“Dylan?”She looks up the length of my body.
I shove my hands deep into my trouser pockets and hunch up my shoulders.“I think I’m ready to go home.”
“Oh.Okay.”Up she rises beside me.
In her heels she’s almost my height.The wind catches her hair and blows the strands across her face.“Do you want me to see if Johns is available to drive you?”
I shake my head.
“Dylan, I’m not sure you’re in any state to be driving yourself.”
My alcohol consumption barely amounts to a few sips, but we both know that’s not really the issue.I’m too distracted to concentrate on something as meaningless as traffic.
“Do you drive?”
She tips her head right, and peers at me along the length of her nose.“Me?Yes, I do.”
“And you drove here?”
She nods.
“Will you take me home, Kira?”
For a breathless moment I imagine she’ll refuse.Then she nods, and links her arm with mine.“Yes, I’ll take you home, Mr.Drake.Do you need to say goodbye to the hosts, or we good to just slip away?”
I’m sure Dare will forgive me.The party is still raging, but Falchard has made him aware of the incident.“Let’s just leave.”
-15-
-Kira Carter-Wells-
The journey to Dylan’s is spent in silence broken only by the irregular bleats of the Sat Nav.I start out pretending it’s a companionable quiet, but it’s an outright lie.The tension between us is as palpable and uncomfortable as the attraction that still exists.I want to help him work through whatever occurred in that bathroom, but he’s completely closed off on the subject of Bask, and I daren’t push too hard for fear of him actually opening the flood gates and spilling horrors about his past that I don’t know how to handle.
There’s no real danger of that happening.Dylan, for all his eloquent speeches to the LGBT+ community, is at core a bottler.He doesn’t share, or dissect traumatic events.He buries them.I’ve seen him do it, time and time again.Anything awkward, anything he doesn’t care to recall, it gets shoved inside a big old closet in his skull.One day it’s going to burst right open…but not, I think, tonight.
It’s clear his autobiography was his way of releasing some of the pressure.He let a few minor incidents out, regurgitated them for entertainment, and delivered them as jokes.The really dark stuff remains locked away, but I’ve brains enough to read between the lines of what he’s written, and I’ve spent enough time with him to know what he fears.Someone, or rather several someones made his childhood hell, and whatever Adam did earlier has reminded him of that.It’s why he looks so damn haunted now.
The shadows in his eyes, the fear… It’s not easy watching someone you care for bleed inside, and not knowing how to help.
Despite his earlier brazened show of resilience, I know he’s hurting.
Part of me suspects my mere presence is making things worse.
He doesn’t want to deal with me, or the attraction that still exists between us.It’s not something he can handle.It would involve shifting his perception of himself, and he’s been up in arms defending the person the world believes him to be for so long that he doesn’t know how to be anything else.
“We’re here.”I turn off the engine, having parked up in the underground car park of the hotel where we first met.Apparently his suite here is as near as dammit his home in the UK, though he mumbles something about a property in Italy and a penthouse apartment in Manhattan.“Dylan?”
He remains perfectly still with his seat belt still fastened.His face is ghostly, reflected in the glass of the windscreen.
“This is where you wanted to be, right?”
His nod is so slight as to be near imperceptible.
I hit the button to release his belt, and his hand shoots out to capture mine.His skin is warm, despite the shivers chasing through his limbs.“Come up with me.”
“Oh!”Too many conflicting thoughts strike me all at once.That he needs a friend.That he shouldn’t be alone tonight.But, I’m not the right person.This is too complicated.I want him, and if we go upstairs together things are going to pan out the way they inevitably seem to do whenever we’re alone together.That’s not an outcome that’s going to benefit either of us.
We’re both done.We know that.Parting ways is the only option.Neither of us can be what the other requires.
