19. Sienna
19
SIENNA
R eluctantly, I do as I am told and exit the car. We must be somewhere on the outskirts of town because there aren’t any skyscrapers close by. It’s mostly well-maintained townhouses. I have never been to this part of the city before.
The building we’re standing in front of looks a little different from the others, and I absolutely love it. It’s not too out of place, but it’s by far the most recognizable. It reminds me of a baby castle that dressed up for Halloween. It’s as if they took it apart black brick by black brick back in Europe or some other fairytale place, sent it over here and reassembled it one by one. Trap doors, a firefighter’s pole, and marble floors so shiny Narcissus would be happy living here all seem like reasonable assumptions. There’s no arguing that it’s beautiful in a somewhat what-am-I-even-looking-at way.
“Is this where you live?” I ask, maybe a little too enthusiastically as we approach the entrance.
“Sometimes.”
“Interesting,” I say and follow him inside.
“How so?”
“I guess I would have expected you to have a less fascinating house.” Stepping inside, I glance around the lobby with its heavy curtains, oversized chandelier, and oil paintings. “This doesn’t feel like it would be your home, you know?”
“That’s because it’s not. Or rather, it wasn’t. I inherited it from my grandparents when they passed. Just never got around to redecorating.”
He leads me inside, orders me to take a seat in what I assume to be one of the living rooms (there’s probably several), and then leaves me to myself. So, naturally, I stroll around a bit. The eye-catcher of the room is a cozy fireplace with two adorning grotesques on top that are presenting their butts. Two rocking chairs sit next to it. On one of the rocking chairs lies a basket with knitting utensils. Someone started knitting socks and never finished them. It reminds me of the ugly pillows I still keep around at home.
Ryker Grayson never struck me as particularly sentimental, but maybe Olivia wasn’t entirely wrong after all. Maybe we do actually have a thing or two in common. Like memorabilia from our grandmas.
Curious about what else this place holds, I walk from one room to the next one. The doors are open so it doesn’t really feel like I am intruding and sneaking around, which I guess I am, considering that he told me to ‘Sit your ass down and wait here’ in as polite a manner as he can apparently manage after using up all his charm for the TV show host.
By now he should know that’s not how you get people to do the things you want them to do. So I don’t feel particularly bad when I enter what appears to be his bedroom. The walk-in closet gives it away. There are too many expensive suits that look almost identical, plus, on the other side of the closet, there are numerous colorful costumes. I sift through the garments and imagine what Ryker would look like wearing them. Then I imagine what Ryker would look like not wearing them. Then I imagine what I would look like underneath Ryker not wearing them. Then I intentionally bump my head against the wood panel next to the wardrobe.
Ouch.
It sounds hollow. Not my head, the wall behind the panel. I wish my head was as hollow though, so it wouldn’t be filled with pictures of Mr. Whom I Really Should Stop Thinking About. I knock on the wood. Definitely hollow. So I check for a handle to see if it opens, but there is none. I step into the closet and check for another way to open it. Just when I am about to give up, I discover a hidden button on the side that releases some kind of mechanism. The wood panel creaks as it swings open, and I’ve never been more jealous of anything in my entire life.
Back in the living room, I can hear Ryker cursing. I guess he noticed I am not where he’d like me to be. And now I am not entirely sure if I want to be in this house in the first place. What if I have just discovered a secret passage to his dungeon where he tortures and murders people?
When his footsteps come closer, I quickly step inside and close the hidden door behind me. It’s dark, so I pull out my phone and turn the flashlight on. A few steps in, there is another panel that I can open from the inside. Quickly, I step into the next room.
It’s empty. Entirely. There’s nothing on the walls, no furniture, no nothing. If it was cushioned all around, one could assume this was a room in a mental hospital, or maybe in a mental hospital in a horror movie. Who knows if mental hospitals have those rooms in reality.
I close the door behind me and watch as it seamlessly slides into the wall. If I didn’t know there was one, I wouldn’t be able to see a door. A row of windows let in some natural light from above, but they’re too high for me to properly look out. The whole thing is a little creepy.
I should probably head back. There doesn’t seem to be anything here, and he doesn’t need to know that I know about this place. I can just say I went to the restroom and then got lost. It’s plausible enough. The only issue is that I don’t know how to get out of here. I look for another hidden button to reopen the door I had just closed, but can’t find any. Trying not to panic, I slide across each wall, looking for things to press or pull. I consider scaling the wall and exiting through one of the windows when I hear something pop open behind me on the other side of the room.
Slowly, I turn around and discover Ryker standing in another secret doorway. He’s brandishing a knife, which makes my heart skip a beat.
“I’m making dinner,” he says nonchalantly and wiggles the knife between two fingers. “Do you have any dietary restrictions? Allergies?”
“Are you going to poison me because I found your little kill room?”
He raises one of his eyebrows. “Why would I go through the trouble of poisoning you if I had a dedicated kill room?”
“Well, I think we already established that you’re a little slow up there sometimes.”
“I guess every once in a while, we’re more alike than either of us would like to admit, Miss de la Vega.” Ryker turns around and walks out of the room. “I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it,” he adds, “but for now, I am just going to feed you.”
“Ah,” I exclaim and quickly pursue, “kind of like the witch in H?nsel and Gretel?”
We exit the room into a hallway and walk straight to the kitchen where he has laid out a bunch of vegetables and everything needed to cook dinner.
“Don’t worry,” he mumbles as he begins chopping faster than Gordon Ramsey can spew insults… or chop vegetables, for that matter. “You’re not on the menu today.” His eyes look over to me while his knife keeps cutting spring onions in a quick rolling motion.
I hate that anything he says is so goddamn sexy. He doesn’t even need to try. I just get naturally turned on. It’s like his annoying cockiness is the lube that allows him to slide right into my mind.
“I love your house,” I say after watching him work for a while. “It’s quite something.”
“My grandma designed it.” His answer is brief.
I can’t help but probe a little. “Were you two close?”
“Yes.”
“When did she pass?”
“Two years ago.”
“Hm, mine too.” I take a seat on the stool in front of the kitchen island. “What do you miss most about her?”
Ryker stops working for a moment, readjusts his grip and continues. “Her existence, I suppose. You?”
“Same,” I say, and know exactly what he means. They were people so complex that reducing them to just one trait doesn’t feel right. I steal a piece of bell pepper from the cutting board and start nibbling on it. “Do you have a favorite memory of her?”
Ryker nods slowly. “I do actually.” He turns on the burner and starts heating a pan. “When I was younger and visiting here, I’d play outside all day long and sometimes in the evening, I’d run inside to find Oma in her rocking chair in front of the fireplace reading or knitting something. I’d lay on her lap while the warmth of the fire would lull me to sleep. At some point, she would wake me and tell me it was time for dinner. So she’d put me down, I’d try to run for the kitchen and then I’d immediately stumble and fall down on the fluffy rug on the floor.” Ryker lets his fingers glide through his hair and sighs with the pain of fond memories. “She had tied up my shoestrings because I was running through the house with shoes on. You wouldn’t believe how loud she would crack up. There was nothing she loved more than kids falling and hurting themselves.” Ryker laughs and for a moment I think his eyes are watering, but it’s probably just the onions. “I wasn’t actually hurt, but I remember being so confused when she did that the first time. After the third or fourth time, I caught on and it became like a game between us. I would pretend to be asleep, and then I’d fall onto the rug just to hear her laugh.”
“That’s adorable.” I sigh. “I would have loved to see you face-plant too.”
Ryker’s ensuing laugh instinctually makes me cross my legs. It’s ridiculous, the effect he has on me.
Who gets wet from a fucking laugh?
Someone is charismatic, you chuckle or smile. You don’t fantasize about them screwing your brains out!
“How about you? Got any good stories about your grandma?”
“Lots,” I answer. “I grew up with my grandma, so she was always more like a mother to me, I suppose. She missed out on a lot of things to take care of me. So once I got older and went to college, she used that as an opportunity to have a bit of a wild phase herself. I remember once there was an earthquake here and so, naturally, I called to make sure she was alright. After the second or third ring, a man with a deep voice picked up the phone, so I was like ‘Oh, my god. Is this the firefighters? Is my grandma alright?’ The guy laughed and handed the phone to my granny. Turns out she did experience a bit of an earthquake that day, but not the one I was worried about.”
“Go, granny,” Ryker says with a smile as he flips the food in the pan with a quick flick of the wrist.
“So I already know you had to go to law school to please your father, but who made you go to culinary school?”
“When I grew up, my parents weren’t around a lot. They had to take care of business, as you can imagine. We had a bunch of nannies and cooks and tutors and tennis coaches who’d take care of the three of us, Bruce, Roman and me. I just always thought that was kind of weird. I wasn’t the biggest fan of having people do everything for me, so at some point, I started helping in the kitchen. Our chef taught me everything I know.” Ryker pours a liquid into the pan and sets it on fire, then tosses everything into the air. “I am just doing this to show off, by the way.” He smiles as the flames extinguish slowly. “There is no need to flambé this dish. For all I know, I just made it worse than it could be.”
Half an hour later, I’m pretty sure he was lying because whatever he flambéed tastes phenomenal. I take a second helping and wish I could bath in the sauce.
Having dinner with Ryker Grayson at his home is weird.
It’s weird in that it isn’t.
We talk about our families, we share stories from our past, we laugh and bicker and do all the things normal people, who don’t hate each other, would do. It’s like we have reached a ceasefire for the night.
Of course, with every ceasefire comes the anticipation of the next shot fired. So I’m expecting the worst when I finally ask why he brought me here in the first place. It’s probably something evil. Something I am not expecting. Something very Rykersome.