“What the fuck is going on Dylan?” I said, this time getting more frustrated, with the crazy words that were spitting from his mouth.
“I came to work on this island a couple of years ago. I was handpicked from Henry himself. Since the last time that I saw you, I was working at a brand new five-star restaurant in San Diego, when I first met Henry. A month into working there, Henry came for dinner. I had no idea who he was, but at the end of my shift, I was told that there was a customer who wanted to meet with me. I’d never had that in my career before, initially nervous, a couple of the team I was working with told me it was usual protocol when some of their wealthier customers come in. So, I accepted the request and took a seat down opposite Henry who was dining alone. He told me that the simple steak that he had ordered was one of the best steaks he had ever eaten in his entire life. Next thing you knew, I was sitting down opposite him in the empty restaurant, drinking down a bottle of red wine, getting to know each other. I thought he was an incredible man. We spoke about our lives, business, goals, aspirations. By the time it hit midnight a littleboozed up, I would have said that he was the closest friend that I had made in the city.”
“Yeah, I never thought you ever wanted to leave Philly…” I sighed. It was the major reason as to why we broke up after all.
“I didn’t,” he replied bluntly before continuing his story. “Anyway, by the time that it hit 2 A.M., Henry told me that he had just signed the papers to buy out the building that I was working in, the restaurant business was technically now his as well. It was quite embarrassing really, now knowing that technically he was my new boss and I had just told him that the restaurant that I was working at was really just a step in my journey.”
I had never seen this side of Dylan. I always knew that it was in him, I knew how good he was, but I was always the one that was dreaming bigger than him. He’d hid anything that I knew that he truly wanted behind fear and closed lips.
“That was when he said that he could promise me one of the best chef jobs that there was, he told me that I could cook for some of the most important people in the world that would be screaming my culinary name all over it. Half of that story was true,” Dylan said.
“Okay…. Well, that explains how you ended up here. But it doesn’t really explain anything else…. Are you trying to say that you’ve gone missing? That you’ve come out here and isolated yourself?”
Dylan took a step back, his hands curling into fists. “Molly, I am being serious, I am really fucking helping you right nowand I have already said too fucking much. There is always someone watching here. You need to stop questioning everything and actually listen clearly into the words that I have spoken.” I’d seen him angry before, but I had never seen him this mad. The words he spoke stung just as fresh as they did any other time that we got into a fight. I was the one who was always to be silenced. I was the one who questioned too much. I was the one that never listened, yet I was also the one that never felt heard. What we were and whatever we used to be really was an anomaly for the life that I lead. Or used to lead, because being silenced, or drowned out by everyone else around me, that didn’t need to exist anymore, at least not in the life that I was building with Henry. All of me was wanted here, loud and clear.
“Wow, you really haven’t changed a bit have you,” I scoffed. “You know all this time, all of my memories of you have been nothing but fond. But now seeing you here the reality of what we were to each other is all coming back. Thanks for the drink and the dessert, but I think that I’ve had enough of a midnight grilling for tonight and I’m going to take myself back to bed.” I had nothing left to say to him.
I stood up off my stool, turning by back to him, trying to make some sort of sense of what he was trying to say to me. Dylan grabbed hold of the tie around the middle of my kimono, almost completely undoing it, but instead I grabbed it as his hold spun me around. Within a single blink, I was held tightly in his arms pressed against the stainless steel bench. Hisarms wrapped around me and I tried to wriggle myself free. His lips were firmly pressed against my ear.
“I can tell you right now, I’ve dreamed of this very day so many times when I finally got the chance to lay my eyes on you again and I can tell you right now that this is the last way that I wanted it to go. I hoped that I would find you somewhere in New York, probably find you sitting in the corner of a bar, enjoying a nice drink after a long day of work. I’d hoped that you would see me, invite me to sit down. I would be so excited to hear about all of your incredible adventures, your thriving career. I couldn’t wait to hear all the stories about how you achieved everything you wanted, you were well traveled, and accomplished in business, heck, maybe you had even started your own rather than showing other people how to better theirs. Then I would tell you how I’d expanded my horizons, how I had worked in various restaurants, accumulated my accolades and that now I had just scored an ideal role in New York City. And that was the beginning moment, where we would reconnect again. That was how I wanted things to go down. The last thing that I wanted was to see you here. It’s not safe here, Molly. It’s not. You need to get out, we need to get out. I’ll find a way for you to leave, for us to leave. Meet me back here at the same time tomorrow night.” Dylan finally released me, taking a step back. I pushed past him and ran straight towards the door. Pressing the button to the elevator, grateful that the doors opened instantly throwing my body inthere. As soon as the door closed, I felt like I could breathe again.
What the fuck had just happened? And Dylan’s story, the story of what he wanted, was he still in love with me? Is that what this was all about?
Chapter Seventeen
“Good morning, sleeping beauty,” said Henry. The moment that I opened my eyes, the bright light of the day poured into the room. Henry was sitting next to me on the bed, smiling down at me as one hand gently caressed my cheek while the other held tight to his coffee mug that I quickly realized was mine as he tried to hand it to me before I was ready.
“What’s the time?” I said, my voice groggy as I stretched my arms out in front of me. I sat up and took the hot mug from Henry. I really should have been drinking water rather than drowning my body in caffeine as soon as I opened my eyes. But caring for my nervous system right now, probably wasn’t the most important thing to worry about. Not when I had Henry half naked handing me the cup of goodness. Besides, if I did become over stimulated, I’m sure he would find a way to calm me down.
“We’re on an island, Miss Molly. Time is the last thing that you should be worrying about right now.”
“Right…” I sighed. “So maybe it’s time that you come back to bed then,” I said taking his hand and pulling him back towards me as his favorite smirk took over his face. I needed to see his dimples this morning, I needed his eyes locked on mine. I needed a moment trapped inside our vortex. One single look that soothed me from the craziness of last night. The craziness that I was still undecided as to whether I should tell him or not. And if I did, which part of it would I tell him? Would I tell him that his chef was my first boyfriend? And if I did that, would I ask him about the stories that he had told about him? A part of me wanted to search for Dylan right now, find him and corner him alone. I wanted to know if he was just making some stupid joke last night or if he was just delirious from the late night and no doubt overworking hours. What were all those pastries for anyway? Maybe if I could find him this morning and have a quick chat, he would have changed his tune. Either way, if I did say anything, I think I needed to have a chat to Dylan first.
Henry pulled his hand away from my tight grip. “You know that does sound really amazing,” he whispered in my ear as he wrapped his arm around my back, holding me in tight to the side of his body. “And I am so sorry that I have to ruin this moment, but I do have to get some work done. Something pressing has come up, but I shouldn’t be longer than half an hour. I was thinking you might like to have a slow morning, enjoy the bed, the sunshine, pick something nice to wear, and I could meet you downstairs for breakfast?”
“That sounds wonderful,” I sighed.
“You know it’s a really beautiful day. I know that you want to go for a hike, but after all that rain last night, I think we might have to leave that till Sunday.” My heart did sink a little. Not that it should have. I was just dying to get lost inside nature. It had been so long and now seeing all of the greenery surrounding me, looking out at it, I craved it even more. “But today, I was thinking that we could spend a day out in the sun on the boat, there’s some great little reefs around here to go snorkeling if you’re interested?”
“If I’m interested?” I said, mocking his words. “Of course I’m interested.” If I couldn’t go deep into the middle of the green island, then getting out on the water was my next best option. And with Henry needing to take a little break for work, this morning really couldn’t have gotten any better. All I needed to do was to find wherever the hell Dylan was and try and have some sort of logical chat with him this morning and find out really what was going on with him last night. If he wanted to get out of here so badly, maybe he was just overworked? Maybe he really needed some time off which was more than understandable, and I didn’t really see what the harm was in being honest with Henry about that. Heck, if he was somehow scared of Henry being his employee, then I could chat to Henry for him. It could really be more of a win situation me being here, well, a win apart from the fact that he was never going to get me back. Not here, not now, and even if the circumstances were different and I had never met Henry. I don’t think that we would have ever ended up back together.
At the end of the day, Dylan and I were too different. And now I knew what it was like to be with someone who really understood every side of me. I couldn’t see a world where Henry’s and my paths didn’t cross at one way or another, his voice ran through my mind again, replaying the words that I knew to be true. We were meant to meet.
Henry looked down at his watch before placing a soft kiss on my forehead. “I’ll meet you downstairs at nine,” he said standing up from the bed and disappearing through the elevator doors.
After taking another sip of my coffee, I reached down to my phone on the side of the bed, checking the time. It was 8.24 A.M. Wow, that really didn’t give me much time to get ready and try and talk clearly with Dylan. I saw the unopened message that sat on my phone from my sister. I couldn’t deal with her again right now, I didn’t have the time. I wanted to be offline this weekend anyway. I had told my other friends that I would be, mostly because I wanted to be as present as possible with Henry, but I also had no idea what this island was going to be like, and the cell service, for that matter.
I had thirty-six minutes, I could do this. I jumped out of bed, downing the rest of my coffee as I tiptoed naked over to the bathroom. I threw my body into the shower, smiling at the two empty cocktail glasses that still sat at the end of the bath. Memories from last night ran through my head, and I thought of the way he had cut me, then sucked me, lifting me up onto the edge of the bath, his hot breath in between my legs,his tongue pressed against me. My hand ran down in between my thighs as I replayed the images. Quickly, I snapped myself out of it, turning the water to cold for a single second before turning it off. I didn’t have time for that. I shook my head out of the thoughts again as a grabbed a towel. I did not have time for that at all, and as much as I wanted it, I knew that an even better release would be happening later today.
I let myself into the wardrobe, gasping again as the door opened. I don’t think that I would ever get used to the feeling of seeing this. Walking slowly across the shelves. I wondered what would be the most appropriate outfit for a day out on the boat. And by boat, Henry meant the most luxurious yacht that I had ever seen.
“What are you going to wear?” the familiar voice echoed around me, making me jump.
Ruth. Shit, with everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, I had completely forgotten about her. Which made me wonder, was she always here? Or did she somehow have an off button? Had she been watching everything? Had she literally been lying dormant watching everything that we got up to last night? Was she somehow watching over me in the very moment I came? A part of that felt so wrong, but as I shook my head out of the thought, I couldn’t help how a part of it also felt like such a turn on. I loved the idea of someone watching me. Henry was right, that alongside the anticipation were my exact fetishes.
“I don’t know,” I sighed, “I’ll pick some swimmers out obviously. But maybe you could help me out with the exact vibe of the day, or the boat for that matter.” I still didn’t know why I was saying boat like Henry.
Ruth appeared in her perfect vision next to me, “Well, you’re talking to the right person, because the boat is my favorite place on this whole island,” she sighed. “Well, at least it was.”
