Exclusive
I OPENED MY EYES and blinked, confused. Upon waking, I found myself in a huge, extremely comfortable bed, my head on top of several soft, white pillows, my body covered by a fluffy, white duvet. Sunlight streamed into the room, bathing it entirely with bright, clear light. I lay all alone in a silly-huge bedroom. It seemed to take up an entire floor of the house, with floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides.
How drunk did I get last night?
I had never been here before, not even in my dreams. Looking around, I realized that I had no idea where I was. I really hoped that this was Ryan's place, because if it wasn't, I'd hunt him down and kill him for leaving me alone with someone who'd kidnap me and take me to an …
… awesome beach house. Yeah, this must be Ryan's home.
Swinging one bare leg over the side of the bed, and then the other, I learned that I was wearing some sort of white surfer t-shirt that I’d never seen before. It went down to the tops of my thighs. If Ryan put this on me …
… then he was the sweetest guy ever. How much of a perv was he when he took off my clothes? Sheesh, that's a thought for another time.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of the window. Holy rat's nest, Batman. And what was I thinking going to sleep with makeup on? The black smudges around my eyes meant that I must look like Catwoman, too. Shit. I needed to find a bathroom, and fast.
But before I did, I couldn’t help but gape at the view beyond my reflection in the window.
The entire Pacific Ocean stretched out like a moving blue-green blanket, taking up most of the view. If I looked to my left, I could see a bit of the coast that stretched down south to Ventura, and eventually reached Los Angeles and beyond. But if I looked straight out, all I saw was water. It was so soothing and so beautiful.
But more soothing than the view was the sound. The open windows let in the cool air, which felt comfortable and moist. The waves provided a constant noise, drawing back, and then folding into the shore. Drawing back, and then folding into the shore. Pause, crash. Pause, crash. It made you feel like you were a part of something infinite, looking at the endless waves like that.
Deep thoughts, Amelia. Get a move on.
Taking a tentative step onto the cool-to-the-touch, dark wood, wide-plank flooring, I quickly scurried to what I hoped was the bathroom. I chose correctly, if you could call a room the size of a second house, a bathroom. A huge two person—two person—shower dominated the corner, floor to ceiling windows on two sides. Talk about a view. I had no idea that Ryan indulged so much. Okay, so probably no one could see him shower from up here—they would have to be out on a boat with binoculars.
Hmm. Ideas. Shit, now I was the perv. Then I had further ideas about joining him in the shower. Just some good, clean, fun. I turned and saw a sunken bath tub that could hold, what, twelve people? Geez, did he have orgies in here? I really wanted to try out the sunken tub. Fucking decadent bastard. Well, that's not fair to him, he was so down-to-earth, normally. But his bathroom was over-the-top.
It took me a full minute to work up the guts to finally look at myself in the mirror, but when I did, it wasn't that bad. I cleaned up the makeup that had smeared, tried to tame my hair, and made myself at least a little bit better for morning perusal by the Sun God. Now it was time to explore. I felt a little shy, honestly. Where was he?
I left the bathroom, crossed the bedroom, and headed to the door on the opposite side, hoping that it was an exit, just as Ryan bounded up the stairs and into the bedroom, a latte in one hand and a cup of black coffee in the other, miraculously not spilling a drop. Show off.
Oh, yeah, and he was shirtless, glowing, in dark blue-and-white, Hawaiian flower-print surf trunks that were so low on his hips I thought he could get arrested, his abs and happy trail on full display. That's my man.
Wait, was he my man?
Well, that thought could wait until after coffee.
He smiled his huge smile and said, "Morning. I figured you'd want some coffee." He held both cups in his hands, bent down and kissed me chastely, and then handed me the latte, keeping the black coffee for himself.
"You figured right," I agreed gratefully and took a sip. My own personal Southwinds coffee maker. It was times like this that I felt lucky to be alive. Such a change from last night.
"Need Gatorade? Advil?"
Surprisingly, I didn't. I remember Ryan ordering me to drink water all night. That must have saved me from Hangover City. I gave him a small smile. "Not now. Thanks for taking care of me last night."
Ryan cocked his head to one side. "It was my pleasure." Then he continued, suggestively, "More than you know."
I immediately panicked and my eyes popped open. "What did I do? I mean, after I hit Jonathan?"
He laughed. "Relax. Nothing happened after I found you holding your fist, except that you had a few too many drinks and were a quiet, happy drunk who fell asleep in the car on the ride home. Scout's honor."
"Not even when you undressed me?"
"Does copping a feel count?"
I thought about it. "No."
"Then no, nothing happened." It was nice to hear that validated. I thought that I could trust him, but still, it felt nice to have my trust in him confirmed after it took a hiding behind the woodshed last night. I was going to have to talk to him about the blonde bitches.
After coffee.
"Come on over here." Ryan took me to the other side of the room, where there was an indoor-outdoor terrace. It had glass doors that you could close off or open, depending on the weather. He kept them closed, likely because I was only wearing a t-shirt, and we sat on adjacent chairs, our feet up on the coffee table, drinking coffee in silence and being comfortable with each other, watching the waves.
After a while, we finished our coffee, still half-dressed. The waves were lulling me back to sleep, and I was just thinking that it sounded like a good idea to curl up in my surfer's arms, when he started talking.
"What else freaked you out last night?" he asked in his sexy, husky voice. The one that made me not function properly. It still was a form of voodoo, I thought. But my recovery time was getting faster.
"What do you mean?"
"By my count, you freaked out, first, when you figured out that I’m not a slacker, but I have a couple bucks in the bank, and, second, that you saw your asshole ex-husband, who had a bad date with your fist. But I thought that you were freaked about something else too. Dunno what."
I expelled a breath of air. He was more perceptive than I gave him credit for. Fuck. Do I bring it up? Or do I let it go.
It was probably the better thing to base a relationship, or whatever this was, on honesty, not on hiding. I had hidden from everyone for a long time, so this was going to be another brave step for me. But no way was I going to tell him that I was falling in love with him. Nuh-uh. At least not yet.
For now, though, I sideswiped the issue and blatantly changed the subject. "So you have a Tesla, huh? Then why do you drive the truck?"
"It was my grandfather's truck, and ended up being my dad's first truck. Living out here at the beach, I have to take extra good care of it so that it won't rust, but I love it. It's great for surfing. The Tesla is better, you know, for the earth, seeing as how it is electric, but I am attached to that old truck. But you changed the subject." He looked at me pointedly.
God, he was perfect.
Okay, decision made. I was going to be brave and talk to him about it.
"There were these women next to me at the dinner tables, while you were getting the drinks."
"Yeah?"
I took a deep breath.
"Which part do you want first?"
He leaned back. "There's more than one part?"
"Yeah."
"Whatever you want, Movie Star, I'm listening."
"Well, first they called me fat and old."
He immediately got angry. "Fucking bitches. That's why I hate this society shit. I only do it because of what happened to my parents."
A small knot in my stomach, which I had been previously unaware of, relaxed. I knew I shouldn't be surprised that he took my side, but truthfully, I was. Maybe this was the depression talking still. I tried to hide it with bravado. "Yeah, that's what I thought." But then I couldn't help but ask him, "You don't think I'm fat and old, right? I mean, we've gone over this, but it sucked to hear it out of a stranger's mouth."
He looked me straight in the eyes, green to violet, and said, "You have the body of a goddess and you are the perfect age for me. I'm twenty-eight, you're thirty-one. Big deal. After we talk, I will remind you of how beautiful I think you are, in every way. And what do they mean, old? How old were they? Did I know them?"
Well. "They seemed to know you. Intimately."
He furrowed his eyebrows, thinking. "Where were they sitting?"
"Right next to us, to the right as you looked at the stage."
"Fuck. I know who you are talking about. A bunch of boring, shallow blondes?"
I looked at him and thought, you're the guy who puts on charity functions in honor of your parents. You're the one who drives your dad's first truck. You're the one who cooks me dinner, who makes me feel whole, who takes care of me. You're the opposite of shallow.
You're not the guy who picks up blondes by the half dozen.
"Yeah."
"That's Tiffany and Destiny and a couple others. They go to every charity event, and want to be in every damn issue of the Santa Barbara society pages. They use me, I use them. I'm sorry if it sounds bad, but sometimes I've needed a date and they're low-hanging fruit."
"That's pretty cold."
He tilted his head to the side.
"They don't mean anything. Not like you."
Okay, that was … amazing.
"I feel like I am opening up with you, I'm being vulnerable with you, but …" I trailed off and tried again. "I feel like I'm exposing myself to you, but it's not reciprocal. It was a huge shock to find out that your parents had died. I don't know what you—"
"I'll tell you. I'm not going to hide anything from you. Ever. I told you, I'm a sensualist, I live in the moment. I live for pleasure and I live for the now. I do it while surfing. I do it while fucking." He gave me a teasing, knowing smile. "I do it while making love. I do it when I work on my business. I could care less about all this stuff," he said, gesturing to his home. "I could care less about the money. I'm a fifty-one percent shareholder of Fielding Pharmaceuticals, along with my sister. It’s a publicly traded company. But I care more about building up a good, local coffee shop business, and possibly franchising it than about Fielding Pharma. Southwinds is a business that is actually mine. I lose myself when I go to Kona and talk with the farmers, pick the coffee beans, make the roasts."
He paused and looked at me intensely. "I lose myself when I spend time with you. It makes me forget that I'm an orphan. It lets me block out the pain. If I think about the past, it hurts too much. Do I want to think about that shit? My dad slowly dying of cancer? My mom dying at fucking Heavenly, in a skiing accident? Me fighting my aunt for custody of my sister when I was eighteen and she was eight? I can't do that. So I've trained myself to feel things now and not think about the shit in the past. So my fear? My fear is that everything I care about will be taken away from me. And that's because it already was taken away when I was eighteen."
If that wasn't being vulnerable with me, I didn't know what was. His confession brought tears to my eyes.
"Oh, Ryan."
"I've just had ten years to learn how to deal with it and now? I've dealt with it. Sometimes the ways I've dealt with it haven't been great. Did I go crazy at first, fucking everything in sight? Yes. Have I overindulged on all sorts of things? Yes. I cut loose, but then I got it together, for my little sister. I have to watch it. Too much pleasure means that you get fat and drunk and high and never do anything. So I surf. It clears my head." He let out a breath and smiled, a wry smile, and lowered his voice. "We can talk about all of that more. If you want. I don't particularly want to. But I'll tell you anything, beautiful. Anything." He leaned over and kissed me, a soft, wet, sweet kiss. "Are we done here, and can I take you back to bed, or is there anything else on your shit list from last night?"
Those women had planted a seed in my soul so dark and deep that I hoped that I could weed it out, because if I allowed it to grow, it could destroy this relationship—whether this was a relationship with a small "r" or a big "R."
I sighed. Then I went for it.
"Yeah, well, they were saying that you were a cheater and you used the same 'sensualist' line on them that you used on me. It made me feel like I had been had."
"The fuck?" he exploded. "Those fucking bitches. They're such haters. I can't believe they would say those things. Fuck.
"Listen. I’ve never seriously dated any of them. I’ve never been exclusive with any of them. I have gone to public events with a lot of them, and yeah, I've fucked a few of them, but there was nothing more. I've never been exclusive with anyone, ever. I would never cheat on anyone if I was exclusive."
"Are you exclusive with me?" I asked in a timid voice.
"Fuck, yeah," he said emphatically. "If I had found you earlier, I would’ve been exclusive with you earlier. I keep telling you, because it's true: you're the only one I have ever wanted. In. My. Entire. Life. I have compared every other woman who I have ever been with to you. Since high school. And even though I built you up in my mind, the real you is better. Much fucking better."
Whoa.
Hold up.
"I'm yours and you're mine."
"Are you asking me or telling me?"
He laughed. And then he asked me, in that panty-dropping, husky, sexy, low voice: "Amelia, will you go out with me exclusively and be my girlfriend?"
He made my heart beat faster every time. What other answer was there to that than, "Yes?”