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I’m the escort.
He’s the boss.
I’m the employee.
But, boy oh boy did I read this one wrong. I feel like an idiot, a naïve, foolish girl. I might be wearing a two thousand dollar dress but honey it’s not all that easy taking the insecure out of the girl who’s been insecure most of her life. Dylan lifts an arm and signals a driver. Regret drills thin, mean holes in my bones.
I replay the last twenty-four hours in my head, desperately searching for the stupid thing I said, the stupid thing I did or didn’t do that would explain his 180, when a truckload of fear and panic broadside me as if being hit by a runaway car.
Blood drains down my arms, a chill descends my spine like I’ve been shot up with Novocain. My fingers turn numb and I wriggle them just to make sure I still can. Crap. What did I screw up? What did I do to cockblock this man?
And suddenly I get it: the gut-chewing feelings bookend the heady ones I experienced twenty-four hours earlier when Dylan secured the lucky charm necklace and his fingers brushed the little hairs on the back of my neck, his touch making my nipples hard. His pride, generosity, and determination soared within me like a shot of courage mixed with premium single malt scotch.
But now all the bad feelings, the horrible ones — the funhouse mirror versions stomp about inside me like mean minions eating me alive.
And then I realize these aren’t my feelings after all.
They’re Dylan McAlister’s.
And I’m having an empathic reaction.
***
6
A Clusterf**k
CLUSTERF**K
My childhood was a clusterfuck. I grew up with a bipolar mom who suffered psychotic splits. When you’re around bipolar people, when you’re around manic-depressive, hypo-manic, whatever the derivative is that is not treated, not controlled with a combination of therapy, treatment, and/or meds, you get schooled in moods that flip on a dime.
I grew up with highs so high my ears popped and lows so low I couldn’t keep track of the times I was buried lower than six feet. Do you know how many days Mom couldn’t get out of bed and it fell on me to get things done? Yeah. Me neither. I lost count. It fell on me to feed my sister. It fell on me to walk Chris the dog for the month we had him until Mom made us return him to the shelter. I made coffee at noon and waved it around next to Mom’s face. “Come on. I know you want this. I made it super strong, just the way you like it. Sit up and it’s all yours.”
“No,” she’d say, not even lifting her head off the pillow. “Go away. Just let me sleep, ’K?” A week later she’d be buying us burgers, shakes, and cotton candy, all of us squealing in delight, stumbling around a Halloween-themed maze in a cornfield.
Emotional rollercoaster.
Emotional funhouse.
Emotional whiplash.
Karma delivered me into this family, bought my ticket, and signed me up for this ride. I prayed I’d get through it, and I did. But survival didn’t come free. I paid with anxiety, over-sensitivity, and empathic reactions. I’ll never forget the feeling of being ripped apart, tossed to the winds, spun here and there like a twig in a tornado. I survived but I was never the same.
Trust me. You’re never the same.
After years of sublimating, kicking away, flat out denying that I could sense others’ feelings within my own body, my empathic ability has returned unbidden and unwanted with a special fury in the form of gorgeous Dylan McAlister. I shiver and I remind myself –
I am not a rickety shed.
I survive when the storm blows through.
But I know, the same way I knew in the car that day when we ran into the Wolfe brothers, that something is crashing, but this time it’s not something – it’s someone.
Dylan McAlister.
His heart is breaking. Whatever horrible, crappy thing is playing out inside him, he’s dealing with it by shutting down. He’s not sharing it with me. Why would he? We only met twenty-four hours ago.
My ride pulls up to the curb of the five-star hotel and Dylan opens the door. “Thank you, Evie. See you again? Soon, I hope.”
