Wildest Dreams: Chapter 20

Bruce: Where are you?

Rhyland: Home?

Bruce: Why is there a question mark? You ain’t sure where your fancy butt is, boy?

Goddamn boomers and their inability to decipher tone. I was close to losing my patience with the guy. He’d been jerking me around, making me wait for our Texas gathering before he’d make a decision. I knew business deals took time—Tate had warned me—but Bruce knew I was sitting on a gold mine and was playing hardball because… what, he knew I had a history of dating women for money?

Rhyland: I’m home, why are you asking?

Bruce: I’m coming over to hand-deliver you and your fiancée the invitation to my house.

Rhyland: We already RSVP’d.

Bruce: So?

My deep-rooted urge to knock Bruce’s teeth down his throat morphed into panic. Truth was Dylan and I didn’t live together, and one glance at my bachelor pad would confirm this. I had to think on my feet.

I knew Dylan was home, and in a purely convenient coincidence, her mom and soon-to-be stepdad were also in town, so she actually had a babysitter.

Dylan and I had been keeping our distance since the preschool tour, but it was time for her to earn that fat paycheck. I opened our chat box.

Rhyland: Bruce is coming to hand-deliver our TX invitation. Let’s meet him downstairs at Café Europa. Putting a show on for him would help me.

Dylan: What’d you have in mind?

Rhyland: Can I kiss you?

Dylan: I’d literally rather eat my own eyeballs than pretend to enjoy it, but sure. Whatever gets you the deal.

Rhyland: Sorry. This ain’t working anymore. I know you’ve got it hard for me.

Dylan: Hard-ly.

Rhyland: Now you’re just giving me a stiffy.

Dylan: We can always do something about it.

Rhyland: See? You are as consistent as a half-baked muffin.

Dylan: I’m honestly repulsed by how much I’m attracted to you. But rest assured, I don’t like you AT ALL.

Rhyland: I’m attracted to you AND I like you. The liking you part is the problem though. I don’t do relationships.

Dylan: Aw. Are you afraid to catch feelings?

Rhyland: Don’t be so smug, Cosmos. That shit’s contagious.

I shot Bruce a message to meet us downstairs because we were going on a mommy and daddy date. Then I lumbered into my walk-in closet and honest to fucking God had trouble deciding what I was going to wear. The options were dwindling by the day, seeing as I’d started selling shit online to keep afloat. I settled for a beige button-down short-sleeve shirt, olive chinos, and preppy tennis shoes. Then I proceeded to spritz on enough Valentino cologne to drown a small herd of kittens.

Did cats move in prides? Fat chance—they were solitary animals. Anyway, I was unnecessarily anxious because I knew I was going to kiss Dylan Casablancas today.

And I also knew I was going to fucking like it.

Things got progressively more pathetic when I took the elevator down and accidentally hit the button for Dylan’s floor instead of the ground floor. I chalked it up to the fact that I’d spent a ton of time playing nanny to Gravity. Force of habit. Nothing more, nothing less. Still, I was already here, so I might as well say hi to Zeta.

I stepped out and knocked on the door. Zeta flung it open. She was wearing a red fitted dress and a matching lipstick, with an apron. She was a true MILF. A mature version of Dylan. Same high cheekbones, regal nose, thick, fluffy eyebrows, and an endless stream of thick black hair that ran down to her waist like a river.

“Rhyland! Mio figlio!” She threw her arms over my shoulders, octopussing me in a hug and dragging me past the threshold into the apartment. She kissed both my cheeks before grabbing my head and examining me. “You look good. Your mother and father are well?”

“Sure.” Who the fuck knows? “You and Marty having fun in the Big Apple?”

“Yes. I just got back from a Broadway show. Now Marty went golfing with old college friends, and I’m baking a cake with Gravity.” She licked her thumb, using it to wipe off the residue lipstick from my cheeks.

“Uncle Rhyrand!” Gravity’s high-pitched voice rang around the apartment. The small human bolted from the kitchen stool she was standing on, climbing my leg like I was a tree. I squirmed as her little fingers dug through my waist, abs, and torso. She managed to get all the way up to my waist before I scooped her up and tossed her in the air until she almost hit the ceiling. With each toss, her giggling became squeakier and more enthralled.

“I told you,” I said.

Toss.

“Uncle Rhyland.”

Toss.

“Is a ticklish.”

Toss.

“Bas—” I remembered Zeta was here. “Man.”

Toss.

When I put her down, Gravity hugged my leg, staring up at me with her enormous dark blue eyes, her lower lip curled down to stop herself from crying.

“What’s going on?” I ruffled her hair.

Where the hell was Dylan? Why wasn’t she coming out? She must’ve heard me walking in.

“Uncle Rhyrand, I got a boo-boo cutting sugar dough.” She extended her arm toward me.

“Let’s see.” I kneeled down on one knee and examined her arm. She was bullshitting me. Her pudgy forearm was pristine, with no scratch in sight.

Zeta chuckled above Gravity’s head.

“Where is it, exactly?” I clasped her little wrist, turning it from side to side.

“Right here.” A chubby finger pointed to a tiny beauty mark.

“Eh, I see.” I nodded gravely. “Looks pretty bad.”

“It hurts.” Another pout.

“Gotta be honest, I don’t know if you’ll make it out of this.”

That earned me a slap on the back of my neck with a kitchen towel from Zeta. I stifled a laugh.

“Go get the Band-Aids and markers. We’ll fix you up.”

Gravity nodded, dashing back to her room.

I stood up to find Zeta grinning big at me. I raised a hand. “Trust me, I’m hating every minute of it.”

“Mio caro, you’re growing up. You’ll be a great dad one day.”

“Is your daughter coming or what? We’re going to be late to a meeting downstairs.” I ignored her observation. I assumed Zeta didn’t know about our fake relationship, so there was no point in explaining my existence in Gravity’s life would be temporary.

“Oh yes. She jumped in the shower. She should be out any minute now.”

“Can you go tell her to hurry up?”

“No. And neither can you. She’s a lady. She needs time to prepare before going out.”

I rolled my tongue along my inner cheek. Gravity returned, clutching a small tin with Band-Aids and her marker box. I got down on one knee, snatching both.

“Where is it again?”

The kid pointed to a beauty mark on a completely different arm. I did appreciate how committed she was to the lie. A lawyer in the making.

“There.”

I opened the tin and grabbed a Band-Aid. I flattened it out on the uninjured spot, smoothing it over her skin. “Ink?”

“A giraffe eating a donut.”

“Random, but I’ll allow.” I grabbed the markers and started doodling on her Band-Aid.

It all started when Gravity got a paper cut one day when I was babysitting her. She insisted I put a Band-Aid on it, but when she realized they’d run out of colorful, themed Band-Aids, she threw a fit. This resulted in me giving her a TED Talk about the decay of moral society through consumerism and the pink tax before concluding that anyway, it was best to buy plain Band-Aids and just draw what you wanted on them. We’d been patching her completely unblemished body ever since. I doubted Michelangelo was ever as busy as I was these days.

“All done.” I dropped the brown, yellow, and pink markers back into the box. “You’re as good as new.”

“Thank you. I wove you.” Gravity hugged me.

What was with the Casablancas family and being ultra-affectionate? And why couldn’t Dylan touch me? She was the only one whose hands I wanted on me anyway.

I patted Gravity’s back awkwardly. I still wasn’t thrilled about befriending a toddler.

“Did you…draw smileys on her Band-Aid?” A voice coming from the hallway made my head snap up.

Shit. Now this was a sight worthy of being drawn in the Sistine Chapel.

Dylan, all made up, with a brown-and-white polka-dot summer dress offering a deep slit and a peek at her long, shapely legs. She’d done her hair in big, fluffy waves and put shimmer on her cheekbones, and she had that glittery thing on her lips and her inner eyes that made her look all dewy.

“It’s a giraffe and a donut,” I corrected matter-of-factly. “I will not have my work thoughtlessly disparaged by an amateur.”

“I didn’t realize we were…commissioning your work.” Dylan swallowed a laugh.

“You ran out of fancy Band-Aids.” I stood up slowly, since all my blood had rushed to my dick.

Dylan just stared at me with a mixture of awe and softness. It was the first time the grumpy woman had oozed warmth toward me, and not the kind that wished to set me on fire.

“Ready to hit the road?” I glanced at my lowly Cartier.

Finally, Dylan shook her head, snapping out of her weird reverie. “Um, sure. Mama, is that okay? It’s five minutes from here and shouldn’t take long.”

“Tesoro mia, of course. You go have your fun. Make sure to drink a glass of wine. You deserve it.”