Page 21 of A Moth to the Flame (Utopia #1)
Chapter
Fifteen
CORDELIA
Duke’s house is cleaner than I expected. Lonelier, too. I don’t know why I had this fantasy that he and his brothers all still lived together like one big, happy family. It’s shameful that I ever thought about Duke at all, especially after I’d moved away.
I close the front door behind me, then turn on a lamp that’s centered on an entryway table.
There’s a sense of isolation in this tidy place that doesn’t align with my imagination about Duke’s adult life.
No pet runs to the door to greet me. No plants are thriving in front of the windows in the sitting room.
This place is utterly devoid of life in a way that elicits empathy that I don’t want to have for him. It’s as if the carefully ordered structure of his house is a mask to cover up the fact that this isn’t a home.
It’s just a place where someone lives.
I shove that depressing thought aside and stomp around his house in a tizzy.
If he’s miserable as a thirty-year-old bachelor, then he fully deserves that. I can’t forget that he got my body dangerously drunk in town today, enough to get me hauled off in the back of a police car.
It’s a good thing he doesn’t have a wife and kids. He’s clearly incapable of basic human decency, let alone the sort of selfless love that a family needs to flourish.
Normally, I’m not the type to snoop in other people’s medicine cabinets, but I’m not digging into Duke’s life out of morbid curiosity.
I’m on a mission to discover any secrets that Duke Castellaw might be hiding in his lonely lair of emotional dysregulation.
He probably has the key to getting back into our bodies hiding in plain sight.
His washroom is surprisingly clean and mostly empty.
There’s a pump dispenser of cheap hand soap to the side of the shining clean faucet.
The contents of the medicine cabinet above the sink are equally boring—a stick of deodorant, a bottle of Advil, a corded hair trimmer of some sort, and nothing else.
I throw open the shower curtain to find a half-used bar of soap and a single bottle of generic shampoo.
I really anticipated finding a slew of products.
Men stacked with as much muscle as Duke care deeply about their appearances.
He must put all his extra time and energy into his workout routine rather than luxurious self-care.
It’s a crime that his lustrous hair and beard don’t require five separate steps to maintain their shine and easy manageability.
I recoil when it occurs to me that he’s washing my long, frizzy hair with this crap. More motivation to get my body back as quickly as possible, before he destroys it past the point of salvation.
My next stop is his bedroom, though I hesitate before stepping into the most personal space of his sanctuary.
I never imagined I’d be here—mostly because I prefer fantasizing about good things.
His bed is neatly made, with a light down comforter and matching white cotton sheets.
Nothing fancy, nothing dark or alluringly masculine.
No matter which way I turn, everything is inexpensive and functional, without a shred of personality.
No art on the walls, no photo on the bedside nightstand.
Not even a lamp for nighttime reading. No dirty laundry piled up in the corners of the room.
The furniture is a matching set of plain, light wood .
I’m a little disappointed that I don’t find a voodoo doll shrine of me in the depths of his closet. It’s like he never thinks of me at all, despite going out of his way for years to warp my sad existence into a living nightmare.
That’s some serious bullshit.
He’s been fucking with my head even in my most intimate moments with other people. The least Duke could do is be fully obsessed with me.
The bureau on the opposite wall is weirdly empty.
One drawer at the top is filled with his plain cotton tighty-whities, not even sexy black boxer briefs to entice all the women he bangs in bar bathrooms. How disappointing.
For them. The other top drawer contains matched, folded pairs of more plain white cotton.
The man wears tube socks. Good grief. There’s a drawer of plain white undershirts.
The other three drawers have nothing in them, not even a dust bunny.
I turn my attention to the nightstand. If I’m going to uncover Duke’s deepest, darkest secrets, surely it will be here. This is where I stash all my most important things, like my favorite body lotion, my diary, my vibrator. I even keep spares at Granny’s place for when I visit.
The bottom drawer is also empty. I slowly slide open the top drawer, half expecting it to be booby trapped.
Nothing special here either. A box of condoms, Magnum sized.
I grit his teeth at the unfairness of the universe.
I guess I should be grateful he uses protection at all.
The world would be a much scarier place with a bunch of mini-Dukes running around.
There are a few magazines, but not the expected porn kind.
Mechanics Monthly. Instead of half-nude, buxom centerfolds, there’s a three-page spread of antique Mustangs.
With nothing else to snoop through in his innermost sanctum, I abandon the bedroom for the doorway across the hall.
It’s a spare room. The closet is full of hunting and fishing gear.
Nothing incriminating to be unearthed in here either, just two twin beds that are also neatly made with the same plain white sheets and comforters.
There’s a desk in the corner with an ancient-looking desktop computer that’s seen better days.
I don’t bother booting it up. It would probably take forever, and I doubt Duke would be willing to pay for the molasses-slow internet we’re able to get around here.
I move on to the kitchen that’s as clean as the rest of the place.
There are no dirty dishes piled up in the sink, no moldy food in the refrigerator.
Plenty of fruits and vegetables, a gallon of milk, and a container of plain coffee creamer.
There are a few bricks of various cheeses.
The freezer is stocked with individually packaged meats.
I guess it’s mostly deer that he hunted himself.
The cupboards are as immaculately organized as the rest of the house, everything stacked neatly in their right places.
Unlike the bland white of everything else, his dishes, mugs, and bowls seem to be a mismatched accumulation of other people’s discards in various shades of blue.
Utopia is so small that we don’t even have a thrift store here.
I have no idea where he bought all these random pieces.
A snapshot daydream of surly, muscly Duke Castellaw picking through various antique stores floats through my mind.
I laugh to myself. That’s about as likely as him growing a heart.
Maybe that’s why he has a full box of condoms. It didn’t escape my notice that there weren’t any stray bras, panties, or travel-sized, scented body wash lying around. He’s only available to dole out orgasms in public places, rather than show a woman genuine care in his house.
The sitting room is my last stop on my tour of Castle Castellaw.
I’m not typically a fan of wood paneling on walls, but he makes it work.
This front room, at least, has a rugged, masculine style with contrasting cool colors in various shades of gray.
A pop of blue completes the visual appeal.
Everywhere I look, I see comfortably worn fabrics and sensible furnishings.
A full-sized couch sits opposite two armchairs that are separated by a decorative side table.
The coffee table at the center of the arrangement is timeworn, yet timeless.
None of the furniture matches, and it all looks secondhand, but somehow everything fits together to create a cozy atmosphere.
I turn my attention to the stone fireplace that’s perpendicular to the seating arrangement.
My breath catches.
The rough-hewn mantel looks like it was harvested by hand from the woods surrounding Utopia, and atop it sits a variety of framed photos.
Much like the contents of his kitchen cupboards and sitting room furniture, the mismatched frames appear to be other people’s well-worn castoffs.
It’s hard to judge the frames when the love shining clear as day through the photos speaks volumes to what really matters to the man of this house.
His family.
The center photo is the largest, a picture of his mother and father laughing together, their faces turned toward each other as dappled light from overhead trees plays on their smiling faces.
It’s a random snapshot that doesn’t appear to be from any important event in their lives, and yet it tells the viewer everything they need to know about this couple.
They were deeply, deeply in love.
I swallow a ball of grief that feels like an intrusion. This isn’t my family. These aren’t my parents, but I appreciate the pain of this once-in-a-lifetime love being cut tragically short.
The entire town had mourned the untimely death of Mrs. Castellaw.
She’d suffered a fatal car accident when Duke and I were in eighth grade.
At the time, I believed his sudden shift from quiet boy to abusive bully was a result of his grief.
I took everything he doled out that year in silent stride.
I considered it a badge of honor to be the emotional outlet for his pain, and I couldn’t bear to deny him whatever he needed to cope, regardless of what it cost me personally.