Nights With Parker (24 page)

“How did it go?” she asks immediately. I think she wants things with Riley to work out just as much as I do.

“Well,” I say with a sigh, “I’m talking to you instead of her. How do you think it went?”

“Oh baby, I’m sorry. What are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know, Mom. I don’t know how to get her to listen to me. She ran out of here like she couldn’t stand the thought of being anywhere near me.”

“Can you blame her? You abandoned the poor girl after making her promises.”

“Thank you for that, Mother. I really needed a play by play of what I’ve done to screw up my relationship with Riley,” I say with a roll of my eyes. This isn’t helping.

“Okay, I’m sorry, but Oliver, you have to give her some time. You’ve made your presence known, so let that sink in. Give it a day or two then try again.”

“I don’t know if I can wait,” I tell her honestly because this is driving me crazy.

“You’ve already waited this long. What’s another day or two?”

I can’t argue with that, but it just feels like, with every day that passes by, Riley is slipping further and further away from me. I’m not so sure she hasn’t already. The way that she reacted to seeing me today wasn’t exactly the welcoming I’d hoped for. Deep down, I knew that it wouldn’t go well, but I still had to try.

“All right, Mom,” I concede. “I’ll give her today, but after that, all bets are off.”

***

I must have banged on the fucking front door a full five minutes before Riley finally deemed it necessary to answer it. I gave her yesterday as I promised I would, and now, I’m done waiting. She stands there staring at me as if I’m a stranger, and she has more pressing things to attend to.

“Are you going to let me in?” I ask her with very little patience.

“I hadn’t planned on it. No.”

I glare at her, and she glares right back. I’d forgotten how combative she can be when she really wants to be.

“I have a class to get to. Did you want something?”

“We have to talk.”

“Our time for talking is done. What we need to do is stay away from each other for the greater good of humanity.”

I chuckle, I can’t help it; I’ve missed her smart mouth. “A little dramatic, don’t you think?”

“Not at all,” she responds crossing her arms over her chest.

“There are things to say.”

“I don’t agree—” she begins, but I cut her off.

“I understand that you’re angry, and you have every right to be. I get that, I promise you, but all I’m asking is a chance to explain. That’s all I want from you, and if you want to walk away from me after that, then I’ll let you. But at least I can find peace in knowing you walked away instead of feeling like you needed to run from me.”

“You’ll let me? How thoughtful of you, to give me a choice. Maybe if you’d given me a choice about your abrupt departure six months ago…”

“Please. Give me twenty minutes.”

“Fine. But not right now. I really do have a class.”

I pull out a card with the hotel's address and hand it to her.

“Meet me here at three o’ clock. Room 210,” I tell her then turn and walk away, not giving her a chance to say no. She’ll show. I know she will, and when she does, I’ll lay it all out for her and pray that it’s enough.

RILEY

I’m late on purpose. I didn’t want to give Oliver the satisfaction of having me show up on time, so I stroll into the hotel casually at three thirty. I take the elevator, outwardly appearing as if I didn’t have a care in the world, but inside, I’m dying. What could he possibly have to say that would make any difference? How can he possibly explain why he left me the way he did? Why he yelled at me then disappeared?

Did he really think that giving me a bakery would make the past few months go away? That I would be so desperate for him that I would accept his over-the-top gift and throw myself at him? He’s delusional. I make it to his room and knock on the door, knowing that if I don’t do it quickly, I never will.

Jesus,
I think to myself as he opens the door wearing a pair of dark jeans and a fitted gray Henley. Well, this is just not fair because he shouldn’t look this good. Regardless, I steel my spine, man up my defenses, and accept his invitation to come inside. I look around his room, simple yet beautiful.

“Why aren’t you staying at your hotel?” I ask, trying to break the ice, and also genuinely curious.

He smirks at me and responds. “I am staying at my hotel.”

“Then why are we here?”

“This
is
my hotel.” I’m confused by this. Why would a major hotel chain buy more than one place in the same city?

“Your family bought another hotel in Savannah?”

“Not my family. Just me,” he says with a shrug of his shoulders.

He bought this place. I’m more than a little stunned by the news.

“Are you not working for them anymore?” I probe. Because even though I hate him right now, I know how unhappy he was working for his family.

“No. I quit after I finished the London project. This place has no ties to my father and his money. It’s all mine.”

“Well, that’s amazing,” I say softly. I mean it, but out of all the places in the world, he had to choose Savannah to buy a hotel in. “Why here? Why not New York or Florida?

“It’s simple really,” he answers, taking a step toward me. I instinctively take a step back, needing to keep a safe distance between us. “You’re here.”

“Don’t say things like that to me.”

“It’s the truth.”

“If that were true, you never would have left me. I loved you. I was ready to follow you to another country. I would have done anything for you, and you just left me here.”

He takes a few steps closer to me, reaching out for me as he says, “I wasn’t in the best place, baby.”

“Don’t call me that!” I yell, giving him a shove. “Don’t touch me and don’t call me your baby.”

I can feel the tears stinging my eyes, threatening to fall, but I fight them. The last thing I want is to let him see me cry. I’ve already shown him enough emotion.

“Okay,” he says, putting his hands up in surrender. “I won’t touch you, I promise, but I just need you to listen to me. Can you at least just hear me out?”

“I’m listening,” I tell him because I’ll listen to whatever he has to say as long as I can get the hell out of here. I can’t take being around him much longer.

“I love you, Riley. I need you to know that,” he says, and I turn away from him. I can’t look at him when he’s saying shit like this to me. It’s not fair.

“I thought that I was sparing you from a life of abuse by walking away from you.”

I’m struck by this, caught off guard, and I turn back around to face him.

“What are you talking about?”

“I grew up in a tumultuous home. Things were never right there, and I learned from a very young age that my mother feared my father, and I should fear him too. Even if there were no bruises on her that I could see, I knew that he was a scary man,” he says, walking across the room and sitting on the edge of the bed.

“I thought it was normal, though. I was just a child and Jacob lived in his own world, so he never realized things were off. As I got older, I learned to spot the signs. My mom would walk a little slower, flinch when she sat down, or shudder when one of us would hug her.”

“She was hiding bruises.” I say it for him. I can see that this is difficult for him to get out.

“Yes,” he confirms, looking up at me. “It would be years later when I finally came between them and put a stop to it until the last time he hit her.”

“You did the right thing.”

“I did. But that didn’t stop me from convincing myself that I was just like my father. That I had this inherited trait in me that would eventually make me hurt any woman who I got close to.”

“But you never did.”

“I never let anyone get close enough to hurt them, Riley. You were the only person I let in, and the entire time, that fear lived in the back of my mind.”

God this is so fucked up. It’s incredibly sad that he grew up believing he would eventually turn out to be a carbon copy of his father.

“You do know that’s an irrational fear, right?”

“I do now. And I tried to shake it off when I was with you, put it aside so that I could just enjoy being with you but that night, the night of the re-opening, my father showed up there.”

“I saw you talking to him,” I tell him, remembering Oliver getting agitated. I remember wanting to go to him, but I was talking to someone and didn’t want to be rude. When I saw him walk away from his father looking like he was about to lose his cool, I followed him, not caring that I had left mid conversation. “You looked upset, so I followed you back up to the room.”

“I lost it. I did, and I’m so fucking sorry that you had to see me like that.”

“Why were you so upset?” I ask taking a step closer.

“Because my father had just finished telling me that I was just like him. That no matter what I did, I was his son, and I would eventually hurt you just like he did to my mom.”

“Oliver,” I call quietly. I’m gutted by this, by what it must have done to him to hear those words from his father. I let the tears fall now, not caring if it makes me weak. He’s been living in his own personal hell, and I only wish that he would have said something to me sooner.

“When I saw your face after I broke that lamp … it killed me, Riley. It fucking killed me to see you that scared. Looking just like my mom looked before …”

“Don’t,” I say, crouching down in front of him. I take his hand in mine and give it a squeeze. “Don’t ever compare our situation to that again. You never hurt me. You never laid a hand on me.”

“No. I never hit you. I just took advantage of you and used your misfortune to my advantage.”

“You made a mistake, and we’d moved on from that. We moved past it, Oliver, we were in love.”

“Were? Do you not love me anymore?”

“I …”

“I came back here for you. I saw a therapist when I was in London. I dealt with a lot of those issues, and when I was done, the only thing I wanted was to get back to you. To come home to you.”

“So you bought a hotel?”

“I bought a hotel, and I bought a fucking bakery, not because I’m trying to buy your love but because I want us to have a future together. I want a life with you, and I want it here,” he says, and I can feel my defenses crashing down around me. He loves me, he came back for me, and maybe it’s stupid of me to give in so easily. Maybe I should put up more of a fight, but I love him too.

“Tell me what to do, Riley,” he pleads softly. “I’ll do whatever you want me to do.”

There’s nothing to tell him because it’s already done. Without a word, I throw my arms around his neck and bury my face in the crook of his neck. He grabs onto me, holding on tight, as if he was taking hold of a lifeline.

“I love you, Oliver,” I whisper, and he pulls me up and onto his lap. For the first time in six months, I feel like I’m home. Like I’ve been wandering around aimlessly and lost for all this time, and with one touch from Oliver, I’m right where I belong. He was worried about all the ways he could possibly hurt me, not realizing that I feel the safest with him.

“I love you too,” he responds before kissing me. It starts soft, sweet, and gentle, but before long, we’re entwined with such a furious need for each other that I’m afraid it might just consume us both. I’m the one who pushes him down on the bed, but he doesn’t give up control. He lifts me up tossing, yes tossing, me in the center of the bed with a thump. I watch with lust as his shirt comes up and over his head, revealing his deliciously toned chest. It’s every bit as beautiful as I remembered. While he works on discarding his jeans, I sit up just enough to easily remove my shirt. The minute I do, Oliver is on me; his mouth is on mine, and his hands are in my hair as he rolls us so that I’m on top of him. He makes quick work of discarding my bra, and I swear I nearly come when his lips brush against my nipples.

Clumsily, I push off him, so that I can strip out of my pants and underwear.

“Don’t move,” he demands, taking in the sight of me fully naked and ready for him. “My God, I missed you,” he growls, reaching out for me and hauling me back down on his lap so that I’m straddling him. There’s no more foreplay, no use in prolonging what we both desperately want. He guides me down onto his engorged cock and a pleasured cry escapes from my lips. This is what I’ve been missing for the past six months. Not the sex—it’s not about that even though it’s amazing, it always was. It’s the connection, the level of intimacy that I’ve shared with Oliver and never had with anyone else. I know he’s close when he flips me onto my back, taking my mouth in an uncontrolled kiss. It’s crazy, passionate, reckless, and as we both climax, I realize that this is making love. It’s about everything that we’ve lost and everything that we’ve just gotten back. It’s about cementing a future together, basking in the fact that we really do love each other. That even though we started as something far from perfect, we ended up as something truly beautiful, and that beauty is what Oliver Parker and I will build our future on.

OLIVER

Three years later:

“I’m telling you, Oliver, this location is prime. Trust me.”

I glance at the clock on my computer, making sure I’m not running late.

“I trust you, Jacob. Riley wanted to get away for the weekend anyway, so why don’t we meet you there?” I suggest. Thinking that a weekend trip to Atlanta might be fun.

“All right, I’ll email you the information tomorrow, and we can finalize everything,” he says before disconnecting the call. After I had purchased this hotel, Jacob expressed an interest in combining our resources and venturing out on our own. I think he was just as about done with our father as I was. I agreed to his proposition with the stipulation that I would be based out of Savannah and do minimal traveling. I had done my fair share of that, and Jacob was all for handling that aspect of the business. This is how Lockwood Hotels came to be—Lockwood being our mother’s maiden name. In the last three years, we’ve opened four hotels and are looking at a fifth location in Atlanta. It’s safe to say that my father was furious at losing not one but both of his sons. With our departure from the family business, out father’s reputation took a permanent hit. So much so that his carefully crafted mirror of appearances came crashing down and his goal of breaking into the top five best hotel list became a nonexistent possibility.