Locked (PresLocke Series Book 2) (25 page)

“Oh, sorry,” I said. “I thought you were someone else. Can I help you?”

The woman’s lips curved into a sad smile. “You don’t recognize me?”

The words
should I?
were on the tip of my tongue, but I stopped short when I saw the way her eyes, the same sea-green shade as mine, gave me a once-over. My hand went to the doorframe as I looked at her again. Light brown hair, the same shade as mine, and instead of the thick makeup and red lipstick that used to cake her face, she hardly wore anything now at all.
 

“Holy shit,” I breathed, as I realized who the woman standing in front of me was. The one I’d escaped all those years ago. The same one who’d used me for money, who’d been verbally abusive, and who’d thrown me into the lion’s den with a man three times my age just to pay her rent.
 

Brenda beamed. “You’re so much taller than I remember, Dylan.”

I gripped the door beneath my hand to stop it from shaking as I stared at the smiling face tipped up at me.
God…it can’t be.
But as I stood there paralyzed, it was as if I was transported back to that old, grungy living room, with the orange couch and stale air.

“Aren’t you going to invite your mom inside?”

I was pretty sure the words
fuck no
were on the tip of my tongue, but I’d be damned if I could work out how to get them out. Visions of my childhood with
this
woman were long buried under a shitload of hurt, denial, and self-loathing, and it had taken years to banish the memories that, until recently, I’d forgotten were lurking inside of me. But they were there. They did exist. And so did she.
 

As she took a step forward, I came back to myself, to my current situation, and I blinked her into focus and straightened off the door, blocking her progress. “How did you find me?” I had to know. There was no way Sunshine or Ziggy would’ve told her, so that only left—

“Why, the TV, of course. You’ve become somewhat of a celebrity these days. Every time I turn on the tube, there you are. And your apartment.”

My stomach knotted, and then dropped like a bowling ball into my gut as I white-knuckled the wood. I gulped in a much-needed breath of air and felt it get stuck when it hit the huge lump in the back of my throat.
This can’t be happening,
I thought, but no matter how many times I blinked, each time I refocused she was still there.
 

“Can’t we talk inside?” she asked. “I just want to—”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. If I could’ve screamed
no, no, no,
then I would’ve. But that one
no
had been a stretch in my current state. Anything else would’ve been monufuckingmental.

“Son, please. I just want to talk to you. I’ve changed—”

“
Don’t
call me that,” I said. The smile on her face dropped then as she reached for my arm, and I stumbled back, hitting the door in my haste. “You need to leave.”

“Dylan—”

“
Leave
. I don’t want to see you,” I forced out as I took another step back to grip the door handle, and as I began to shut it, I added, “Ever.”

Her face vanished in the sliver of the opening provided by the door, and then it disappeared as it slammed shut. I made sure to lock the latches, and then added the chain for good measure, before I turned around, leaned my back to the door, and then slid down it until my ass was on the floor and my knees were pulled up against my chest.

She can’t hurt me,
I thought, as I wrapped my arms around my knees and fought to hold back the tears blurring my eyes.
She’s nothing. She can’t hurt me.
But even as I said the words on repeat in my head, the fact that I was curled up, frozen in place, told me one very hard truth. And that was that I was a fucking liar.
 

22

CRAZY BITCH

AS THE SUN peeked up over the horizon and slipped through the shades I’d drawn the night before, I trailed my eyes along the man lying beside me. With the sheets drawn to his waist, and his head resting on the plush pillow, Dylan looked calm and peaceful as he continued to sleep beside me. A far cry from how he’d arrived on my doorstep the night before. His hair, which had grown back to the familiar longer strands I’d originally known him to have, were tousled where he’d worried it with his fingers all night.
 

God, last night had been difficult. I’d opened my front door to Dylan expecting one thing, and ended up getting a whole boatload of something else. The second his face had come into view, I’d known. Even if I wasn’t as connected with him as I was, seeing the strain on his face, the bloodshot eyes, and the hard set of his jaw would’ve sent up all the red warning signs. And when I’d reached for him, he’d practically collapsed into my arms…
 

“’Bout time you got here, Daydream. I’m starving. For food and…” My words trailed off, and the smile I’d been sporting since Dylan had called to tell me he was back home slipped from my face to be replaced by a severe downturn of my lips. My guy looked as pale as a ghost.
 

“Dylan? What’s wrong?” And it was blatantly obvious that something was wrong. Dylan had his arms hugging his waist, his eyes were glued to his feet, and there were no plastic bags containing the dinner he’d told me to order for us that he would pick up.

No, he was pulling a statue routine, right there on my front stoop. Mute and all.

I took a step forward, out the door, and that was when Dylan finally raised his eyes to mine, and the lost and vacant look inside of them matched the hollow feeling now growing in the pit of my stomach.

Without another word, I opened my arms, and Dylan stepped into them—practically crumpled into them.
 

“Hey,” I whispered, running a soothing palm up his spine to the back of his neck, and when he trembled, I knew I needed to get him inside. “Come with me,” I said, and then shifted to wrap my arm around his shoulders and draw him into the house.

Watching Dylan fall apart in front of me as he told me the story of Brenda showing up on his doorstep was heartbreaking—and it also had me seeing red. The fucking nerve of that woman… How could she possibly think it was okay to approach him like that? To approach him at all? After everything she’d put him through…

Dylan stirred, his brows pinched together, as if he was seeing something he didn’t like. I reached over and, with a light touch, smoothed the wrinkles from his forehead. When his eyes flitted open to focus on me, he gave a small smile.
 

“I like watching you sleep,” I said, running my fingers along his jaw.
 

He gave a low chuckle. “Why? Because I drool?”

“Because you look so peaceful. Almost innocent. The exact opposite of you when your eyes are open.”

“Smartass.”

“Always,” I said, grinning. “And you don’t drool or I’d make you wear a bib to bed.”

“Please tell me that’s not a fantasy of yours.”

“You’re a sick man, Prescott. But I like that about you.” I rested my head in my hand as I trailed my fingers down the scruff on his neck. When they came to a stop over his heart, I said, “I think…that you should stay here for a while.”

Dylan’s half-mast eyes fully opened then, and his forehead scrunched again. “You mean a while as in all day today, or…”

“
Or
several days. In a row. For”—I gave a one-shoulder shrug, trying to act nonchalant about what I was asking—“a while.”

A shy smile crept across Dylan’s lips as he rolled toward me and mirrored my position, elbow bent, head in hand, eyes on mine. “Are you asking me to move in with you?”

I opened my mouth to tell him
yes
, but before the word could get past my lips, he brought a finger up to hush me, and his smile vanished. His eyes turned serious then, as though another thought had just entered his mind, and then he spoke.

“Are you asking because it’s something you want? Or because of what happened with Brenda?”

I reached for his wrist and drew his hand down to the mattress between us, and then I stroked his cheek and lips and said, “I’m asking you because I want to be with you. Morning, noon, night. I’m greedy. I want any spare time you have to be my time.” I rolled to my back, staring up at the eyes focused on me.
 

Yeah
, I probably sounded like a control freak. But that wasn’t what I meant. I didn’t want to be the
only
thing in his life. I just wanted to be in it in some kind of permanent capacity. I wanted to share the good times and the bad with him. “That sounds crazy, I know—”

“No,” he said, scooting across the space between us. I extended my arm on the bedding for him to come closer, and the sheet slipped down the curve of his hip as he molded his naked front to my side, and then laid his cheek on my shoulder. “It sounds like a dream,” he whispered in my ear.

I looked his way, and when that shy smile reappeared, I felt my chest close to burst with love for him. “It does?”

Dylan nibbled his lower lip and nodded, before leaning in to nuzzle into the crook of my neck. “I’m greedy too.”

As he said that, Dylan trailed his fingers across my chest then mimicked my move from earlier, flattening his palm over my heart. “Thank you for last night.”

“I didn’t do—”

“You were there,” he said, and then his lips brushed my cheek. “You listened to me. You held me. And Ace?”

“Yeah?” I asked, turning so our noses touched, and when I saw the glistening remnants of a lone tear on his cheek, I gently kissed his lips and he whispered, “You made me feel safe.”

I rolled him to his back then, and as I hovered over him, I cradled his head between my hands and skimmed my thumbs over his cheeks.
 

I had no doubt as I gazed down at him that I was in as deep as I could be with another person. And as Dylan lay there looking up at me with such trust—which, if I wasn’t out of my mind for him, would have me running for the hills—I took pride in it. I wanted that trust. And the fact that he’d handed it over to me, when I knew it wasn’t something he gave lightly, made what we shared all the more sacred for it.

* * *

A COUPLE OF days later I was sitting in my agent’s office as she showed me the proofs from the Provocateur fragrance photoshoot. Claudia was leaning back in her leather office chair tapping her bottom lip with the end of her reading glasses.

“Sexy, aren’t they?” she asked, as I studied image after image, and she was right. With the waves rolling into the shore, the snapshots of me, Rochelle, and Lorenzo, the two models I’d worked with the other morning, were
extremely
sexy.
 

The images I’d taken with the two of them writhing around in the sand had come out in a stunning display of sensuality at its best. They were a tease of what
could
happen and what
might
have happened while wearing Provocateur.
 

Rochelle was positioned on her back, arched up on her elbows with her head tilted back to expose her throat and chest in her miniscule string bikini while the water rushed to shore, surrounding her feet and ankles. Lorenzo was on her right side dressed only in a pair of faded jeans, just as I had been, and was leaning down over her with his back to the camera, his mouth obviously heading for her chest.
 

And then there was me.

I was on the other side. Stretched out in unsnapped jeans, with my fingers slipped into the band of her bikini bottoms and my eyes directly on the camera. My hair was slicked back, and my face was the only one front and center, my eyes inviting whoever was looking to come join us with our wet jeans and wandering hands. And my pouty, parted lips, which Ace always got a hard-on for, told the customer that what I was doing was just as sinful as they imagined.

“Yeah. It’s sexy, all right,” I said. “Good thing no one knows how cold the water was and just how uncomfortable these shots here, the ones draping ourselves all over the rocks, were.”
 

Claudia sat up straight in her chair and reached for the final shot. “No one cares about that. They care about what you all did after this shot. They care that the perfume she was wearing made two hot men attack her on a beach. And they will all care that someone as sexy as
you
are inviting them to join in.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at that as I pointed out the obvious. “Even if they all know I’m gay?”

“Pshh, please,” she said with a flick of her hand, her eyes sparkling at me. “Probably more so because of it. Wouldn’t surprise me that that was why they cast two men. What woman wouldn’t want to be the object of two men’s affection, as well as—”

“Yeah, yeah Claude. I get it.”

“Exactly,” she said, jabbing the air with her finger, as if she’d just solved the answer to world hunger. “This campaign is going to sell millions of bottles of Provocateur, and they know it. The camera loves you, Dylan, and so did the photographer and Osare who called to tell me they would love a contract with you ASAP to lock in some more dates. What do you think?”

What did I think?
Wow
, was the first thing. The second was that the offer was a stroke to my ego. Osare
was a big company, and for them to want me…it was exciting. But still, I didn’t want to be anyone’s exclusive property, shoot-wise. I didn’t want to have the ability to say no taken away. That was very important to me. Actually, it was one of the original stipulations I’d put firmly in place when I’d entered into the world of modeling way back when. Because if I was going to use my face and body to make cash, then I was going to say who got the privilege to profit from it. That way, if I needed a break or I wasn’t comfortable, I could get the hell out of Dodge. And I wanted to make sure that was still understood.
 

“That’s very flattering, Claudia. But you know how I feel about exclusivity.”

“Yes, but—”

“No,” I said, getting to my feet. “That’s a non-negotiable. I’m good to go on next week’s shoot. Just let me know what time to be there.”