Crushed (Crystal Brook Billionaires) (61 page)

I nod. “I’ll come with you. He probably shouldn’t be alone for a while.”

Crystal shrugs. “I’m not working for two more days. I was going to be home all weekend anyway.”

Something about her tone of voice is odd. Briefly, her eyes flick to Simon before returning to my face.

“I can come home and help,” I say.

She hesitates and glances at Simon. “You don’t need to. I mean, I’ll be there, so…”

Simon picks up after a short silence. “If you want to go home, Sydney, I can drive you.”

“Or not,” Crystal says. “But either way, I’ll see you soon.”

She waves and jogs off across the parking lot.

Only Simon and I are left. I look down at my feet, the blazing sun striking the concrete sidewalk and reflecting nearly full blast in my face.

Simon clears his throat. “I understand if you want to go home, and, like I said, I’ll take you there. But if you would like to finish our conversation, I really would like to show you something.”

I awkwardly tug at a lock of my hair and look up at him. “Like Crystal said, I don’t need to go straight home.”

His mouth breaks into a smile. “Great.” He cocks his head. “I don’t think she wanted you to go there anyway. She was trying to play matchmaker.”

“Hm,” is all I say.

We’re silent for most of the ride. The exhaustion from earlier is back, filling my bones and weighing me down. I sink into the leather seat, not sure if I’ll be able to find the energy to climb out once the car stops.

The route Simon takes is a familiar one. For a moment, I wonder if he’s gotten confused and means to take me to my house after all. He veers away from the city, though, going up towards the Hollywood Hills area. We’re somewhat close to Griffith Park, and memories of the day we kissed at Bronson Caves come to me. His lips were so sweet and his hands so hot on my back.

Would kissing him every day be like that, even if “every day” meant the next fifty years?

The car continues to climb and we enter what I think is the Cahuenga Pass neighborhood. It’s only about ten or fifteen minutes from my place. A little thrill goes down my arms at the thought of him living so close to me. All this time I’ve been wondering where he is at night, and it turns out he’s barely more than a stone’s throw away.

The driveway he turns into is surrounded by greenery. It shields the house beyond from view and covers the paved drive with thick, low tree branches.

The driveway comes to an end, circling around a little garden with a gazebo in it. The house before us is quaint — at least for this neighborhood. It’s two stories, but more on the cottage end of mansions. There’s a two car garage as well, but Simon opts for parking right in front of the house.

I open the door before he has the chance to get out and do it for me, and take in the tan home in front of us. Ivy climbs over the walls, dangerously close to covering up some of the windows. Simon’s door slams and I feel him walk around to my side before I see him there.

“This feels like we’re in the middle of the country,” I say, nodding at the thick wall of trees next to the garage. From where we stand, you would never guess there’s another house on each side of the property.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “That’s the way my mom wanted it.”

I look at him. “This was your mother’s?”

He slowly licks his lips. “She moved here right after my parents divorced.” There’s a hint of hesitation in his voice, like what he’s saying is more painful than it appears to be.

He goes on. “She lived here for six years and died when I was ten.”

“I’m sorry,” I breathe. “I didn’t know you were so young when that happened.”

He looks at me. “I didn’t tell you,” he says simply. “That was a long time ago… and I don’t tell most people much of anything. Especially not when it comes to that.”

I turn back to the house, feeling that looking at him for so long in his moment of pain might be disrespectful.

“Come on,” he says, stepping forward. “I’ll show you around.”

He unlocks the door and I follow him into a dark, cool hallway. The walls are paneled in wood and close to barren. Near the front door, a staircase leads upstairs, and a few doors go off to both sides.

Simon pushes the doors open as we walk down the hall, showing me the living room, the library, the kitchen, and the dining room.

“All the bedrooms are upstairs.”

“Oh,” I nod, trying to act like I didn’t just get turned on by the mere thought of his bedroom. I still don’t know what he brought me here to see. Is it upstairs? And, if it is, will I manage to escape this house without falling victim to him once again?

Likely not.

But maybe “falling victim” to Simon isn’t as bad as it once was. After everything that’s happened today — all the words and the actions, all the fainting and the being there for each other — falling victim to him might be the best thing that could happen to me.

Instead of going up the stairs, we walk straight and exit through the back door and onto a covered porch. The back yard is just as green as the front, save for a break in the bushes beyond which the city below us is visible. There’s a pool to the side, and a hot tub next to it. There’s no garden to speak of. Instead, trees and bushes grow wild and the grass towers, slightly overdue for a cutting.

Simon puts his hands in his pockets and steps up next to me, so close our shoulders brush.

“So you grew up here,” I say. “At least for a little while.” I furrow my brows and look at him. “What happened after your mom died?”

“She left the house to me. Colt got along with her fine, but he was always more of our dad’s son than anything else. He spent his weekends there and I would always come here.” He pauses. “There was a big divide there. After our mom died and her will was read, her cousin took hold of the property to keep it until I was eighteen. That’s when I moved in.”

His face grows dark. “I didn’t see it for years. A few times, when I was a teenager and home from boarding school, I snuck over here and slept in the yard. No one lived here. A gardener would come by and mow, and someone would go in and dust every once in a while, but that was it. Once I broke a window and climbed in.”

He shrugs, his hands pushing deeper into his pockets. “It was better than being at my father’s house. That place never felt like home to me. Here, I was close to what was important to me. I could still feel my mom here, even though she’d been dead for years.”

“Wow,” I whisper, more surprised at his act of revelation than at the information itself. “How did she die?”

“Cancer.”

“Oh.” My voice is small. I look back at the yard, trying to imagine a six or seven-year-old Simon running around it. I can see a little boy with sun streaked blond hair curling around his ears jumping over bushes and rolling around in the grass.

So much must have happened to him since then.

We don’t lose our childhood zest for life and joy all in one day, do we?

Or maybe it’s different when you’re ten and the person you love most in the world dies. I try to imagine that happening to me — suddenly being without my parents at that age — and I can’t.

I can’t even begin to know how that might affect me; what kind of person such an experience would turn me into. At least, supposing one of my parents died, I’d still have the other one to count on for love and support. Simon wasn’t able to say as much.

“What did you want to show me?” I ask, remembering.

He colors slightly, and it looks so strange to see his cheeks pink. My boss. The man who I painted to be an insufferable, womanizing asshole, blushing.

He’s changed,
a voice in my head says.

Maybe in ways I don’t even understand.

“It’s at the other side of the yard.”

He doesn’t move. His cheeks are still pink and he is obviously embarrassed. I take the lead and step down into the grass. He follows, and as we walk through the green landscape, he takes charge, steering us over to the corner where a large cottonwood rests.

Boards are nailed to the tree’s trunk, leading five or six feet up, the last one stopping near one of the wider branches. Around the base are more boards, propped up against the wood, brown with decay.

“Remember when I told you about my Star Trek shelter?” he asks.

I think back to that day at Bronson Caves. It was the first real glimpse I got of another part of him. In telling me the story of his childhood fort, he became more than ornery Mr. Mulroney. He started to become a man with a story and reasons for being the way he is.

“I remember.”

He props his arm against the trunk. “This is it.”

I bite my bottom lip and giggle a bit. “It’s still here.”

He slowly nods. “My mom helped me with the steps, but I did the rest myself.”

His eyes rake over the fort, and there’s so much in his expression. Pride. Sadness. Longing.

My heart cracks right open just looking at him, and a sudden swell of love surges in through the gashes.

I love him. I love Simon Mulroney. Screw it if it’s wrong. Damn it if I end up regretting it, and beats me if I even know what exactly led me to this place. It certainly wasn’t his caustic attitude or cocky sense of entitlement.

No. It was everything in between the snappy remarks and sharp looks. It was those little moments where we began to see each other for who we really are — deep down, away from all the pain.

My throat burns and I swallow hard. “Why did you bring me here?”

He looks away from the tree and catches my eye. It seems like he’s about to say something, but he looks back down, clears his throat and shuffles his feet.

It’s hard for him to say things,
I realize. It’s hard for him to show how he really feels.

Finally, he speaks, his words coming slow but sure. “It’s a big part of who I am. I wanted you to see it.”

“To understand where you come from.”

He looks at me, and there’s relief on his face. “Yes.”

“To see why you are who you are.”

He hesitates again, and his Adam’s apple bobs up and down. “Yes.”

I nod and reach out to run my fingertips over the bark. They trail along the top of one of the boards, then down its side. Simon reaches out and grazes his fingertips over the top of my hand.

He takes a step forward and I half close my eyes. His familiar scent wraps around me like a warm and safe cocoon.

He speaks, the sound waves traveling into my body and pushing their way into my heart. “There have been plenty of other women in my life since my mother.” His voice rasps slightly. “But none who were really important.”

I slowly look up and into his deep blue eyes. “Are you trying to tell me something?” I ask.

Because if you are, that’s all I need. One statement straight from your heart to make nothing else that’s happened between us matter anymore.

He blinks heavily but doesn’t break eye contact. “I want to tell you something,” he whispers.

I find his hand near my hip and wind my fingers through it. “But it’s hard?”

He nods.

I take in a slow breath, wanting desperately to take the plunge but also being scared senseless. “This has been so up and down,” I say. “From the first day, I thought you hated me.”

He grimaces. “I thought I did too. For a while, I thought I hated everyone… I was in a bad place.”

I slowly shake my head. “What changed?”

The hand not grasping mine comes up to cup my cheek. “Me. I started to change because of you. No matter how hard I pushed against you, you never backed down. And yet… I got the feeling that you cared for me, even though I didn’t deserve it.”

My bottom lip trembles. “I didn’t want to care for you. I didn’t want to spend every single day and night thinking about you; wondering about you.”

“I know, and I was bad to you.” His thumb rubs lightly across my jaw. “You demanded I treat you like a person, and for the first time in my life, I realized I’ve been doing anything but that with people.”

My breath catches. “What have you been doing?”

He grimaces. “Anything and everything that involves not letting them get close.”

I lightly shake my head. “I can’t take the drama, Simon. I don’t want to force you to change.”

He guffaws. “Don’t you get it, Sydney? I’ve already changed. You being in my life, that’s all it took. I didn’t know what was happening at first, but spending the whole week alone at that beach house gave me time to think. I love you, and I don’t want to be without you.”

The sky and earth spin around us as his words sink into my heart and soul.

“I love you too,” I say, nearly choking on the words. “I can’t believe I’m saying this.”

He smiles. “I know. Neither can I. It came out of nowhere, didn’t it?”

Nodding, I gasp as tears blur my vision. A second later, all I can do is laugh though. I laugh as my vision swims and Simon presses his forehead against mine.

I don’t stop laughing until his lips meet mine and his fingers thread through my hair. I relinquish control of all thoughts, slipping away into the sweetness of his touch. Our tongues move across each other, dancing like they were made to meet in a moment as perfect as this.

He pulls me closer to him, wrapping his arms around my back and holding me so tight I couldn’t escape if I tried.

Not that I ever want to. Everything I need is right here.

I grab the front of his shirt, my breath coming out ragged in between our kisses. My body aches all over, begging to be touched by him without the hindrance of clothes between us.

“Take me inside,” I murmur into his mouth.

He sighs against my lips, low and long. When he speaks, the words vibrate against my skin. “I can take you right here.”

Before I can react, he turns me around and presses my back against the base of the tree where there are no boards. One arm goes up to rest against the bark and the other trails slowly down my side. Our kiss is slow and deep — the kiss of a love that can take its time, knowing there is no rush.

His palm slips underneath my shirt and presses against my lower back, warm and good. I tilt my face up further to kiss him deeper and he edges forward until he’s between my legs. His groin presses into me, and the embrace is just as intimate as one done without clothes.