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I pressed my lips together, suppressing a smile. We really needed to stop talking about sex. Especially in light of her brother wanting to make a BLT sandwich out of me for simply playing pretend with her. It was hard though. Dylan was funny. Imaginative. Real. It was why I’d kept my distance from her up until now.
Rhyland: We need to keep it PG-13. Remember, Bruce is a person of faith.
Dylan: So am I.
Dylan: I firmly believe people who want to get their butt fucked should. It’s no one else’s business.
RHYLAND
Three days had passed since Dylan propositioned me for anal in front of my forty thousand followers.
Three days since I last spoke to her or Bruce Marshall.
I’d refrained from following up with Marshall on Tate’s advice, not wanting to seem desperate, knowing I’d see him soon at Row’s event in New York. But something was gnawing at me. I wanted to do more to push this deal into completion. But I also didn’t want to appear as panicky as I really was.
I spent my day going to the gym, grocery shopping, and sweet-talking a few potential investors. I then made the mistake of checking my bank account and regretted the decision immediately. I was fast approaching being in the red, and I still had to pay Dylan an unfathomable amount of money. By the time I returned to the apartment building, it was ten at night.
I ended up hitting the fifth-floor button on my way up to my penthouse.
It was Dylan’s first week in New York. The least I could do was make sure she’d survived it.
I rang the doorbell. No answer. I glanced at my Patek Philippe, frowning. Ten at night. She must be home. She didn’t have a babysitter, and I imagined it was way past the child’s bedtime.
Had something happened to her?
If so, it’s not your goddamn responsibility. You already saved her once, the metaphorical devil on my shoulder said.
She’s your best friend’s baby sister. If the chick is dead, Row will be a major pain in the ass. Already he’s irrepressibly grumpy, the angel on my shoulder countered.
Making an executive decision, I pulled out the extra key Row had given me and turned it inside its hole. I pushed the door open, peering into the apartment. It was quiet and dark, save for the bluish hue of electronic screens. Maybe Dylan had just called it a night early. But I wasn’t going to leave before confirming she and that annoying mini version of her were okay.
Stepping inside, I closed the door and sauntered past the living room and kitchen. I stopped in the hallway, filling the doorframe to the nursery. Her daughter was curled up in a too-small cot, her stubby, Pillsbury-boy arms encircling that damn pink penis. She seemed perfectly fine.
I advanced farther down to the master bedroom. Pushed the door open. The bed was empty, still made, the linen pressed under the mattress like in a hotel. I listened to the hum of the AC, the traffic blaring from downstairs, and detected the gentle noise of water swishing. My throat bobbed with a swallow. She was taking a bath.
Good. Now you know. Turn around. Walk away.
But something stopped me. What if she’d drowned? Got injured? Fallen when she got out of the bath?
I stepped to the ajar en-suite door, feeling very much like the creeper I apparently was. A tiny sigh echoed in the bathroom. It had a floor-to-ceiling view of Manhattan, one of those reflective-finish windows that gave the glass a one-way mirror effect. She could watch the entire stretch of Fifth Avenue without it watching her back.
I caught a glimpse of her, and my pulse kick-flipped right down my pants, making my cock throb.
Dylan had her naked back to me, everything from her spine down covered by a sheet of bubbles. Her hair was caught in a white claw clip. She was staring out the window—not down at the busy, lively street full of people but up at the sky. Her chin was propped on the back of her hands, and in that moment in time, she was that beautiful girl I left behind in Staindrop.
The most beautiful girl in the world.
Wild but soft. Brave but lost. Imperfect but whole.
“Oh, look,” she said, our eyes locking through my reflection in the window. “It’s my wallet.”
Her words were harsh and sarcastic, but there was something tired and defeated about her demeanor. Something that made me step inside without being invited and lean a shoulder against the wall.
“You shouldn’t have let yourself in,” she said, her voice void of anger, and I remembered Dylan had never really had her privacy. She’d always lived under other people’s roofs, never spreading those beautiful, black-tipped wings of hers.
“That is no way to greet your fiancé,” I tutted.
“I forfeit, smart-ass. I feel too much like shit to engage in this battle of wits.” Her gaze rolled back to that invisible spot in the sky. To the liquid darkness and the stars that spun inside it like silver freckles.