless drinks, dates, forgiveness. It’s funny how he felt larger than life to me growing up. Now, under the soaring ceilings of my parents’ enormous kitchen, he looks normal-sized.
Or maybe the perception of myself has changed.
“If your drawing skills are any indication, she’s a definite keeper.”
I stare at him, inordinately proud of his mistimed humor. “Did you have to go there?”
He laughs, half-choking on the mouthful of banana. “Consider this a marketing coup. I don’t even like rosé, but I’m willing to try it now.”
I pelt a grape at him. Hard. “You’re an idiot.”
“Takes one to know one,” he teases and lunges for the remaining tower of fat green grapes at the same time I do.
We rip off clusters of ammunition and prepare for battle on either side of the kitchen island. Our favorite childhood pastime involved launching grapes at each other. The best kind of war, if such a thing exists. A well-thrown grape can sting like hell but leaves no real damage.
Other than a sticky floor that needed constant mopping.
JC launches his tried-and-true attack—a rapid-fire succession that kept me cowering for cover as a kid. But I’m stronger now. And he’s unprepared for the hurl of fruit pinging off his body.
“Dude!” he yelps. “Since when did you get all aggro?”
“Consider this making up for lost time,” I say, ducking his green bullets.
“Oh, yeah?” He winds up his arm to launch a handful in my direction.
I duck, the buckshot spray of grapes whizzing over my head to connect with the impenetrable wall of muscle that enters the kitchen at the exact wrong time. Seeing JC’s look of surprise, I turn, and there stands Sawyer, wearing a suit and his eternal frown.
Arms crossed. Eyebrows slashed into knives.
Like clockwork, time spinning backward, JC and I snap into our poses of obedience, waiting for the reprimand.
Sawyer flicks a piece of grape from his lapel and arches one dark brow. Despite his stiff exterior, his eyes are soft. Not quite welcoming, but that might have more to do with me.
“Not much has changed here, huh?”
No, but also, yes.
When Dani and I walked through the front door earlier and all the ghosts I’d been dreading didn’t swarm me, it dawned on me that everything can change.
For the better.
Mom and I talked it out before Sawyer arrived, and she’s (sort of) come to terms with the reality of what happened—made palatable by my promise never to let Dani out of my sight. And now I have to set aside my bruised ego, follow Dani’s advice, and make things right with Sawyer.
I clear my throat. “Listen,” I start, my voice sounding as awkward as I feel. “I didn’t mean half the shit I said yesterday.”
A flicker of profound uncertainty passes over his face. “And the other half?”
I fall quiet for a moment, recalling the endless messes JC and I created that Sawyer was tasked with cleaning up. Always looking out for us.
Like that long-ago night at the Commodore Ballroom, Vancouver’s famous concert hall. JC was giving ‘er on stage with his band, and me, smuggled in as an underage roadie, prowling in the dark corners so the bouncers wouldn’t nab me.
When I came out of the john, I saw Sawyer hunched against the back wall by the bar, doing everything he could to stick out like a sore thumb in his blazer and dress shoes. He stood in the shadows, arms crossed, acting like it was a crime to smile. Eyes on the dude selling merch, because cash was king in those days, and it tended to disappear.
He was managing JC and his band even back then.
Representing the family biz because Dad gave him no choice.
At one point in my life, having to be related to Sawyer was its own special kind of misery. Maybe having a big brother pushing me to be better isn’t the worst thing after all.
“You never went to bat for me when I needed it the most. That stung,” I admit. “But I understand now why you didn’t.”
“There were only so many times I could save you.” And with what sounds like grudging respect, Sawyer adds, “So you saved yourself.”
“Is this where you two kiss and make up?” JC chirps in, his dumbass smile more blinding than the wall of stainless-steel appliances behind him.
Before either of us smacks him one, Mom and Dani enter the kitchen. Arms linked. Ear-to-ear smiles.Bestie patrol.
“Oh, Sawyer,” Mom says. “I didn’t hear you come in. Dani and I were in the study, looking at old photos.”
Dani lays a flirty wink in my direction. “You were pretty cute with your long hair. All those ringlets. Pudgy legs.”
A grape bounces hard off my forehead, and JC chortles a laugh. “Always a looker, that Rhys. Remember all the girls who used to call here, giggle and hang up? Mr. Heartbreaker.”
I can feel my face go red from the collective gazes of everyone in the room landing squarely and humorously on me. “It’s not like that ever amounted to anything.”
Not like the scorched earth of smitten groupies JC left behind in high school. Or the emotional devastation of every girlfriend when he moved on to the next target.
Mom lays a protective hand on my shoulder, her sensitive thirdborn. “I spent the morning with your father. He’s perked up immensely since yesterday. The nurse couldn’t believe the transformation.”
All the emotions of last night flood through my veins like a narcotic, making me feel woozy.
“Really?” I clear my throat to get the shake out of it. “That’s great news.”
And the little smile Dani gives me is one I tuck into the safety of my heart for all of eternity.
“Can we eat?” Sawyer asks. “I have to get back to the office.”
“Isabel has set up everything in the dining room,” Mom says, referring to her devoted housekeeper, now gray-haired and long in the tooth. “Tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.”
She beams at me, and my stomach flip-flopping has nothing to do with hunger. Lunch happens to be my favorite childhood meal.
“Let’s go.” She links her other arm through mine. “We have so much to catch up on.”
Her loving gaze travels across all three of her children before landing on who is very obviously her newly adopted daughter-in-law. JC gives me an exaggerated eye roll. I’m done for, and he knows it. But who would have guessed that emotionally awkward Rhys scores big in the relationship department? Or that, in the house where I never felt remotely important as my brothers, where I lived in fear of punishment for being me, I can enjoy a meal untroubled, no longer pathetically in search of my father’s approval.
I never thought I would say this, but it feels good to be home.