Live for Me (13 page)

“It’s crazy, that’s what it is.” Cat shook her head. “I don’t know about this.”

“Having money isn’t a crime.” A glance over at the register showed Devin checking his phone while he waited for our drinks. It didn’t escape my attention that he hadn’t asked me what I wanted. I was curious if he’d get it right though.

“The way you’re looking at him…”

I looked back at Cat. She was frowning, her brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“You’re in love with him. Oh, my God.”

I was. I knew I was. I had been falling in love with him gradually since the second I’d met him. But it wasn’t relevant. Not yet. “So? That doesn’t change anything.”

“Be careful,” she whispered urgently.

Shrugging, I told her, “I know what I’m doing.”

Devin pulled out the chair next to me and settled his long legs under the table. He handed me a cup with a smile. “Your caramel latte.”

“Thank you.” He’d gotten it right. He had noticed what I tended to make for myself with the Keurig at home. At Richfield. At his house. God. I was thinking of his house as my home.

Cat was right. I needed to be careful.

But he was so beautiful. So commanding. So intelligent.

I wondered if my face showed everything I was feeling.

Maybe I wanted it to. Maybe I wanted to nudge him past what he’d started in his studio.

It must have shown something because Devin’s smile evaporated. He reached out and tucked my hair behind my ear. Still looking at me, he said, “You don’t mind if I steal Tiffany for Christmas, do you?”

With major effort, I tore my gaze from his to look at my friends.

Cat looked horrified. Heath looked puzzled.

I knew exactly how they were feeling. They were my feelings too.

Devin chatted casually with my friends, asking Heath about his fishing boat, and Cat about her plans after college graduation. He didn’t name drop or talk about the city. He shared how he’d spent summers in Maine with his grandparents, and that’s why he’d decided to buy a house there as an adult. He wanted the same idyllic summer nights.

While he spoke, his hand drifted over to my knee, resting there on my jeans. He shifted his chair closer, spread his leg so it was touching mine, his body warm and hard through our respective denim pants. His fingers stroked my kneecap, then gradually began an ascent up my leg, my thigh, caressing the whole way, casually, intimately. It was normal for him to touch me, but not in public, and never quite as absently as he was. Like he was doing it without thinking. I didn’t get the feeling it was sexual in that he wanted to turn me on or get me off, though the first he was, and the second he might. It was more that he felt comfortable with me to the point it was natural.

A guy my age would have taken it too far. He would have stroked right up to the seam of my jeans below the zipper, or shifted my own hand onto his erection under the table. Devin didn’t do that. When he was perilously close to inappropriate, he retreated, giving my knee a final squeeze before removing his hand.

“Too bad I’m never here in the summer,” he said with a shrug and changed the subject to the possibility of a blizzard in the next few days.

I hardly spoke. I just listened and watched and felt.

If we were in a play, Devin was the director and I was the chorus girl. But at least I had a part.

Later on the drive back to Devin’s house, I got a text from Cat.

I’m not ok with this. He’s a Chester the Molester.

It blindsided me. Wow. She wasn’t holding back. I answered with a curt, “Why?”

You say all the time you look young. He’s too old for his interest to be anything but creeper.

What hurt was I knew she was right in that I looked young. But I also knew that Devin wasn’t attracted to me because of my appearance. He liked my mind, the way I stood up to him. The fact that when I spoke I didn’t ramble endlessly about stupid shit. It was complicated. Attraction wasn’t just about big tits.

She hadn’t been there with us for the last few weeks. She hadn’t heard the things he’d said to me.

Angry with her for throwing that out in a text, regardless of how worried about me she was, I didn’t answer.

“Is everything okay?” Devin asked, pulling into the driveway at Richfield.

It was snowing and he took the turn too fast so that we fishtailed a bit. It was ridiculous to drive a sports car in Maine in December and he knew it. He’d been talking about buying an SUV in town and putting the Lamborghini in the garage for the rest of the winter. Almost like he intended to stay.

For some reason he refused to drive the truck that already sat in his garage. I wondered if it had something to do with Kadence.

I nodded in response to his question. “Just got a reminder that I’m on my own. That I’m alone.” I didn’t usually give in to feeling sorry for myself, but Cat’s texts felt like a betrayal.

His hand stroked over my knee. “You’re not alone. You have me.”

Devin’s words made me angry. He didn’t understand what it did to me. To him, it was a casual platitude. He meant it, I knew he did. In a way that someone did who has a ton of friends, family, wealth, privilege. He never had to be alone. Not truly and earnestly.

For me, it was a harsh reality. I was well and truly alone.

If I died tomorrow, maybe five people would show up at my funeral.

That wasn’t self-pity, that was reality. I had been quiet in school, and unable to participate in extracurricular activities. My hope was that I could go to nursing school as planned, reach out and help people the way isolated foster parents had for me over the years. To be kind in a world where there was so little kindness. I had no lofty goals or expectations of wealth, travel, even love. Maybe someday I would find a guy who would get me and could tolerate that I had the Great Wall of China in front of my emotions.

That guy wasn’t Devin, no matter how much I wanted it to be. Whatever love I felt for him, whatever feelings he might have for me, they were transient, temporary.

Ultimately, I was alone.

“Don’t patronize me,” I said, jerking my leg so his hand fell off my knee.

His jaw dropped. “I’m not. I’m telling you that I’m your friend.” He parked the car in the garage and turned to me. “What, you don’t believe me? After everything?”

“I believe that I am, for now.” Not wanting to look at him, I stared out the window at his immaculate three-car garage. Everything was orderly, with a built-in storage system for the tools and equipment no one used. Sometimes it seemed to me like Richfield was a movie set, not a real house. Like at any minute cast and crew would stream in, pull off the sheets, pretend like there was life and vitality happening there, then retreat, leaving it silent and empty again.

“What is going on?” Devin asked, sounding frustrated. “Who texted you?”

But I didn’t bother to answer because sitting on the work bench was that freaky Kadence doll. “Why is that doll in the garage?” I asked, curious and a little unnerved. I hated that doll. It was so… plastic. Sort of like its inspiration. But more to the point, I didn’t understand why Devin would want that thing around.

“What? What are you talking about?”

I pointed. “That doll that was on your bed.”

When I looked over at him, Devin was peering around me into the depths of the garage. “I don’t see anything,” he said flatly. “And I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t have a doll on my bed.”

“You don’t?” That was weird.

“No. Why would I have a doll? That is not something I would choose to collect and it’s a little bizarre that you think I would.” With that, he opened his car door and got out.

I did the same. “That doll,” I said, pointing to it. “It was on your bed.”

Devin came around the car and frowned. “Oh, shit, that thing? I thought my ex-wife took that with her. It was designed to look like her.” He picked it up and turned it over so that the blond hair flopped over her face. “I think it’s hideous and weird, personally.”

“It was on your bed,” I insisted.

“When were you in my room?” he asked.

That wasn’t the relevant part of my statement. “When you weren’t here. Why does that matter?”

But he was smiling, that smug male smile that says he knows you were checking him out. He tossed the doll back down.

“Hey, come here, Tiff.” He held his hand out for me.

I ignored it. “I think you should check the surveillance footage. Someone was in the house.” I shivered at the thought that I hadn’t been alone when Devin was back in New York. That someone had come in to the house without me knowing.

“Okay.” He took my hand and pulled me up against him. “Don’t worry about it. It’s just an ugly doll.”

“There was potentially an intruder.”

“I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry. I don’t want you to ever worry. You’re not alone. I mean that.”

I wasn’t in the mood to listen to reassurances he thought I’d want to hear. So I just moved around him toward the house. “It’s cold out here.”

Going in through the back door, I bent down to greet Amelia. “If you want cookies for Christmas, I’m going to need to go to the store.”

“Are you talking to the dog or to me?” Devin asked.

Smart ass. He sounded as annoyed as I felt.

“Unless the dog can drive I’m talking to you.”

Devin moved past me into the kitchen. “By the way, I have something for you.” He reached into the desk drawer and pulled out an envelope, which had already been opened. “Since you were never going to do it, I ordered your birth certificate for you. Now you can go and legally get your temps.”

“You did?” I admit, I was surprised. I had been ignoring the issue because I still didn’t really see the point in getting my driver’s license. I didn’t even have a car to take the test unless I used Devin’s, which seemed ludicrous.

“Yes. And I thought you said you’re eighteen.”

“I am.”

“According to your birth certificate, you’re actually nineteen.”

Um, that was not what I was expecting him to say. “What? That’s not possible. Someone would have told me at some point. I was in foster care. Those things pop up.”

“Well, apparently they’re all fucking idiots because I can do math and that piece of paper clearly states you’re nineteen.”

Unfolding the birth certificate I’d withdrawn from the envelope I studied all the data on it. He was right. The year was one earlier than my grandmother had always told me. What the hell? It also had something I’d never seen before- my father’s name. Randy Hart.

He had a name. I liked the sound of it. I also liked that my mother had listed him on the birth certificate. Like it mattered. Like he mattered to her.

“Do you feel older and wiser?” he asked.

Just really confused. “But that means I started school a year late. This doesn’t make any sense. I don’t understand how it never came up with me.”

“Maybe you could ask your grandmother about it. Maybe there was a reason.”

“It doesn’t matter, I guess.” Though it felt like it mattered. I’d lost a year of my life without even being aware of it. And again, it felt like other people had controlled me, my fate, carelessly and without letting me in on it. “But it feels very weird. That means I only get to be nineteen for a few months.”

“You’re almost twenty.” Devin sounded pleased by that fact. Like it relieved him of a certain burden of perversion.

That might be the only positive. It might encourage him to move a little faster with what we’d started. “Are you sure this is valid?”

“Of course.” He kicked his shoes off by Amelia’s dog bed, peeled off his jacket, and went to the refrigerator. “I want some wine and a fire in the fireplace. You want anything?”

I shook my head.

“I feel like I should have gotten you a Christmas tree since I’m stealing you from your friends.”

That would have been nice, I had to admit. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve only had a tree twice when I was with foster families.”

“You say it doesn’t matter a lot,” he told me, head still buried in the shelves, looking for what I had no idea. He emerged with a block of Brie cheese. “I don’t believe you.”

“It is what it is. I’m not bitter.”

“I know you’re not. Which is one of the reasons I find you so amazing.”

The doorbell rang. Damn it. Lousy, shitty timing. “I’ll get it.”

Devin let me, which surprised me. Usually he followed me when I went and did something. He was like a little kid or a dog that way- he didn’t like to be left alone in rooms.

When I opened the front door, all I saw was greenery and a guy with a knit hat on his head. “Where should we put it?” he asked.

“Put what?” I asked stupidly.

“The tree.”

“What tree?” Even though I could clearly see he was holding a Christmas tree in his hand.

“This tree. Look, this is Mr. Gold’s house, right?”

“Yes.” Realizing that Devin had been messing with me, that he had clearly ordered a Christmas tree, I opened the door wider and stepped back. “Sorry, come in. Devin,” I called. “Where do you want the tree?”

He appeared in the foyer, looking pleased with himself. “By the fireplace, in front of the window.” He gestured to his right for the guy.

A woman followed the man, carrying three plastic containers piled high in her arms. I raised an eyebrow at Devin.

“Ornaments,” he said, like it should have been obvious.

“Right.” I couldn’t help but smile. He could be very thoughtful when he wanted to be. Even if he liked to tease.

“They’re going to light the tree and decorate it for us.”

And with that, the joy and sweetness of his surprise evaporated. “What? Oh, hell no. We’re decorating it.” Was he for real? “Get your hands dirty, G Daddy.”

He made a face at me. “It will look better if someone else does it.”

“And why do we care what it looks like if we’re the only ones here? It’s supposed to be special, not to sit as a perfect display. I’ve never gotten to decorate a tree.” I wasn’t going to stand there and watch someone get paid to do it. So weird.

Though probably no weirder than my role in Devin’s life.

“Fine.” He looked uncertain about the whole thing, but he helped the woman set the boxes down on the floor as the man put the tree into a stand.