Rare and Precious Things (22 page)

“You’d better start getting
ready or we’ll be late. Aunt Marie’s plans wait for no man…” she trailed off, never taking her concentration away from the mirror where she was applying some kind of dark smudge around her eyes. She had on a short black lace getup that made me hard just looking, but she was only halfway dressed.

I realized quickly, i
t would be best to stick with the plan or we’d never make it to Dad’s birthday dinner on time. So I forced myself to think of something very non-arousing, about work instead. It didn’t take long. The minding of young Prince Christian of Lauenburg at XT Europe certainly helped to cool my cock. My trip was just two days away, and I dreaded leaving Brynne already.
Ridiculous fuckin’ job.

“
But I’d much rather look at you,” I told her.

She made a soft sound. “Well my ass is getting bigger by the second, in direct competition with my belly. I hope my ass doesn’t win. At the end of this gig, I just want the baby, not the extra ass.” She looked up into the mirror at me, her expression giving away little of what was on her mind. Still so mysterious, my girl was. I loved that aspect of her
, though. Made me even more determined to get as close to her as I possibly could, so I could touch and taste and absorb every available molecule. My need for Brynne was still as strong as ever. I had no doubts that would ever change, either.

“Your arse is perfection and you’ll never hear me complaining ’bout a bit more of you to grab hold of.” I gave her a slow wink and a lecherous grin. “From back here, you don’t even look pregnant.” I
came up behind her, my hands sliding forward to rest on her bump. “I have to do this, to really know you’ve got anything here.” I splayed my palms over the firm rounded swell of our baby growing strong inside her.

She leaned back and rested her weight against me. “Oh something’s there all right,” she said, “that you put there.”

I laughed softly behind her. “I really enjoyed doing that by the way.”

“I seem to remember that you did,” she said dryly.

“Oh, you enjoyed it too.” I slid my hands up to her luscious tits and lifted one in each hand, squeezing softly. “Now these…are a different story. They’ve changed a
great
deal, and I fucking love the transformation.”

“
I’ve noticed.” She closed her eyes for a moment and tilted her neck, just allowing me to touch her at will. Always so giving of herself to me and my crazed needs.

“
Mmmmm…you feel perfect to me, Mrs. Blackstone, and you always will.”

“Did I ever tell you how much I love
it when you call me Mrs. Blackstone?” she asked lazily, pegging me with those lovely eyes.

“A few times, yes. And
I’m delighted you love your new name.” I grinned back at her in the mirror. “I know I love saying it to you. I know I love that my name is now your name. I love a lot of things…now.”

She reached her hand up to hold my cheek, still
looking at me in the mirror. “But you’re getting a new name, too. We have someone coming to us soon who will know you only by one name, and it’s not
Ethan
.”

“Dad.”

“Yep. You are somebody’s dad now.” She smiled softly, a mixture of happiness and maybe a little sadness at the thought of her own father. “You’ll be the best ever…” she whispered.

Brynne always amazed me in her generosity—her ability to be so lovingly giving even in the face of her grief and loss. Brave.
Strong. Magnificent. I kissed her on the back of the neck and rested my chin on her shoulder, both of us staring into the vanity mirror. “I love the sound of it—Dad. I’m a dad and you’re a mum.”

“We are indeed.”

I returned my hands to her stomach. “I love our little pineapple.” I turned her around to face me and took her smiling face in my two hands. “And I love you, Mrs. Blackstone.”

“I love you more,” she said.

4th
January

London

THE
charity my father championed when he was alive sent out a notification whenever a donation was left in his name. The amount of the gift in the message I’d just read made my eyeballs bug out. I checked it again, counting the digits to make sure. All six of them.

The second shock was the message left from the donor
in the comments section.
Please let me make it right, Brynne.

Lance.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Lance had done this? He had made an obscenely large donation in my father’s name to the Meritus College Fund? Assisting disadvantaged, but motivated kids to get a university education?

Why would he do it?

I really couldn’t imagine why he would, but I knew I needed to find out. So I went to my purse and dug around in the side and end pockets until I found the card he’d given me. I flipped it to the back and read the message he’d handwritten with blue pen, just to make sure.
Please
let me make it right, Brynne.

I sent him a text with shaking hands and a pou
nding heart, afraid to hear what he wanted to say to me, but knew the time had come for me to know.

Ethan was at the
offices, preparing for his trip to Switzerland the next day. I’d not told him about either of Lance’s attempts to meet with me, at his hospital bed, and after my pre-natal check-up. I’d found the more time that passed, I just didn’t want to dredge it up. What purpose would it serve? I needed to move on and deal with the here and now, instead of dwelling on the shit that had gone bad years ago.

I didn’
t tell Ethan, even though I knew I probably should have given him a warning. He wouldn’t be comfortable with me seeing Lance alone, and he’d be over-the-top territorial to the point any meeting, including his presence, would be made useless. No, I needed to meet Lance on my own. This was
my
history.
My
past. And I was the one who needed to face up to it, and put it to rest.

So I left a short note for him
on the kitchen counter instead. In case he made it home before I did, he would find my note saying I’d gone for a walk.

IN favor o
f some exercise, I did walk down to
Hot Java
, the coffee shop just around the corner from the flat.

Lance arrived before I did
and was waiting window-side, at a table for two. He looked as he had the last time I’d seen him—completely and totally different from the boy I’d known a lifetime ago. In so many ways it was true. He was now a political celebrity, the tatted-up, war-hero son of the Vice President-Elect. He had an escort waiting for him too—Secret Service most likely, considering the terrorist risk. For someone like him, it must be enormous.

He looked miserable sitting across from me, and I wondered if he was
still in any physical pain from his injury.

“I
’ll be heading back to the States very soon. Command performance for the inauguration.” He tapped his leg with a tattooed finger. “But, I’ll miss London. It’s a good place to fade into.”

Yes, it is.
“Why did you send that huge donation in my father’s name? Is it something you truly want to spend your money on, Lance?” I asked, pushing the raspberry tea bag in my mug into a mini vortex from over-stirring. No matter how much I’d thought about it, I could not for the life of me, see his motivation for the money. So, all I was left with was the unimaginable idea that he could really be sorry.
Mind. Fuck.

Lance looked out
of the café window, staring at the busy street traffic, and the equally busy foot traffic, managing the winter drizzle to go about their business. “Thank you for meeting me, Brynne. This is something I’ve wanted for a very long time…and also, very much dreaded.” He turned his eyes back to look at me when he finished speaking.

“You said…you said you wanted to tell me what really happened that night at the party.” I could feel my heart thumping
erratically deep in my chest.

“
Yeah.” He shifted in his seat and seemed to brace himself for what he wanted to say. “But first, I want you to have my deepest apology for how I treated you, the things I did to you, for how I hurt you so very badly. I have no justification for anything that I did, no excuses, only regrets.”

His eyes flickered over me, a hint of longing in his expression—for what, I wasn’t sure. Longing for me? About what might have been with us?

“So, before I tell you the rest, I wanted you to at least hear that part.”

I felt something strange
glimmer inside of me, like a crack feathering out on a frozen lake. I couldn’t speak just yet, but I managed to acknowledge his apology by nodding my head.

“You saw the video, Brynne?”

I nodded my head again and kept my eyes on my mug of raspberry tea. “Once. That was all I could watch—” My mind went black at the remembered images that flashed in my head. The other guys, me being used, the laughter, the song lyrics, the torment of my body with objects, how they spoke to me like I was a whore who wanted what they were doing to me.

“I am so sorry…I didn’t
mean for it to go that far,” he said.

“What in the hel
l did you intend by filming us then?” I spat back, lifting my head. “Do you even know what that video did to me? How it changed my life? That I tried to kill myself because of it? Are you aware of all of that, Lance?”

“Yes.”
He closed his eyes and winced. “Brynne, if I could take it back—I just—I’m just so very sorry.”

I sat there and stared at him,
nearly unbelieving at what I was experiencing. For so long I’d understood my dark place for what it was. An evil deed, done to me by evil people, devoid of remorse, or even humanity for their actions. But with Lance before me, apologizing so sincerely, he didn’t seem evil at all…and it was a very hard concept to accept.

“So…what
was
your intent that night, Lance? If you feel you must make things
right
with me, then I guess I’ll have to try to hear it.”

“Thank you,” he w
hispered, tapping the table top with his hand softly, rhythmically, only his fingers lifting up and down. The tattoos that decorated him covered the whole surface of his right hand—a skeleton of the bones of the hand interspersed with spider webs in between the individual finger bones.

I wondered what
Daddy-O thought of all the goth ink on his son.

After a moment, he started talking.

“I was a complete prick to you,” he began, “I know that, and I have no excuses, but when I went off to Stanford and found out you were with other guys when I was gone, I got insanely jealous that anyone else would have you. I wanted to punish you for it because that’s how my mind worked back then.” He started flicking his thumb onto the side of his coffee mug. “I got you drunk at the party with the intent of filming us having sex, so I could send it to you as a reminder that you were
my
girlfriend, and nobody else got into what was mine when I was away at college.” He cleared his throat and continued. “That was the extent of what I intended for the video, Brynne. I would never have posted it anywhere, or shown it to people. It was a reminder of me…for you.”

“But, those others…Justin Fielding and Eric Montrose—they were there.” I
couldn’t look at him, so I just stared out the window at the rainy sidewalk and busy people instead.

I
kept on listening, though.

“Yeah,”
he said sadly. “I got you drunk, but I was even more wasted, and to the point that I passed out after I…finished. Those two had come home with me for the holiday weekend and they knew I was bent on teaching my girlfriend a lesson she wouldn’t forget. I told them what I was going to do with the sex video. Like an idiot. I was so arrogant I never imagined they would try to get in on it. You can clearly see on the video that after I fuck—after I’m done—I’m not there on screen again. There’s a cut in the filming, and then it’s just Fielding and Montrose…and you. Trust me, I watched it over and over, horrified by what they did.” I looked away from the window and studied his face. He met me head on without shielding himself. I saw regret and shame in him. “Brynne, I—I never meant—”

I knew Lance was telling
me the truth.

“They watched us…and then when I passed out, they took over. I don’t
even remember leaving you in that game room, Brynne. I woke up the next morning in the back of my car. The video had already been posted to a sharing site and it was too late. It got passed around all weekend.” He hung his head and shook it slowly. “And that music they put on there…”

I tried to remember the sequence of imagery, but I’d been so traumatized by my one
-time viewing of the video, I couldn’t really pull up much memory of Lance’s involvement at all. I knew he’d been very angry with me for dating Karl. Being an immature seventeen-year-old slut hadn’t left me with good judgment skills in where I went, what I did, or whom I did it with. Sadly, I’d learned my lesson in a very hard way, but it was still remarkable to hear this new information from Lance.

“So, you didn’t do it because you hated me?” I asked him the question I’d always wanted answered.
It was the thing that never made any sense to me. We’d had our problems, but I had never felt hatred from Lance before that night. The video had felt like hate to me for all of the intervening seven years, and had been hard to bear because it was so confusing.

“No, Brynne. I
never
hated you. I believed I would marry you some day.” His dark eyes blinked at me, regret and sadness clearly readable in them.

I
gasped, unable to respond to what he’d just told me. I had no voice, so I sat there silent and stared at him, unable to do anything else.

He slid
his hand forward as if were going to reach for mine, but caught himself in time, leaving his fingertips about an inch away on the table. It was so awkward I picked up my mug of tea and held it in both of my hands so I could make them useful.

“I tried to call you and see you, but your father, and mine, shut that down. My dad
informed me that I would die before he allowed me to destroy his political career. He had me withdrawn from Stanford and enlisted in the Army within two days. I was shipped off to Fort Benning for Basic Training, and there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t even talk to you to say I was sorry, or to find out how you were.” He held his palm up in question. “And now with my father’s political aspirations…I’m just caught up in all of it, carried along without a way out. And with him in the West Wing, I’m more trapped than ever…” he trailed off sadly.

Wow. Just wow. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined this reality. I didn’t know what to say to him, or how to respond, so we just sat there in silence together for a minute.
He didn’t even know about the other sordid history connected to the whole mess—the reason behind the deaths of Montrose and Fielding, Karl’s blackmail attempt, my father’s murder—were all because of that video. Lance wouldn’t hear it from me, either. The events had played themselves out, and it was time to put them into the ground for good. Nothing would ever change my greatest loss, by bringing my dad back to me.