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“Mmhm.” I grunted curtly. “You are very good at what you do, I have to admit.”
He missed the accusation beneath my comment, just offering me the crook of his arm. “Happy that you’re finally giving me my due.”
My nostrils flared as I accepted his arm, tugging on my braid as he guided us toward the dock.
I put my jealous pangs on hold, rewinding. The dock. The salt of the water and the fact that we were going through a private access gate, toward boats I used to watch from the bench when I got a free afternoon, wondering what it would be like to see the city from the water.
I had a feeling I was about to get my wish.
We passed by modest watercraft, gleaming and bobbing on the water and I realized that my date didn’t do anything small. This was the same man who didn’t mention that he owned the restaurant he’d invited me to. Who probably just drove that motorcycle every now and then, and had a garage filled with countless other cars for every recreational purpose one could think of. Enough to drive a different one every day of the week if he wanted.
The kind of man who probably owned a yacht.
All the other women he’d brought here had probably started squealing right about now. I was determined to not do what he expected. To not be the latest pit stop on his way to greener pastures.
The dock was lined with string lights and we passed through a second gate and the boats, gleaming and expansive, told me we’d reached the creme da la creme section.
He paused, pointing at a massive thing that looked like something out of a music video. Like something out of someone else’s life, because there was no way that I was here with him.
“That’s Delilah,” he mused.
I was busy trying to not freak out. To not wonder if he named it after one of his former conquests.
“I think it’s high time you two met,” Jason finished with a toothy grin.
My excitement waned, like air escaping from a balloon. I couldn’t take this ugliness, these questions, any further. “I’m sure she’ll forget me,” I said with a nonchalant shrug, referring to his inanimate, exorbitant object. If Delilah’s walls could talk... “Like she’s forgotten all the other women that you’ve brought onboard.”
Jason unhooked his arm, stepping in front of me, obscuring my view of a life and experiences that I’d only ever seen in movies. Read about in books. Or glimpsed in tabloids while I was waiting at the grocery checkout lane.
He didn’t ignore my statement, or laugh it off like I was expecting. His face was unreadable, the shadow cast by the string lights showing me more than I was supposed to see.
I saw nerves.
Something that should have been a foreign concept for a man who plowed through women like a runaway freight train.
“No other woman has been onboard,” he said intently. “Not like this.”
My jaw dropped in disbelief. I almost scoffed, but instead I just whispered, “Why?”
Some brutal war waged in his eyes, and the confidence that he wore well seemed to slip and I got a peek at something else. A peek at surrender.
“Because I think I was waiting for you, Natalee.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: JASON
“I know this may be difficult for you, Sienna, but try and contain the urge to talk about...” Dad’s impassive face flashed with the elephant we all refused to admit was stomping around the room. “The thing.”
I balled my fists in the pockets of the khakis I hated and chewed my gum until I tasted teeth. It was a quick walk from the security gate to my grandparents boat, but considering we’d just wrapped up the longest half hour drive of my life as my parents played ‘Whose Fault Is It Really That There’s A Thing, Anyway?’, I had a feeling I was in for round 2.
I wanted to leave them both in my dust, leave all of this behind, but if I got the lead out and stormed off in a huff, they’d argue about that, too.
“Ken,” Mom growled, her heels clicking like bullets falling into the chamber. “I have a mother. We’ll see her in a few moments, in fact. And if I wanted a tutorial on public decorum and protocol when your seventeen year old son knocks up-”
“Don’t be crude!” Dad growled, bringing the train to a screeching halt as he whirled to face us. We all looked utterly ridiculous in our white and khaki ensembles. The crisp couture of people with too much money and too many rules. But Dad was the worst of the bunch. A bleached white polo stretched over his massive chest and an argyle sweater was draped over his linebacker shoulders. But in this moment, even though he looked like a joke, there was no hint of humor in his voice. In the way he glared at us both like we were on the football field—and on the opposing team. “We will not speak of this problem. It is being handled. And it is in the past.”
The minute he turned around, Mom was back at it, her words slicing like a thousand tiny paper cuts. “That seems like your approach to a myriad of things, sweetheart.”
There was no love or affection behind the term of endearment. I was no fan of that kind of shit myself, but my stomach still churned at the realization that I couldn’t remember a moment where my parents ever seemed happy. They merely tolerated each other, and lately, they barely seemed capable of that.
