Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Wyn
I jab the fork into the center of the cake. Blackberry jam mingles with the chopped pecans and caramel drizzle, and I can’t help but hum at how good it is. On the third monster bite, my body slouches, even the muscles along my spine that I hadn’t realized were tense and tight, ease.
Perched on my counter with an entire cake balancing in my lap, I take another bite and release another breath.
I laugh out loud, looking down, resting my head back against the cabinets as I finish chewing. Now what? How the hell am I supposed to manage any of this?
The sound of my phone vibrating is muffled. I look around me to find it, not even realizing I never took it out of my bag. I hop down from the counter and find it at the bottom of my bag. There’s a wall of messages waiting for me. Julian.
UNKNOWN
Do you need rescuing from your required margarita meeting? . . .
Tell me you’re alright, Crowne.
Had an interesting chat with your brother-in-law tonight. He’s chatty.
And according to Theo, your sister put AirTags in all of your shoes when you came back.
“Dammit!” I yell, yanking off my boot and throwing it across the room.
Tugging off the other, I turn it over in my hand.
When I reach inside and pull up the sole insert, I spy the round AirTag.
Eyes burning with emotion, I bark out a laugh.
I don’t know whether to scream at Stevie or hug her for doing it.
I wipe away the tears that escape down my cheeks and tip my head back, eyes closed as I breathe for a solid ten-count.
There isn’t a formula or syllabus outlining what to do in this exact scenario.
With a harsh exhale, I respond to his messages.
WYN
I don’t need rescuing.
I’m alright.
Theo loves a good story.
And I’m going to violently hug my sister.
When I look up, I catch a reflection of myself in the window.
I tug the elastic out of my hair. It falls just past my shoulders now.
The light brown highlights look even better when it’s wavy like this, maybe a bit disheveled.
My cheeks feel flushed as a smile lingers from responding to his messages.
The old me would be appalled, thinking I looked unkempt, borderline trashy.
I look like the version of myself I was when I met Julian in Hideaway.
I run my fingertips across my bottom lip.
I’m more of a Crowne right now than maybe at any other time in my life.
I need to get out of my head. Tossing my phone on my bed, I flip open the record player and scan the stack of albums I found at the church’s flea market.
Nina Simone and her rendition of “Sinnerman” has played out in my house plenty of times.
Jo watched The Thomas Crowne Affair like it was her bible, but it’s the double time of the bass and the pulsing drumbeat now that vibrate around my space that mimics exactly how I’m feeling.
A spectrum of emotions, slightly drunk on whiskey margaritas, and layered with complication.
It’s not about right and wrong but the blatant reality that I’ve missed things, important things about my family, for my entire life.
And now, there’s a man, who’s quite dangerous and who I’m undeniably attracted to, somehow folded into all of it.
I want control over the karmic disaster that has become my life.
My phone screen lights up on my bed.
UNKNOWN
Your sister said to pour “your fantasy” something worth remembering tonight. Am I your fantasy, Crowne?
WYN
What do you think?
When my phone buzzes in my hand this time, the message that’s waiting is a picture of a bottle of whiskey being held in one masculine hand that’s tastefully decorated with two rings and a wrist wrapped in brown leather. I look down at the same one that I borrowed from him.
A shiver runs down my body, thinking about what those hands have done to me. And what I want them to do again . . .
UNKNOWN
I think you should let me pour you a drink and you can let me convince you that I am.
I didn’t need much convincing. Julian Colton is a fucking fantasy. I swallow the flood of moisture in my mouth and toss the phone back onto my bed. Overheated, I shed my shirt, and turn down the temperature.
I pour myself two fingers worth of whiskey and take a sip as I sway to the music that still plays throughout.
I walk toward the mirror on my wardrobe.
I feel confident. Shimmying my pants off, I turn in the mirror to really look at myself.
My eyes water thinking about what it took to get me here.
Years of comparing my size and shape to the women around me, and then losing body mass because of the torture I’d been put through.
I finally have curves again—hips fuller and stomach softer.
I feel the most comfortable about how I look, maybe more than I ever have.
Even here, I think as I run my fingertips along the puckered skin that’s raised along my side.
It feels like a coat of arms—a reminder of what it felt like to live instead of die. Others hadn’t survived like I had.
Looking over my shoulder, I can’t help but smile at the tattoos that now run up my spine and across my skin in bright and bold colors.
My favorite flowers from Birdie’s garden are woven together so beautifully that it looks like a real bouquet of wildflowers placed along the length of my back.
Therapy can come in many forms. WITSEC had a therapist I still meet with virtually, keeping our monthly sessions.
But at the beginning, every week wasn’t enough and too much all at once.
My skin felt like it was scarring everywhere.
It crawled with memories only of a monster and nothing else from before.
I started erasing that feeling with pretty ink.
I glance back down at my phone and decide how I want to respond to the picture message, realizing he’s holding one of my bottles of whiskey.
Holding up my glass, I snap a selfie.
WYN
Already have a drink. Should we discuss how you plan on convincing me?
My phone vibrates repeatedly in my hand, and when I answer, it’s Julian’s voice on the other end as he growls out my name. “You sent a picture with no shirt on . . .”
Maybe this is what control and a little whiskey-induced confidence looks like.
He laughs quietly, and I can picture him smiling to himself, the way his lips tend to tilt up on one side, how his eyes crinkle in the corners like it’s something he’s done so many times and those lines are there to prove it.
“I’m not interested in reading between the lines with you.”
I scoff. “Then let’s start with you being honest with me, Julian,” I demand as I drain the last sip of my whiskey.
His laugh rumbles across the phone line and, hell, do I feel it everywhere. “Alright,” he says on an exhale. The admission makes me pause. “I’ll expect the same from you then.”
Moving toward my bed, I drop back, staring up at the worn wooden beams. I listen to the movement on the other end of the line.
Calmly, he says, “There are truths about what I do, who I am to certain people, what brought me to Hideaway and here.” He takes a measured pause. “Then there are truths when it comes to you, Naomi, Wyn, Professor Crowne, whoever you choose to be.”
I try to slow my breathing. Not all of those were choices.
The way he calls out my names, and the way he says each the same, as if they’re all the same person, when I’ve worked so hard to keep them separate.
It makes me feel seen. And intensely naked—even more so than lying on my bed in my bra and panties.
In a low and deep tone, he cuts the bullshit. “The only one I care about right now is that I want you. I never plan to keep anything or anyone. I never walked into that Montana bar expecting to walk out and not being able to stop thinking about the woman I just met.”
I want that to be true, but that’s not what brought him there. Or here.
“I call bullshit,” I hum.
He laughs out. “Bullshit?”
“Yes, bullshit. You went into that bar and needed information. I was your mark?—”
He laughs out for real this time. “My mark? What do you think, I’m a spy?”
“I think you’re charming and sexy. Mysterious and and dangerous. I think you know exactly how to get what you want and you got it out of me.”
“Maybe that’s how it started.”
I hate the truth of it. I close my eyes letting the silence linger. Thinking about what I want if it’s going to end.
“I went to Hideaway needing to confirm that it existed. I was looking for a friend. My job, the same kind I was here to do for your family, isn’t paid for in cash and checks. Currency is paid out in favors. I owed a favor. That’s what brought me to Hideaway.”
I close my eyes and ask the one question I’m afraid to hear the answer to. “Tell me your friend didn’t go there to hurt anyone.”
“Just the opposite, Crowne,” he says softly. “I promise you that when I found out what Hideaway was, who would be in a place like that, I wouldn’t let anyone I didn’t trust know about it.”
I let his words linger and swipe away the tear that tracks down the side of my face. I think I needed to hear that.
“Those types of jobs are done. This one, in Rumor, was my last.” He exhales loudly before he says, “I should’ve been gone the minute I got out of those fucking zip ties.” I hear him moving around, a car door closing.
“If it’s done, then why are you still—” I start to ask, but he quickly cuts me off, out of breath.