“What are you saying?” Dorian’s face hardens with apprehension.
Sibyl walks around the island and puts her hand over his. “I’m leaving.”
“The fuck,” he says quietly.
“I have to. It’s best for me. I can’t be hanging around in some gorgeous white man’s shadow all my life. I got things to do.”
I want to stand up and cheer for her. But I stay put, because this moment is not about me.
Dorian steps back, pulling his hand away from hers. He clears his throat. “Go, then. I’ll give you six months’ severance pay. Good luck.”
“You’ll have to find another manager for your security and socials. I’ve made a list of recs.”
He gives her a single nod. “Kind of you.”
“And you listen to Baz, okay? She’s got a good head on those skinny-ass shoulders.” She throws me a wink, and I grin back.
“You’re a pair, the two of you,” Dorian says hoarsely. “Thinking you can boss me around.”
“You have Lloyd for that,” Sibyl replies dryly. “Take my advice—listen to that bastard less. You’re a smart man, Dorian Gray, and a better one than you think. Don’t screw this up, you hear me? Or I’m gonna have to come back and teach your ass a lesson you won’t like.”
“Are we talking spanking or pegging?”
She smacks his arm lightly. “I mean it. I will beat you.”
“Promises, promises,” he murmurs with a faint smile.
Sibyl heads for Vane’s room, and I come over to the island again, standing across from Dorian.
“You said people don’t see past your prettiness to the real you,” I tell him. “But she does.”
“She does,” he admits.
“You care about her.”
“I suppose I do, as a friend.”
“You suppose you do?” I roll my eyes, exasperated. “You have the emotional insight of a gnat.”
He slams down his bottle of water. “It’s not that I can’t care about these people, Baz. It’s that I know I’ll have to separate myself from them sooner or later, when a decade has passed and I still look the same. I’ve left or outlived more friends and acquaintances than I can count. If I refuse to care about too many people, it’s out of self-preservation, so the pain when I lose them won’t be as great.”
I knew that, of course. But the way he’s saying it, the emotion in his voice—it strikes home, and Ihurtfor him. It thrills me, too, because once again, he let me in. Once again, he’s allowing himself to be angry and sad and wild, and it’s so good for him. He’s becoming more human because of me.
“I still have to experience those feelings before I can push them away,” he says curtly. “Shoving them into the portrait isn’t a perfect system. When I truly care about someone and I lose them, the pain wells up again and again, so I have to push it away over and over. I hate it. So instead, I’ve trained myself to care only a little, for a very few people.” He rounds the island with sharp, quick steps. “Let’s go. Maybe you’ll understand once we pay a visit to the place I want to show you.”
24
Baz
When Dorian pulls into the parking lot of Cedar Grove Retirement Home, I groan. “Seriously?”
“You want me to age like everyone else,” he says curtly. “I think you should take a long, hard look at what you’re asking of me.”
“Do you know someone here?”
“Yes. Two people, actually. I lived in Charleston for a while back in the 1950s, and I met them both around then. Haven’t seen them in decades, though.”
“But you kept track of them. Why?”
