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“You look nice in that blue dress.”
I looked down, sort of forgetting for a second what I’d put on. “Thanks. But this is not what the women wear to the clubs.”
“You’re right, of course.” He smiled. “Shows you how much I think about women’s clothing. I’ve always been more interested in getting women out of their clothing.”
My cheeks heated up. He was blatantly sexual in a way I just wasn’t accustomed to. Kit certainly hadn’t been that way, even when he’d been quote-unquote in love with me. Zeke had invited me into his room with his shirt still off. He’d touched me as it suited him to do so. Carried me around. Threatened to spank me for talking badly about myself. And now he was talking about undressing women.
I was strangely naïve, considering the public opinion about me and my relationship status had kept me from being pursued in any blatant ways for a long time.
“I’m sure you are.” I looked down at the table where my plate would have been had it still been there. I wished it were. I could pretend to eat more.
He took a long look at me that I could feel on my skin, even though I was staring down at the table. “You really are young, aren’t you? For moments, I almost forget. And then it rushes back.”
I was pretty sure he’d just insulted me again. That was Zeke’s way with me so far. Be nice, helpful, flirty, and then mean. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Amazing what I’d learned in less than twenty-four hours in his presence, and it hadn’t done anything to lessen how much I wanted him. If only it was me who he was trying to get undressed.
Of course, he’d have to do all the work because I’d probably miss the cues, considering that I hadn’t a clue how to flirt successfully.
“I don’t think it’s a crime to be twenty-two,” I said finally, because something needed to be spoken or it was just going to get even more weird. “And I think I am young in a lot of ways and not young in others. In some capacities, I was born old.”
“Fair enough.” He actually ran his finger over the top of my hand, and I shivered from the contact. Why did he do that, and then in the next breath, be so obviously scorning of me? Hewas a confusing man. “Are you hoping to move the book writing into a fashion career? Making your own handbags? Or shoes? Or something?”
That was a fair enough question. “No. I’m not.”
His eyebrows shot up. Maybe at how fast I’d said the no. “That might seem a logical next step. Take the success of the book—I looked, it was successful—and turn that into a career in fashion.”
It might. But I didn’t want to do that. “I know I’m frustrating. Why can’t or won’t I just do what made sense? Take steps, make things happen. I was born into privilege. Use it.”
“I’m not interested or concerned with your privilege. That was a non-answer you just gave me. Is it that you can’t draw? Another I’m stupid thing? Because I’m sure in this day and age there is software…”
I held up my hand, imitating him, and he smirked at me as he stopped talking. “I can draw. It’s not that. I just don’t want to.”
I was actually a great artist, when I used to do such things. But I hadn’t given that a go since I was a child and wouldn’t again.
“Wasn’t your mother an artist? She was, right? I remember it was a big deal when she killed herself because out of the two of them, your mother and your father, she was the success at that point. Married the poor guy who was trying to make it. Had four kids and died. Her paintings go for a fortune.”
My body went cold, the same way it did whenever she was brought up, which was almost never. People knew better than to talk about her, because my father had made it clear that she was never to be brought up. Ever.
Your mother died eight years ago, Layla. I’m not going to discuss her now. Let dead be dead.
“My mother didn’t kill herself.” I was done with this conversation. It’d only been several hours, but I’d go back to bedrather than speak about this at any length. It hurt my stomach to think about her, made me want to pound things and declare that I wasn’t that flighty, that somehow, I’d manage my life better. Even with all evidence to the contrary.
“I thought she did.”
He had to know that I didn’t want to talk about this. The man read my body language well enough to know when I was lying. He was pushing this subject, and since he was so big on the word ‘no’ I was going to use a version of it to end this night.
“She accidentally took too many pills. She didn’t kill herself on purpose. No one has any reason to think otherwise, and I’m going to bed.”
“You haven’t had dessert yet.” As though he’d summoned him, the man who took our plates arrived with two more, setting them down in front of us. “And I apologize. That wasn’t well done by me. I assumed you could talk about it, considering it happened twenty-one years ago. I get it. Some things aren’t ever discussed. I have my own secrets, keep yours.”
It wasn’t a secret. He was just trying to get me to admit something I couldn’t do because it wasn’t true. She’d accidentally overdosed on sleeping pills because she was so exhausted taking care of four children under four with an absent husband that she hadn’t paid attention to what she was doing. It hadn’t been suicide.
That was what I’d been told, and that was what I was going to believe.
Because I wasn’t sure how I could digest the idea that she’d left us in our cribs to scream for twenty-four hours, until my father returned from his business trip to find us starving, soiled, terrified, and dirty. My brother wandered the house. Two years old. He’d tried to bring us bottles, but they hadn’t had milk in them. Did anyone know if he’d seen her? Did anyone ever ask? Was it just me who didn’t know?
I didn’t remember any of that. Just what I’d heard over the years. My grandmother’s whisperings. My aunt’s drunken ramblings. The way that my mother’s best friend, Lois, had stared at us with empty eyes one afternoon when she’d just had to see us again after a decade of not. That was when those things came out.
It was an accident. It couldn’t be suicide. Because it was too awful to contemplate if it was.
