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Even then my feelings were conflicted. Rick had saved me. We shared a steady and easy connection. I was attracted to his strength and composure, and I knew that he would always keep me safe. I’ve already admitted that stray erotic thoughts passed through my mind as well and I felt guilty, but Rick and Dalton were always together and it was almost as though they were one person, just two sides of the same coin. Was it so wrong for me to love both of them?
Chapter Thirteen
I stayed with Dalton for a while. He smiled at me and held me in his arms. It felt good to be close to him again, to breathe in his warmth and his scent, to remember what it was like to have our flesh pressed against each other, to drown in each other’s love and lust. Once we started kissing it was almost impossible for us to stop. Our tongues danced. His fingers ran through my hair. I wrapped my arms around his neck and sat in his lap, exchanging tenderness and affection. In that moment Dalton gave me everything I was missing and I knew that despite my efforts to be a high-powered career woman, I hadn’t been happy. It had just been an effort to patch over my misery. The only time I had felt alive recently was with Dalton, and I couldn’t ignore that any longer.
But could I really just up and leave my life so abruptly, and say goodbye to everything and everyone I knew? I had worked so hard at my job and it seemed foolish to let it all go now after pouring so much time and energy into it, but as I sat with Dalton, it seemed wrong to tear myself away from him as well. Each kiss came with a bittersweet feeling, knowing that it might be the last one we shared. I breathed in deeply and rested my hand against his chest.
“I need to speak with my parents again,” I said softly, my words barely a whisper. Dalton nodded and brushed a few strands of hair away from my face. His fingertips crackled with electricity as they passed along my skin. I kissed his palm.
“I figured you’d want to say goodbye to them before you left. I’m glad that we were able to sort things out. The last thing I wanted was for you to be angry with me. Thank you for forgiving me and giving me the chance to explain myself.”
As I rose, I kissed him deeply once again. I didn’t say goodbye to him, because I wasn’t yet sure of what I was going to do, but I also didn’t tell him that I might be staying as I didn’t want to get his hopes up. I left him with that kiss and nothing else. I hoped it would be enough, in case I decided to leave.
*
Walking away from Dalton was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do, but the world didn’t allow us to hide. I never thought I’d ever go to my parents for advice, because they hadn’t been very helpful in the past, but there was nobody else I could turn to, nobody I trusted anyway, who also knew the truth about the lions.
I saw them standing near the wall of the mountain along with a few other lions. They were admiring some artwork and as I followed their gaze, I immediately noticed it was my Mom’s work. She’d painted a huge mural along the mountain, depicting the majesty of lions. She’d lost none of her talent in the intervening years, and all I could think was that it was a shame her talent wasn’t being witnessed by more people. Her paintings should have been displayed in art galleries.
They seemed happy when I approached, but their smiles fell when they saw the expression on my face.
“What’s wrong?” they asked. I suppose parents always have an uncanny knack of knowing when something is wrong with their child. It felt strange to ask them for advice, knowing that in the past I had pushed them away whenever they had tried to help. They didn’t point this out though, and simply ushered me away from the other lions and took me back to their hut.
“What’s wrong?” Dad asked.
“I have…something of a dilemma,” I said, and proceeded to explain my difficulty in deciding what to do with my feelings. “I guess I’m just at odds with myself. I really care about Dalton, but leaving my life to come and live here is such a big step, and I wasn’t brought here to be romantically involved with Dalton. I don’t want to upset Rick because he’s been so kind to me, and I have to admit that I’m attracted to him as well. The thought of being his partner isn’t the worst thing in the world, and I’m wondering if that means my feelings for Dalton aren’t as strong as I think? I mean, if they were would I even contemplate being close with another man? And then, I don’t know if I can leave the city at all. My life is there you know, my home, my job, and my friends. If I leave what would I have left? It feels as though I’m at a crossroads and I don’t know which path to take.”
The words tumbled out of me almost faster than I could speak them. All the thoughts came crashing down and my emotions swelled like a tsunami. My eyes darted to the ground. I hated being this vulnerable in front of my parents, but they were the only ones I had and somehow being with them here, in this time, made the past seem a little farther away. All the resentment that had built up over the years dissipated and I wasn’t so hasty to judge them anymore. I knew they weren’t only my parents; they were also two people with hopes and dreams of their own and they had been braver than I in pursuing them.
“I think you’re getting yourself a little worked up over this honey when you have no reason to be,” Mom cooed.
“I’m glad you came to us though. I know that you haven’t always appreciated the advice we’ve given in the past,” Dad said. “But, of course, we’re a little biased, in that we know what it’s like to leave a life. It’s hard to say goodbye to everything you know. Sometimes you’re in a place for so long, it starts to define you and you feel a magnetic pull of it, so powerful that you wonder if you can ever find the strength to wrench yourself away, but then you do and you realize it wasn’t so hard after all. The only angst your Mom and I ever faced was in leaving you. We wished you would have come with us, but by that point you were your own person and you had the right to make your own decisions.”
“But I’m not like you. I can’t just shun everything I know,” I said.
“Why not?” Mom asked. Dad gave me an earnest look, asking the sa
me question with his eyes.
“Because I’m not like you.” Frustration crept into my words. I took a sip from the bowl of water.
“I think you’re more like us than you think. Just the fact that you’re here proves that. The thing that we tried to teach you is that there are no rules when it comes to life. You don’t have to be a part of that rat race if you don’t want to be. It’s all well and good having a career, if it makes you happy, but when you’re breaking your back just to prove to some people that you’re worthy of a promotion, you only end up having to prove it all over again to other people, and you spend so much time on that, that you end up neglecting other parts of your life. It can be all-consuming and we always tried to teach you that it’s important to cultivate a well-rounded life. We didn’t want you to become a slave to consumerism like so many other people before you.”
“It’s not that bad,” I said weakly. I didn’t want this to turn into an ideological argument. Mom seemed to feel the same way and placed a calming hand on Dad’s arm. He always had a tendency to get carried away when he was in the full flow of passion. I suppose that I did too; it was just one of the echoes of him inside me.
“My point is,” Dad said, after taking a breath, “that the lifestyle in the city markets itself as the only way to live, the only way to be happy. It’s a lie. There are other ways and yes, it can be seductive with all the glamour and trinkets it offers, but it’s not the only way to live and it never has been. Being happy should be more about the state of mind itself, rather than chasing after promotions and things, because there are always going to be more of those and the chase will never end. You have to look around you and see what you can appreciate, and you never have to stay in one place. You ask what’s left if you leave the city behind, but what’s left is what you take with you. You have more control than you think, Ellie.”
I nodded in understanding. It didn’t always feel like I was in control, but I suppose he had a point.
“And as for your second problem, that’s really a personal matter, but it’s not one you should fret too much about. There are no rules when it comes to love; the most important thing is to be honest with those you care about. It’s something that you should talk to Rick and Dalton about, really.”
“You’ve been here for a long time. Do you think they’d be able to find someone to fill this role if I returned to my life?”
From the glance they exchanged I knew the answer.
“Recommending you was a last resort,” Mom said. “We know you made your choice about the way you wanted to live your life, and we wanted to respect that. The lions have been searching for a long time, and there is word that scouts from other prides are coming down to make a claim for these grounds. You wouldn’t know it to look at them, but the lions are quite anxious about their future. I don’t want to think about what will happen, or where we’ll go,” Dad clasped Mom’s hand. “But you have to do what’s right for you. We only brought you here because they needed some hope, and to be honest we did miss you. I don’t want you to feel forced into staying here, but if you don’t it’s likely this pride will be forced to move on.”
My chest tightened, as I thought about the weight of it all. The lion’s secrecy had become their downfall, but how could it be that I was their last hope? I’d struggled so hard to make something of myself with regards to my career, but my parents did have a point, in that I hadn’t achieved much and all the effort I’d put into making myself into the perfect worker hadn’t left me fulfilled. It had only left me tired and wondering what the point of it all was. I had hated returning to an empty home after a long day of work, and with all the extra effort I put in, it became harder to make time for dating. When I asked myself if that was truly the life I wanted, I found myself answering in the negative. When I really looked deep inside myself, I knew that it was a push back against my parents, fueled by all the angst that had been inside me as a child. It wasn’t necessarily what I wanted, more like what I thought I should have, since it was what my parents had rejected.
