The Devil’s Pawn (26 page)

“What’s changed?”

He watches me, saying nothing. He’s debating his words, or perhaps building the courage to speak them, but after many long seconds of silence, he responds, “The last month has been … awful. I think my sister was ready to ship me back to New York, and quite frankly, I’m not certain she wouldn’t have tracked you down herself if you hadn’t shown up today.” He’s smiling gently now. “I’ve been miserable away from you. And oddly, my sister said nearly the same thing you said to me. If I love you, it’s my job to give you everything I want for you, and not let the guilt I feel for how I’ve failed you get in the way of doing that … and I do love you. She called me a chickenshit for leaving you.” Now he’s smirking, but his eyes are gentle and honest. He watches me intently for many more seconds. It’s apparent he’s not yet finished speaking, and I hold my tongue, wanting nothing, including my mouth, to stand in the way of his words. “I’m glad you came today. It forced me to see that you were okay. I’ve imagined for so long that I’d destroyed you by the things you were forced to endure at Trimbles. And, I think I needed to see that you came out of all of it okay. Hurt, sad, upset, maybe even heartbroken, but not
broken
. I needed to see that. You’re still intact … at least proverbially.” He finishes with another smirk.

With my mind set at ease, and my future locked securely to his, I relax, and so does he. Rain is starting to fall gently outside, and Derek rises from the bed and walks to the sliding wall of windows, pulling them wide open. The scent of rain and earth filter in. I’m given the most amazing view of his backside as he stands watching the rain. He’s so beautiful. Lean and tight. His bottom begs to be touched and caressed. I want to massage every muscle I can see. He turns and catches me staring at his backside, and comments with a wry grin, “Watcha thinking about?”

“That your bottom is just as impressive as the rest of you.” I smile sweetly.

“Impressive, huh? I could say the same of you.”

He returns to bed, and I get what I want. I touch the firm cheeks of his bottom as he lies on his stomach watching me. I caress the strong, tight muscles, and move my hands over the backs of his thighs and back up to his bottom. As I trail my fingers up the cleft between his cheeks, his muscles jump and flinch instantly before he relaxes once again with a chuckle. When I’ve finally had my fill of his backside, he pulls my body back down to his, and we stay there in one another’s arms.

Derek leaves me only long enough to call Morgan to set dinner plans for the next night and reassure her that, yes, I’m still here, and, no, I’m not going anywhere.

She apparently doesn’t believe him, and as he approaches me with his phone in his outstretched hand, he comments with an exasperated note to his voice, “She wants to talk to you.”

I spend the next couple of minutes speaking to Derek’s sister, and by the time I hang up, I’m convinced we will definitely be friends. She’s coming for coffee the next morning, and as she ends the conversation, it is with one final stirring comment. “We have so much to talk about, Ashton. You deserve answers, and I promise I’ll give them to you.”

As I disconnect and hand Derek the phone, he watches me cautiously. I’m sure I look dumbfounded. I am dumbfounded. He continues to study me, but he finally sits nervously on the side of the bed by my side.

“She says I deserve answers… What does she mean?” And I look to him with questions wrinkling my brow.

He’s nervous but resigned. “It involves Morgan too much for me not to let her tell you herself. But I promise you, no more secrets. You will know everything you want to know about me.” And I know he’s telling me the truth. I trust him. Whatever his secrets are, they have never been meant to hurt me, only to protect me, however impossible that might have been.

After I call Liz to invite her and Frederick to dinner the next night, we finally settle back in to spend nothing but time together until the next morning.

Chapter 29

“I’m so sorry, Ashton. This is my fault. All of it.” She’s beautiful even with tears in her eyes. Morgan has the same dark and intense gaze as Derek, but she is not in the least bit intimidating.

When Morgan arrived an hour ago, we settled outside on the expansive deck with our coffee, and by the time we’d finished our first cup, I’d discovered I’d been right on the money with Morgan. I will definitely like her. She is an elementary school counselor in nearby Burlington. Her husband, Charles, whom I will meet at dinner this evening, is a lawyer. It is clear she adores her husband as much as I adore Derek. The way she keeps looking between Derek and me, regarding our interaction with a small smile on her face while we sip our coffee, is precious to see. She truly enjoys seeing us together, and it puts me instantly at ease with her.

But as we start in on our second cup, and she suddenly apologizes for some reason I can’t begin to fathom, she has me at a complete loss. What could this woman possibly have to apologize to me for? I’m shaking my head, wanting to assure her there’s no reason to be upset. I’m finally happy, complete for the first time in so many long weeks, but she is in pain. It makes no sense, but as I try to reassure her, she stills me with a hand on mine. She needs to be heard, and I know the mystery I’ve waited to unravel for so long is at a near end.

“I was just so young and stupid.” She smiles through her tears at the long-past memories. “You have to understand, Ashton, Derek and I come from a very influential and wealthy family. They’re good people, moral people, but there were … expectations, so many expectations.”

I look to Derek, and he reaches a hand to mine but says nothing. He’s intent on giving Morgan this time.

“When I told them I wanted to go into social work, they … hmmm … let’s just say they freaked out. They’d always thought I’d be a doctor, lawyer, even an architect like Derek, but social work just wasn’t what they had in mind.”

I can imagine them both—young, beautiful, smart, and capable, having the weight of the world on their shoulders from a family that expected far more from them than any parent should. But how does it relate to Trimbles? Moreover, how does it relate to me?

“I, on the other hand, was no Derek. Even at twenty-five, Derek was determined, and already successful and popular at his firm in New York. He fit our parents’ mold without ever having to try.”

I look to him with wonder in my eyes. My Derek fit the mold? The once dark and terrifying ruler of my universe wasn’t always the rogue?

Morgan continues. “I was impetuous and quick to strike out at them. I might have been a bit brash in my younger years…” She trails off again with a resigned shake of her head. “Don’t get me wrong. My pursuits were noble enough, and my interest in social work was valid and true, but I didn’t always handle my family in the best way. Which is to say, we fought … constantly. Stubborn as ever, I left, or fled from them more like it. I was cut off; I had nothing until my twenty-third birthday when my inheritance would be paid out, and I had never worked a day in my life. I had already been accepted to NYU, and while Derek was happy to let me crash with him when I arrived in New York, I was just as good at fighting with him as I was with my parents. And that’s when I met Mr. Grayson.”

Her face registers the same pain we all share. She knows him, and little more needs to be said in explanation to me.

“I was waitressing at some nightclub, and he introduced himself to me. He was wealthy and tipped me more money than I had seen in a month. I took the bait…”

The lump she swallows over is painful to see. I know those memories. I know the resignation of self that she went through. My eyes tear as I see her shame. I know her shame. She is me. She didn’t belong there anymore than I, anymore than Derek.

“But as you well know, Mr. Grayson is a conniving, despicable man. Once he realized who I was, he saw a paycheck, and I don’t mean the money I could bring in to Trimbles by escorting. He videotaped me without my knowing and used the tape to blackmail me … or try to at any rate. He wanted a million dollars to keep those tapes from surfacing and destroying my father, mother, myself, everyone I knew. They were all at risk. A million seems like a drop in the bucket now, but at that time, I didn’t have it. He didn’t realize I couldn’t come up with that kind of money. Not at nineteen. But Derek could. He had already come into his inheritance. But the problem was that Derek expected to know what the money was for if he was going to hand it over, and I couldn’t tell him … I was too ashamed, too humiliated.” Her tears are falling swiftly now, and so are mine. The helplessness is so familiar to me.

“I fled. I didn’t know what else to do. I left NYU, moved to Burlington, spent the next two years in community college, worrying and waiting every day for those videos to surface. Every day was torture. I was suspicious all the time. I felt like I was waiting for a bomb to go off. But with every passing day, month, year, the paranoia faded; it certainly didn’t go away, but it did fade. Still, it took its toll on me.”

I’m watching, barely making a sound as I enter her world. Morgan and I have so much more in common than I could ever have guessed when I met her on Derek’s porch. The first time I saw her, I was intimidated, instantly. She was beautiful, and everything I thought I wasn’t, but with every passing moment, I can see that she is everything I am—threatened, blackmailed, terrified, and desperate.

“I withdrew from everything and everybody, including Derek. It took two years for me to find out what I should have figured out right away: that Derek was working at Trimbles. It was my parents who told me. They were livid, and I was stunned. When I spoke to him next, he refused to talk about it. It seemed too coincidental he was working there after I was. But at the same time, I didn’t know he’d found out about my time there … so, I couldn’t connect it together. I also couldn’t tell him what had happened to me there. Every time I asked why he would ever take a job there, he assured me he was there of his choosing. But I knew Derek, and I couldn’t understand how he would give up everything. I couldn’t recognize it at the time, but that place was already killing him. He was short, angry every time I spoke to him, never wanted to talk to me; he was shutting down little by little. But rather than worry about him the way I should have, I justified his behavior as though it were the cause of him being there and not a symptom of his time there. I was grasping for answers about why he was there, and I didn’t see that this shift within him wasn’t the reason but the result. I mean Derek’s an amazing architect. He was passionate about his work, and he was so gifted. It made no sense. Why he would walk away from it all? But, I just couldn’t get him to talk to me.”

“I couldn’t talk to you.” Morgan and I both look to Derek as he speaks. His brow is furrowed, and he’s deep in thought, and then he turns to me. He’s finally ready to talk. “When I tracked her down to Trimbles, I met Mr. Grayson for the first time. It didn’t go over well, and once I saw his … ammunition against Morgan, I lost my temper. He ended up with his jaw wired shut for six weeks, and I ended up creating the biggest enemy of my life. He wanted money, and now, thanks to me, he wanted revenge. And he got it … everything he wanted.”

His eyes slowly meet mine as I watch him, with my sadness for him undoubtedly showing on my face. He sees it and reaches a hand up to brush away my tears.

“Our mother was sick. She had been diagnosed with lymphoma and was going through chemotherapy … and the threat to my parents and to Morgan … I didn’t know what else to do. I gave him the money, and I stayed. I destroyed my career and agreed to take Morgan’s place at Trimbles for ten years. He’s a vindictive bastard, and I’ve spent every day of the last seven years wondering, dreading what form of torture would come next. I was free labor, and free entertainment for his twisted soul. He watched as my life was flushed down the drain, my career was destroyed, my family rejected me, and every relationship that ever meant anything to me fell apart. And he knew I couldn’t do anything about it. He could pull out that damn video and threaten to destroy Morgan and my parents whenever he pleased, and he did. He destroyed me.”

His eyes are begging me to understand, and of course, I do. Call us the trio of unlucky souls. How could I not understand?

“And then you showed up.” He takes a deep and steadying breath before he goes on. “I knew the moment I saw you that you would be the end of me. You were too vulnerable for that place, and it terrified me. I wanted you gone because I knew I would care, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to bear it.” Taking both of my hands in his, he continues. “I promise you, I never hated you. From the first moment I met you, all I wanted was to set you free from him. You were this living symbol of everything he had taken away from me already. You were Morgan, my family, my career, everything I loved and saw destroyed, hell, my own damn reputation. And I wanted to save you. Though hopeless and impossible, it became the only thing I wanted.” His eyes are begging me to understand, and he’s so terrified I won’t.

“But that night at Grayson’s, when he made it clear you were going to be part of his sick little deal, and he would destroy Morgan if I tried to buy your way out of Trimbles…” His head is shaking at the memory, and Grayson’s words from my hazy memory of that night pop into my head.
She’s not going anywhere unless you want to see our deal broken.
I’m heartbroken for Derek. Grayson has tortured him for seven years, and used me as his greatest leverage against him.

“After that, I didn’t know what to do. That was one of the darkest moments of my life. I still thought if I could protect you in that place, keep you safe during your time there, then maybe, I could eventually set us both free.” His eyes are glossed over with tears that are so perfectly restrained by his beautiful eyes.

“Then you were taken from me. I thought I’d lost you, and lost my last chance at salvation. After that, there was no other choice but to choose you completely. I gave up trying to protect my family, and after seven years, I told Grayson to go fuck himself. Might have been the most reckless thing I’ve ever done in my life, but I had allowed it to go on for too long. I loved you too much. I’m just sorry I waited as long as I did.”