Oh, he still looked good. His white polo shirt fit snug to his body, and his dark jeans wrapped well around his legs. I could still imagine how good they made his ass look.
Adrian Vale was understated, but even an understated Adrian looked better than any man I knew.
But if his dress was understated, his facial expression was whatever was below that. His eyes looked haggard, worn, as if they needed sleep yet could do anything but. He wore a smile, but it looked frayed; not in a frightening way, just in the way that a man who had fought to his last ounce of strength did.
“I… did you drive here?”
It was not the first response that Adrian deserved, but I was so shocked to see his car the entire length of the state from home that I couldn’t help but blurt it out. Thankfully, Adrian took the response in stride, chuckled, and drew in a long breath.
“No, no, I did not,” he said. “I suppose the perk of having money is if you want something accomplished, you can get it done. I flew here and arranged to have my car brought.”
I nodded and waited for whatever came next. Admittedly, a large part of me was wondering if that charming King of Diamonds might appear. I was kind of happy to see him, but as the shock of his presence subsided, the alert side of me reared its loud mouth.Do not trust appearances. Be wary of manipulation.
“Now then, Delilah, before I continue,” he said, clearing his throat, “I want you to know that everything I say is the truth and only the truth itself. There is no hidden agenda beyond what I say, and if you think I have not said everything, just have patience. I will. But I am only going to do this if you will hear me out. If your career has taken full priority, I will respect that. If you have found someone else… so will I.”
His eyes flared at that last line, but he kept his voice steady.
“So, with that said, will you hear me out?”
He stepped forward and offered his hand, as if making a handshake. Nothing but the truth and only the truth itself?And if you think I have not said everything, just have patience.If I shook his hand, in other words, I would get everything.
I took it. It was electric, almost unbearably so. All the sensations that had come back to me at Adrian’s, at Aces Up, even in our office confrontation came roaring to the forefront of my mind, and it became nearly impossible not to melt before him. I found the facade of my composure, but his touch was going to complicate things.
I withdrew my hand at what felt like a steady pace, but who the hell knew what was actually normal right now.
“Something I have come to realize with the delivery of that letter was that my instincts have always depended on being the King of Diamonds,” he said. “Power. Money. Love. They all derived from a sense of creating pressure, of creating heat to make the diamond in the rough I wanted. Even after you told me to walk away, even when you in fact walked away to this city, I still ended up deferring to it. What does that mean?”
I could see Adrian’s face in full, but the darkness shrouded some of the nuances that I wish I could have picked up. I only caught glimpses of his eyes, for example, and though every time I saw them they seemed sincere, I couldn’t quite get the full picture.
Which meant I was reliant on his speech to get everything.
And so far…
“It means that I must accept that side of me will always be there,” Adrian said. “It would be foolish to fight my dark side, just as it would be foolish for you to fight your job or your passion for knowledge. Maybe my darkness comes from Virgil. Maybe it comes from my older brother. Maybe it comes fromsome other combination of factors. Frankly, I don’t give a fuck. But.”
He took a step forward. Not quite close enough to pull me in yet for a passionate kiss, but close enough he could have comfortably put his hands on my shoulders.
“I must also accept the lighter side of me, the good in me that you helped me find,” he said, widening my eyes. “You stripped me bare and showed me that the most defining part of me was also a significant weakness when it came to romance. This car? That note? The casinos? They might have been outcomes of prior successes, but romance isn’t something you can buy or manipulate your way toward. If you do, it’s not romance. Only through honesty and vulnerability, something I could never show growing the business or handling the Morrils, could I do that. Only by stripping away everything on the exterior and showing you nothing but who I am at the core could something like this work. This was challenging for me to learn, but I’m doing the work.”
He took another step forward. Now he was close enough to lean and kiss. Not once did I take a step back.
Not in the face of this level of honesty.
“If you are looking for a promise that I will be perfect, Delilah, tell me to fuck off and I’ll go right back to Vegas tonight,” he said. “If you are looking for a promise to throw away the King of Diamonds, to discard my empire, to become a pauper with you in a small apartment, I cannot do that. Not because I value money over you or anything stupid like that. But because just as I need you to see that I do have good in me, I must not suppress the dark too much. I have to let it out in safe environments. With people I care about.”
In bed. When our vulnerability and fully exposed selves aren’t emotional, but physical.The thought in just about any other context would have been incredibly arousing. This wasmore of a creep than an immediate flush of eroticism, but it had planted the seed.
“But if you are looking for a promise that I will try to remember who I am with you and who I am with the world, if you are looking for a promise that I will not be the King of Diamonds with you, but only Adrian Vale, then that? That, I can and I will promise. So… make your choice, Delilah.”
My choice?
My initial reaction was to melt back into his touch. The honesty was something that Adrian could not have realized even two weeks ago, because it was a level of self-awareness he hadn’t possessed before. True, the more controlling, hungry side of me might have wanted Adrian to forever drop the King of Diamonds facade, but he was right. Trying to get rid of it would only make it rear its ugly head later. For him to realize this suggested a level of maturation beyond anything he’d shown before, even in the letter.
But…
Can he truly change? Even if he realizes what he must do? Is this yet another manipulation?
I had to ask. It was the only way.
