Chapter 33
thirty-three
. . .
Ludicrous
Present Day
taven
Saturday, 11:04 am
While I had tossed and turned all night, listening for every sound or soft moan dropped from Desiree’s lips in fear she was feeling worse, I woke up feeling surprisingly fresh. I had turned over to her, watching her stir as she slowly woke up, eyelids fluttering as she registered where she was. She turned to me and smiled, murmuring, “Taven Carlisle is in my bed.”
I tucked the hair that was falling in her face behind her ear, saying, “Actually, you’re in my bed.” It was the best damn start to my day I’d had in a long time.
We had moved to the couch after a breakfast of coffee and toast, and now we sat together, listening to rain tap lightly on the roof. Nothing in comparison to the monsoon of last night. The floor-to-ceiling windows of my family room showcase the view of hills and trees beyond, light speckles of raindrops only adding to the beauty. Desiree sips some juice, and I watch her as she admires the view. I can’t help but think how gorgeous she looks. How happy I am to have her here with me now. How shocked I was last night to see her, a wet mess in her oversized plastic poncho. And then how scared I was when she dropped to the ground like she did. Today she says she has a mild headache with some continued subtle ringing in her ear, but she overall feels better and assures me she’s okay, to my relief.
I ask if she wants to take a walk.
“In the rain?” she asks, startled by the suggestion.
I nod over toward the window. “It’s barely a mist. I have a raincoat you could borrow. No thunder or lightning on the radar. I looked.”
She laughs, and tells me she’d love a walk.
We walk side by side down the long slope of my driveway. I’m tempted to hold her hand, just in case her headache gets any worse or she starts feeling dizzy, but I resist the urge and settle on just staying close, scanning her face periodically for signs of discomfort. We continue in silence on a path past the couple small homes of my neighbors. It’s a rural area, and I point us toward a walking trail across the street and through some woods.
“It’s so beautiful here, how did you find this place?” she asks. She flips the hood of my coat up and over her head, and I smile at how outrageously large the whole thing is on her. The rain is more of a gentle misting now, thankfully, and the sounds of birds chirping in the distance offer a sweetness to our walk.
“I had been renting out storage space from a friend’s garage, because my shop didn’t have the room to expand, but there had been a couple rare vehicle finds that I had to have. I was living in a shitty apartment at the time, saving up and just looking at listings for a while, looking for anything that could double as storage for cars we were working on that would take a while. Finding specialized parts and things can take some time.”
She nudges my shoulder. “I still remember you taking apart Inferno and me thinking you were crazy for messing with a perfectly good car.”
I laugh. “What can I say, I like a project.” She shakes her head as I continue on. “Anyhow, so I had been waiting to find a house that needed a little fixing up, big enough to be a permanent investment but still affordable. And I also knew I wanted decent land. The further out from town you go, the more you can get for your money.
“And then this old mid-century modern house popped up, but it had no garage. Figured it would be pretty cheap to build such a basic structure, so I put everything I could down on the property and went for it. You should have seen it at first,” I chuckle. “Leaks and golden wallpaper and this disgusting red carpet throughout.”
She leaps over a muddy puddle and laughs. “Oh, the good old styles of yore.”
“Trust me when I say that’s making it sound far more charming than it was. But I loved the fireplace and the windows, which were in decent shape. Little by little I updated what I could, starting with the master bathroom. That was covered in shiny blue wallpaper, which is even uglier than it sounds, believe it or not. The whole space was blue everything. And it had carpet in it to match.”
She scrunches up her nose. “Ew. Carpet in a bathroom?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I sure like what you did with it,” she smiles.
I smile too, remembering her naked in my shower last night. “How about you, where are you living?”
She shrugs, and I point us to the right where a small stream runs along the path. The water is higher than usual, and I watch as bundles of leaves and sticks float along by. “I’m a young and poor doctor completing my residency,” she says, “so I live in a humble little condo for now. Nothing like your spot.”
“Do you like the work?”
I love the grin that sweeps across her face. “I really do. I like making kids feel comfortable in an uncomfortable setting, and I like that I get to switch it up. Some days in the hospital, checking out new babies, some days in the office doing standard check-ups.”
“So it’s general pediatrics?” I confirm. “Not the plan of plastic surgery?” I fight the groan I feel knowing it was her dad’s dream for her.
She nods. “Definitely not. It was my mom who encouraged me to pursue something else, actually.”
“Oh yeah?”
Her face falls a little and I direct us over to a clearing with a large boulder, where we sit and watch the stream rushing over rocks.
She tucks her knees under her chin. “When my mom was in her final days, there was something really peaceful about our time together. I had to bathe her at that point, and it was this strange thing to be taking care of her like that, thinking about all the years she had taken care of me. Fixed my cuts and scrapes and made me my favorite foods when I was sick or sad.” She smiles, her gaze held steady on the water in front of her as she lowers the hood from her head. “I don’t think I ever told you this, but she had this tattoo under her left breast. I remember being so surprised when I first saw it.”
“Your mom? A tattoo?” I ask, squinting at the peek of sun making its way between the clouds.
“Yup. It was small and black cursive and said, ‘times ten.’ All lowercase. That was it.”
“More creative than ‘one day at a time,’ I guess. You never knew she had it?” I ask, smiling and trying very hard not to think of the late Holly Hatson’s breasts, but unable to stop the image.
Desiree looks at me with raised brows. “Do you know what’s under your mom’s boobs?”
“Point taken,” I concede.
“And we weren’t exactly a naked house, so yeah, it was a surprise. She said it was a silly joke, that she got it many years ago, and then she held my hand and looked me dead in the eyes. Told me not to chase my dad’s dreams, but to chase my own. Go into whatever field I wanted, even if it wasn’t medicine.
“I had started laughing and asking her how the hell I’d pay my med school bills otherwise, and she squeezed my hand even tighter. It kind of freaked me out, actually. I realized how serious she was, and I told her not to worry about that. Promised her I’d go in whatever direction I wanted, but I reassured her that medicine was in fact where my passion was.”
I put my arm around her shoulders and pull her into me. I remember when her mom died. I remember how utterly useless I was in the days after her death, when Desiree needed me most.
She adjusts herself into my chest and sighs. “Anyhow, as much as I love being creative and reading and writing and things, medicine was still something I was learning to love, especially when thrown into my mom’s illness. I enjoyed the research of the body, what poisons it, how to enhance health and that kind of thing. I loved the relationships we had built with my mom’s doctors, and I wanted to do that kind of thing too, but for kids and their families. I didn’t think I could handle a specialty with more intense life-or-death cases, though, so went with general pediatrics.”
“A good choice,” I say, finding her hand and lacing our fingers together.
“I think so.”
“What’s the worst part about the job?”
Without missing a beat she says, “Doing circumcisions on newborn baby boys,” she laughs, shaking her head. “Feels so cruel.”
“Sure glad I don’t remember mine,” I say.
When we get back to the house, I head to the kitchen to make us some lunch. She needs chicken soup, I decide, so I get to work ripping apart the remnants of a rotisserie chicken I had in the fridge while Desiree chops up onions and carrots and celery beside me. I’ll need to head to the airport soon to pick up Evelyn, to do the thing I hope she knows is coming, but I figure I’ll make sure Desiree is well fed before I broach the subject.
With the soup simmering, I slice up a loaf of multigrain bread. I butter up a slice and cut it in half, plating it and handing it to Desiree. I grab my own slice, and we lean against the counter and munch in silence while I think about how to word this.
“So, I have to head out for a little bit soon here. Two hours tops, to see Evelyn, then I’ll be back.”
She takes another bite and nods, swiping her tongue along her lips to scoop up a spare crumb. “I know, I saw your phone light up with a reminder earlier. I wasn’t snooping, I swear, it just popped up when you were in the bathroom. ‘Evelyn Airport, Flight…’ something or another. I don’t remember the details. She coming or going?”
I stare at her, stunned. “She’s…” My words drop off as I try and study her face, surprised at how nonchalant she is about the whole thing. Last night, I was kissing Desiree, yet today, the reality of the other woman in my life has had me restrained all morning. Is that it for us? Does Desiree assume last night was just a momentary burst of affection, now to be diminished?
She stares at me, waiting for my answer. “Coming or going, Vin?” she asks.
“She’s arriving,” I finally say. “Back from London for work.”
She drops the last bit of her bread onto her plate and grabs a napkin. Wipes her hands and dabs at her mouth. “Sounds good. Not coming back here, I’m assuming?”
“No, back to her place,” I say. “Wait, you’re not mad?”
Blue eyes dart over to me, but I can’t read her expression. “I’m not mad.”
I turn to face her, surprised at how much I don’t actually like that response. “But why not? I’ve been over here trying to figure out how to tell you that I’d need to run out, worried you’d get freaked out and want to leave, and here you are casually telling me that you already know.”
She shrugs. “I mean, it was a little jolting seeing her name pop up on your phone like that. Remembering that you have a fiancée and all. Break or no break.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, because that’s all I can think of in response.
She huffs out a little laugh. “I’m very well used to the women in Taven Carlisle’s life, remember?” she says, arching an eyebrow.
“And I at one point got used to a certain man in yours,” I remind her.
She rolls her eyes and opens the fridge, pulling out a Diet Pepsi. “Please, you were hardly ‘used’ to him. You met him, what…two times?”
I run my hand down my face, realizing she has a point. “Fine. Anyhow, I’m going to pick up Evelyn from the airport. I’m going to finalize the end of our engagement.” I drop my hands and look at her as she opens her can. “Fuck it,” I say. “And the truth is, Dazzle, I was kind of hoping that would give you and me the freedom to figure out what exactly we are to each other. And to maybe even rip each other’s clothes off once and for all, and that you’d be okay with that.” There it is, there’s my truth, laid out before her. My heart starts pumping rapidly as I wait for her reaction.
She sips her drink and then smiles at me. “If you were picking me up from the airport, what would your phone reminder say?” she asks, ignoring my last statement.
I pull my head back. “What?”
“Just answer the question. What would your phone reminder say?”
I pinch my eyebrows together. “The same thing. ‘Dazzle, Airport, Flight…whatever,’” I say, waving my hand out to the side.
“Exactly,” she says. “You’d say, ‘Dazzle.’ Not Desiree.”
It dawns on me. “That’s right.”
“Because I’m Dazzle to you. ”
I cross my arms over my chest, flexing just because, and smirk. “What’s your point?”
She puts her drink down and slowly glides over to me. Runs her hands down my biceps. “You don’t have a nickname for her, do you? No endearing little inside joke you guys share?” I shake my head no. She shrugs. “I like that,” she says, placing a quick kiss on my cheek and walking backwards, gliding her hands over her breasts knowing full well her nipples are poking through her shirt. She dramatically sighs. “So, that solves that problem.”
“Is there another?” I ask, loving the sly way she’s teasing me.
I study her, transfixed by her mesmerizing movements as she drops her hands to her hips and narrows her eyes at me. “Another problem, you ask?”
“Sure. Got plenty more solving I can do.”
She steps closer to me, a slow and seductive saunter that’s filled with mischief. She stops just shy of touching me, and locks those big blue eyes with mine. “Taven,” she says.
“Yes?”
She places a hand on my arm. “Tell me what it was that caused the family fallout all those years ago.”
My face falls. The room goes quiet, other than the bubbling of the soup on the stove.
So this was her game, I see it now. Be cool about the Evelyn airport thing, use it as leverage and get me to share the dark secret that I know would only crush her and fill her with disgust, just as it has with my family for all this time. It was never a subject Desiree and I discussed. She’d tried in the past to ask me what I knew, but I’d refuse, downplaying it like it wasn’t even worth mentioning. In the past, she’d let me.
I have a feeling she will not today.
“No, Desiree. Not that,” I say, my voice quiet.
She leans further into me, her face stern, sky blue eyes wild with determination. “I’m not asking. I’m telling you. Say whatever it was. It was a thousand years ago. It hardly matters now, right? ”
“If it doesn’t matter then why even bother with it?” I counter, skin crawling at even so much as the thought of it.
“It matters because it was something you kept from me. And I know you were young and trying to do right by your family, but I need to know. Want to know if you’d let me in enough to just say it.” She presses her hands onto my forearms and gives me a gentle push, her face twisting in a sarcastic laugh. “Don’t make a big deal of it, just say it! Say the stupid and ridiculous thing that caused the great, big, earth-shattering Carlisle-Hatson divide.”
I unwind my arm and turn away from her. I face the stove on the center island and lift the lid off of the pot, giving the soup a quick stir. “You don’t want to know, Dazzle. Trust me on this.”
“You’ve said that before.”
“Good, then you know it’s where I stand.”
“I can’t believe you’re still trying to be a vault on this, Taven.” She laughs, but she doesn’t sound amused. I can hear the desperation in her voice. “This is so stupid, it wasn’t even about us, so just tell me! It was an affair, wasn’t it? Your dad and my mom, is that it? And you don’t want to tell me now because you think it’ll hurt me, especially with my mom gone, but it won’t. I won’t care, I promise.”
“But you will care.”
“I won’t, and I have to say, you sitting here still remaining absurdly tight-lipped about the whole thing—still protecting your father and his crimes—it’s really making me question whether or not I should even be here right now.”
I slam the lid down on the pot and then slam my fist onto the counter. “It was your father, okay? Not mine. Yours. Are you happy now?”
I look at her. Take in her wide eyes. “And your mom ?” she says, disbelief written all over her face. She pulls her head back. “Lynda wouldn’t.”
I close my eyes, realizing there’s no moving past this. “Not my mom, Desiree.”
“Okay? ”
“Jacqui. It was your dad and Jacqui.”
She lets out a huff of disbelief. “Jacqui? She was a kid back then. That’s sick.”
I tuck my hands in my pockets and lean back against the counter, crossing one ankle over the other and staring down at my socks. Good old black cotton socks. Very basic and normal, as if this conversation is very basic and normal. “She was eighteen,” I say. “Still in high school but technically legal. So there was nothing my parents could do.”
“No.”
I stare down at the grooves of the hardwood floor. Grooves of dark divots in the cinnamon wood, one of the best parts of the original features of the house. “Someone walked in on them together at a party,” I say. My words sound far away to me, as if someone else is talking. “Told my parents. Jacqui and your dad denied it all, but then my mom found her diary. Read all about it, every sordid detail.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head.
I ignore her. “My parents sat me down and told me what had happened. They said I needed to be aware of what kind of man Frank Hatson really was. I didn’t want to believe it at first, couldn’t even wrap my head around what they were telling me. But, sadly, it was true.”
“No,” she repeats.
I look back up to her. “Yes, Desiree. That’s the truth. I’m sorry to say it. I never wanted you to know this, but that’s it. That’s what caused the fallout. It was your father.” And my sweet, innocent sister.
She stands there, mouth opened but stunned into silence.
I sigh. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you back then. But this was also when your mom had been sick for the first time. Your parents had just gotten her diagnosis, and they were dealing with that as well, and not telling you or Dylan about it yet. Your mom was in denial with the Jacqui thing, I guess, and I was told to pretend I knew nothing, to stop seeing you, and that was that .
“I know this is hard to hear, and I hate that it wasn’t just some stupid affair had by our parents, I really do. But think what that was like for me,” I plead. “Learning my sister, my big sister who was my favorite person in that household, was being seduced by and fucking screwed ,” I say, my voice raising despite myself, “by some fucking old pervert little shit, who also happened to be my girlfriend’s father.” I pause to take a breath, study her face to see if she’s comprehending. I want to see if she can understand why I’ve kept it from her all this time.
“No,” she says yet again. “No, that…that can’t be the thing.” She folds her body in half, dropping her head toward the floor. “This is not true. That’s disgusting,” she says, popping herself back up to stand up straight. I watch her as she looks out the window and sucks in a big breath of air. “That’s just not true,” she says brightly, smiling, and my chest tightens as I witness her denial.
She shrugs and faces me. “It’s just absurd.” Her eyes dart over to the stove, and then she walks over to the cabinets above the counter. She opens and closes doors until she finds the bowls, she grabs two and hands one to me. “I’m really hungry. This smells really good. I think we should eat.” I watch as she pushes me aside, haphazardly ladling scoops of chicken and broth and veggies into her bowl, then sets it down to take mine and does the same. “Let’s eat,” she says as she sets our bowls down in front of seats at the island. I slowly walk over to the utensils drawer, pull out two spoons and hand one to her.
She takes a seat on the other side of the island and wiggles to settle herself into it, then smiles up at me. “Smells really good. I fucking love chicken soup, did you know that?” She scoops some into her spoon, then shoves it in her mouth, wincing at the temperature as she realizes it’s still just barely below a boil. “Fuck, that’s hot. Whoops! A little too eager, I guess.” I slide my glass of water over to her. She accepts the glass, drinks half of its contents, and slams it down on the counter before wiping her mouth with her napkin. “Aren’t you going to join me? ”
I’m not sure what else to do, so I grab my bowl and spoon, and go to sit next to her, my heart thumping as I think about the bomb I just dropped on her. One I swore to myself I’d take to the grave. What good would it do her to know? That’s her father, the only living parent she has at this point. Naturally, this would be tough to absorb. I can’t say I blame her for having this bizarre, maniacal reaction to the whole thing.
She slaps her hand on the counter and jolts me out of my thoughts. “You know what? What time is Evelyn’s flight? You should probably go. You don’t want to be late.”
My heart sinks. I turn in my seat to face her, my knees bumping against her thighs. “Dazzle, please,” I say, reaching for her hand. She lets her hand sit limply in mine. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
She closes her eyes. “I’m thinking that my mouth stings with the fucking burning hot soup I just shoved in there.” She opens her eyes and turns her head to look at me. “And that you should probably leave and go get Evelyn. Right now.” I see the shift in her expression. The mask of giddiness dropping down to reveal hurt or confusion or anger or maybe all of it. “Please. Just go, Taven.”
I consider her request. She wants space, I get it. Space to sit and try and process the whole thing, without me breathing down her neck and constantly asking if she’s alright.
“Fine, I’ll head out now,” I say. “Just tell me you’ll be here when I get back.” I stroke my thumb over her hand, willing it to soothe her and calm her down. “Don’t leave because of this.”
She pulls her hand out from mine. “Oh, no need to worry about that. I have no car here, remember?” She looks back down at her soup, fills her spoon with chunks of chicken and broth, then gently blows on it before taking another bite.