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.