Being with Elizabeth was different from any experience I’d had before. Her lips were entrancing. Her skin, inviting, and the sounds she made letting me know she was enjoying me were something I’d crave forever. I pulled her against my body, pressing my mouth on her pink cheeks. If there was a way I could get even more of her, I would.
“I love you,” I said again.
“It took you a long enough time to say it back,” she teased, and the soft yellow light flickered across her beautiful gray irises.
“You distracted me, woman.”
I kissed her because that was something I was allowed to do now. Her delicate but deft fingers tilted my jaw upward before trailing down my neck and over my shoulders. She kept touching every part of me she could reach. I lifted her up and wrapped a blanket around her before carrying her to the living room, where I set her down on the couch.
“Pancakes?” I asked.
“Yes?” She looked up at me.
I chuckled. “I mean, do you want some pancakes?”
She grinned and nodded but stole a few more kisses before I could leave.
I grabbed the plate of pancakes but then had a thought and detoured to my bedroom. When I returned, she extended her hands and took the plate while I set up the old Atari console I’d brought along.
She gasped, crawling to the floor and wrapping herself around me as I did it. It only meant I had to carry her back to the couch, which she seemed to enjoy, judging from her giggles.
“Where did you even get this?” she squealed, taking the now-faded controller into her hands.
“My mom found it when packing up our old house.” At themention of packing up, the soft carpet turned coarse under my knees. I still had more to do at our old home, and I had to do it this weekend. The pit in my stomach grew.
“I can’t believe you brought this along,” her sweet voice said, a medicine to my bitter thoughts.
“Well, I thought I’d be alone and bored, and the internet sucks.”
“Sorry for intruding.” She bit down on her bottom lip.
I kissed her.
“Pac-Man!” she squealed as we separated.
“You are the woman of my heart,” I said.
Her cheeks flushed even redder than they’d been. “Link?” she said after we’d been playing for a few minutes in what I thought was a comfortable silence. Panic and guilt spread across her features. “There’s still a lot you don’t know about me, and I should have told you everything before we…”
“Before we confessed our undying love for each other and I basically proposed?” I said, hoping to lighten whatever blow was about to knock me over.
She smiled, but it didn’t reach her shiny eyes. “I don’t want to keep a secret from you ever again or break your trust or…”
I curled my arms around her. “You don’t have to tell me everything. If you want, I’ll be here, and if you don’t want… guess what?” I kissed her nose. “I’ll still be here.”
“I don’t want to ruin tonight.”
“Nothing can ruin tonight,” I said.
Her slumped shoulders riddled me with concern, but I knew not to push. So I did what I’d been doing for years. I nudged her. “How about all we do tonight is play this game, and when you’re ready, you can tell me?”
After about an hour, when Lily was more pancake than woman, she mumbled, “My mom got knocked up as a teenager by somerandom guy she’d met at a concert. He disappeared, and she became a single mother, with big dreams of becoming an actress. At some point, she crossed paths with Douglas.” Her nostrils flared, and she ground her teeth. “And I suspect he saw how vulnerable and desperate she was, so he plucked us from obscurity and molded us into the submissive family he needed to complete his near-perfect image.”
I kept my gaze on the little TV screen, where I imagined she wanted it to stay.
“He gave us everything money and fame could buy, but it wasn’t free. My earliest memories of him are good. He loved me, and I loved him. But at some point, I learned that love wasn’t unconditional. In fact, he only loved me when I agreed with him.” She blew out the softest breath. “Two years ago, when I was at my lowest point and Douglas only pushed me lower, my mom encouraged me to leave even though it meant leaving behind the mansion and the money. I’m so grateful she made me do it, but I don’t understand why she stayed.”
Rage seared through my chest, setting everything alight. If Douglas Gordon-Bettencourt ever found me, he’d regret it.
