The Devil Series Books 1-4 (Devil #1-4), page 10
We reach the hill and drop down what appears to be a ninety-degree angle. The lap bar is all that is keeping me in this seat as my intestines seem to lift into my throat and stay there. I’m terrified and thrilled and clinging to the bar while I attempt to press my face into his shoulder, all while we whip around corners at high speed and fly up another impossible hill. I stop screaming just long enough to hear him laughing—not the dry, sardonic chuckle he gives me occasionally, usually at my expense, but a true belly laugh. It makes me smile for half a second, until I start screaming again.
When we reach the ride’s end, coming to a shockingly sudden stop, I climb off on weak legs.
I’ve only been standing for a few seconds when the world turns black. “Whoa.” The blood rushes from my head, and I find a strong arm wrapped around my waist, pulling me tight.
“What’s the matter?” he asks.
My head falls to his chest as little black dots fill my vision, and even as I struggle to regain my balance, I notice how nice and firm he is, how good he smells—soap and skin and fabric softener, how reassuring his arm around me feels, as if nothing truly bad can happen when I’m standing against him like this.
“Just a dizzy spell,” I reply. “I think I need to eat.”
Slowly I regain my vision and step away from him. His eyes narrow. “You’re sure that’s all it is?” he demands. “Does that happen a lot?”
I laugh. “Are you worried?” He didn’t even look worried when a very famous actress told us she was ‘gushing blood’ from her incision.
He forces his face into a less concerned shape. “No, never. I just don’t want to blow forty bucks on funnel cake for you. But come along.”
He leads me down the exit ramp, his hand moving from my shoulder to the small of my back, as if he’s suddenly convinced I’m the kind of girl prone to fainting spells.
He orders a funnel cake and two lemonades. “You were wrong before, you know,” he says to me.
“I do need to eat,” I argue. “My entire caloric intake in the past twenty-four hours has been a sip of butterbeer and a pack of Oreos last night.”
“Not that,” he replies. “What you said. That I’m only interested in the bad girls.”
He carries the funnel cake over to a spot in the shade and pushes me to sit.
“Fine,” I amend. “Not bad girls. Just temporary ones.”
He tears off a piece of funnel cake, examining it as if it’s some bizarre curiosity—a winged pig or a tomato with eyes. “Not even all that temporary,” he says. “I was engaged once upon a time, after all.”
I stop chewing, momentarily…frozen. I can’t explain why, but the fact that he was once engaged—that he wanted to spend forever with another person—makes my stomach sink.
“What happened?” I ask. The funnel cake has turned to mush in my mouth.
He lifts his head. His eyes are dark, unreadable. “I went away for a month as part of my fellowship. While I was gone, she fell in love with my dad.”
The funnel cake in my hand falls to the ground as I stare at him. I wonder if I’ve misunderstood somehow. Because it’s difficult for me to imagine how anyone with Hayes could choose someone else, but it’s impossible to imagine that someone chose his actual birth parent. “Your dad?” I ask. “Your real dad.”
He nods, putting the funnel cake in his mouth at last. “He’s a movie producer, extremely wealthy. And still relatively young, since he was only twenty when I was born. It was everything she wanted.”
He doesn’t sound bothered by any of this. He could be discussing his taxes for all the emotion in his voice.
“But your dad,” I repeat. “I mean, who does that? And what more did she want?”
He shrugs. “She accused me, when she left, of not loving anyone as much as I love myself.”
I hate her, this insane stranger who left the man beside me for his own father and was an asshole about it to boot. I hate her in a way that I never hated the actress Matt cheated with, hate her more than I ever even hated Matt. I don’t understand how he can just accept it all. “That’s a pretty bitter thing to say to someone you’re leaving, especially under those circumstances.”
He swallows. “She wasn’t wrong. I’d lost a patient and I was floundering, not sure if I wanted to stay in medicine at all, more consumed with my own shit than hers. And I was still finishing my fellowship back then, making nothing, so it’s not as if there was any other benefit to sticking around.”
I’m still so dumbfounded I can barely respond. I wonder if it’s why he’s in that ridiculous house—if it’s some Great Gatsby-esque attempt to prove his worth to her.
“It sounds like you actually forgave them,” I say, shaking my head. “I don’t see how.”
He wipes his hands on a napkin. Apparently one bite of funnel cake was enough. “I was forced to learn a few hard truths about myself, and I got a little sister out of it, so it’s not all bad.”
My mouth opens, and he holds up a hand. “Before you suggest that I not write off an entire enterprise based on one bad experience, allow me to remind you, you’ve done the same thing.”
He swipes some powdered sugar off my upper lip with his thumb, small laugh lines forming at the corners of his eyes as he does it. There’s so much affection in the look he gives me, so much sweetness, that my heart breaks for him even more. He’s taken that bitter parting shot of hers and made it his motto, embraced the idea that he isn’t loving or loveable, when nothing could be further from the truth.
If he was mine, I’d have held on with everything I had.
When we’ve hit every ride and eaten a year’s worth of junk food (which, for the record, Hayes completely enjoyed even if he wouldn’t admit it), we head home. After the heat of the day and all the walking, the passenger seat and air conditioning are all I need to be lulled to sleep. When my eyes open, we’re in front of his house.
“It’s about time you woke up,” he says. “The neighbors are probably calling the cops to report a comatose teenager in my driveway.”
I yawn. “They’d have placed that call years ago if they were going to. So how will you spend the rest of your day off?”
“The sky’s the limit,” he replies. We both climb from the car. I’m strangely reluctant to leave.
He seems reluctant too. He places a hand on the car’s roof, in no rush to get inside. “Enjoy your quiet night in, refusing to get a life. I’ll think of you while I’m out doing the things you won’t.”
My nose wrinkles. “I’d prefer you not think of me during that, if it’s all the same to you.”
He gives me the dirtiest smile imaginable. “A man has limited control over where his mind goes at various points.”
My body sags a little against the car as I release a quiet breath. I know he’s joking, but my stomach is fluttering anyway—like a single baby butterfly trying out its fledgling wings. If I thought he’d ever actually imagined me during sex, I’d probably orgasm right where I stand.
I cross the driveway to my car, which looks especially rusted out and ready for the junkyard this afternoon. After a day in Hayes’s BMW, it will feel like I’m driving home in a car from The Flintstones.
“Hey, Tali,” he says, as I reach for the door. “Thanks. It was the best day I’ve had in a long time.” He’s being earnest for once, and I can tell it’s difficult for him.
Another baby butterfly takes flight. I smile, stifling the impulse to ruin it with a joke. But I can’t bring myself to tell him the truth…it was the best day I’ve had in a long time too.
At home, before I’ve even kicked off my shoes, I go online to look up Hayes’s dad and wife.
His dad is hot for a guy in his fifties and looks a lot like his son, which really just makes the whole thing creepier.
Ella, his wife, is fine-boned and tremulously beautiful in that way only foreign women are: So fragile you’d think a strong wind might blow her over. The kind of woman other women don’t even try to imitate because you know, looking at her, that imitation is impossible.
It makes my chest ache. It’s not as if I ever thought I would replace her. It just sucks to realize I couldn’t, even if I wanted to.
17
If I thought forcing Hayes to take a day off would teach him the value of leisure, I soon learn I was woefully mistaken. When I suggest he consider a weekend off, he laughs, and when I ask about blocking out another Friday, he only says “maybe”, in a tone that sounds a lot like no.
But he’s coming home nearly every day for lunch, so…baby steps?
On an office day, when he can’t come to me, I go to him instead. I need to go anyway, since I’ve just gotten his oil changed and have to return his keys. The feminist in me winces as I show up at his office, toting a bag from In-N-Out Burger like some 1950s wife bringing her man his midday meal, but…fuck it. He needs to eat.
The receptionist looks at me like I’m taking my life in my hands and suggests I set it outside his door and run. I know he goes out of his way to appear distant and intimidating…I just didn’t realize people actually bought the act.
I wander back through the hallway to his office, walking in after I tap on the door.
“I got you a cheeseburger and fries,” I say, handing him the bag. “The rest is mine.”
He closes a file. I’m clearly interrupting him, but he doesn’t seem annoyed. Not that I’d care if he was. “Trying to ruin my social life by fattening me up?” he asks.
“At one cheeseburger a week, it will take me about two hundred years, but I have faith in our longevity.”
“You have faith in my longevity?”
I smile. “You might have a point.” I nod at the food. “I mean, look how you eat.”
I reach out to take the bag back from him, but he points to the chair beside me. “Stay,” he says. “I have a few minutes before my next patient.”
“I thought you hated people,” I reply, slumping in the chair happily and pulling out my fries. “Your receptionist wanted me to set the stuff outside your door.”
He spreads the paper wrapper out neatly on his desk and places a napkin in his lap, as if this is a proper meal. “I do hate people. I guess your constant nagging sets you apart somehow.”
I laugh despite myself. “Your staff could learn something from me,” I reply, shamelessly licking the grease from my fingers. He watches me, a flicker of interest in his eyes. “Maybe I should offer an in-office training.”
“Your smart little mouth is plenty,” he says. There’s a purr to his voice that makes my core clench tight as a drum, something that seems to be happening more and more. I’ve always had a fair amount of self-control, but one lingering look from him, one low note in his voice, and I feel like I’m another kind of girl entirely.
Remember why it’s a bad idea, Tali.
I know his romantic past is certainly littered with examples of bad behavior, but when I scour my brain for them, I come up empty-handed. Even the few reports I’ve seen about him in the press have been complete bullshit, like the one claiming that girl I saw leaving his house weeks ago is “broken-hearted” over him—though he saw her only once—just because she looked vaguely depressed walking into yoga. Who doesn’t look depressed walking into yoga?
“Tell me about these purported girlfriends of yours,” I demand. There’s bound to be plenty of douchery there. “I’m still having a hard time seeing it. Start at the beginning.”
“The beginning?” He wipes his mouth. “That would be Alice Cook. We were six. I gave her candy hearts for Valentine’s Day, and she told me her mum wouldn’t let her have sugar and threw them away.”
I laugh and ache simultaneously. It’s too easy to picture a tiny, crestfallen version of Hayes having his tender heart broken for the first time.
He takes a sip of water, stalling, and I wave my hand to move him along. So far, he’s only made my issue worse.
“Then there was Caroline Cutherall, my mate’s older sister, who I loved fiercely from ages ten through fourteen,” he says. “She was a decade older. I suppose I might have a shot now.” He shrugs.
I’m sure he would. I don’t know who Hayes was at fourteen, but there’s no way it can match up to Hayes, two decades later.
“After that, there was Annie, the reverend’s daughter. We dated until midway through my first year at university.”
He pops the last of his burger in his mouth. I notice he doesn’t mention the end with Annie, which undoubtedly means he was at fault. Jackpot. “What happened with her?”
He leans back in his seat and holds my gaze. For a moment I’m certain he’s not going to answer.
“I came home from university to discover she’d been filling her time in my absence with a footballer from the local club,” he says.
Oh.
“She was followed by Ella,” he concludes, “who is now, of course, my stepmother.”
He gives me a rueful smile and takes another sip of water, as if this is all vaguely amusing and a little boring. To me, it is neither. I struggle with a sudden lump in my throat. Instead of a healthy reminder of Hayes’s callousness, I’ve just watched him die of a thousand small cuts and a few major ones.
I want to tell him he deserved better. I want to tell him Ella was crazy, that they all were crazy, but the words are lodged in my throat, too earnest and possibly too invested to be said aloud.
The phone rings, announcing the arrival of his next patient. I quickly clear away our trash, still thinking about what he’s said and wishing I could fix it all. He walks me through the waiting room to the elevator, standing with me while I wait for it to arrive. It almost seems as if he wishes I could stay, and…I wouldn’t mind. Increasingly, it’s hard to remember what my days were like before they included Hayes’s smirks and withering commentary about my car and my choices. Without the sweetness in his eyes that assures me he means none of it.
I’ve barely reached the parking garage when he texts, asking me to return. I wish I was annoyed. I wish I didn’t feel this quiet excitement at the prospect of seeing him again, even though I just left his side.
I find him in a room with a patient and stop at the threshold, but he beckons me in.
“Tali, meet Linda. She saw you in the waiting room and is telling me she wants to look like you.”
I slow, and my last few steps to reach them are faltering.
“I want all of it,” Linda says. “The tiny nose and especially the lips. Get mine as close to hers as you can.”
Is this normal? To point to another human being as if she’s an outfit on display and ask to be recreated? Hayes shows no surprise at all, but he swallows as his gloved thumb presses to the center of my lip. I want to suck it further into my mouth, nip it with my teeth.
“Tali has a lot of volume in her lips, the upper lip in particular,” he says. “It would be hard to replicate, but I could use micro doses of filler to turn the border out the way hers does.” His index finger runs along the contour of my upper lip. I take tiny, insufficient breaths through my nose, my heart beating harder than it should.
“Yes, let’s try that,” Linda says. “You’ve done such amazing work on her.”
His finger stills on the center of my mouth and our gazes lock. Being the center of his attention, in this way, is headier than I ever imagined it could be. It’s the experience of being exposed, laid bare, but also seen. Seen in a way no one ever has before, as if I’m something fragile, something worthy of care. I never want to stop feeling this way.
He drops his hand as if he’s been burned.
“Tali’s beauty is all her own,” he says gruffly, walking away. “I’m going to get the camera.”
I stare at his departing back in shock, wondering what the hell just happened. Was it me? Was it both of us? My memory of it is a little too surreal to be trusted.
“I wish my husband would look at me the way he looks at you,” Linda whispers. “Like he could be completely content if he never had to look at anything else.”
I glance at her—she is lovely in her own right, more than deserving of an appreciative husband—and my heart gives an odd, hard thud at her words. It’s the ache of wanting something to be true and knowing full well it is not. “I’m just his assistant,” I reply. “He looks at me like that because if I wasn’t around, he’d have to get his own coffee and he finds waiting at Starbucks intolerable.”
“I just watched the way he looked at you, honey,” she says with a knowing smile. “And believe me, that look had nothing to do with coffee.”
18
Hayes’s smoothie is waiting when he joins me in the kitchen the next morning. He’s slick and pressed and perfect as ever, but his gaze is just a little more piercing than normal. I wonder if I was weird yesterday. Of course I was weird, and I’m still being weird. I can’t seem to shake the desire for more of his attention, for the feeling of his hands on my skin and his eyes on my face the way they were in his office.
I picture him cornering me in the kitchen, his hard body pressing my back to the cabinet, invading my space. His thumb on my mouth before his lips seek mine, his hands falling low, to slide over my hips, to tug up my skirt.
The mere thought makes me feel winded. I can’t imagine what the reality would do.
“I have a party tonight,” he says, shattering the fantasy. “I may need your help.”
I hope he can’t tell that my head was somewhere else entirely. I close my eyes for a moment and calm my breathing. Get it together. This is what he does: he makes women feel like they’re special and then he moves on.
“As far as I can tell, you don’t need any help at parties.” It comes out sounding more bitter than I’d intended.
“It’s an industry thing,” he says with a glib smile, putting his keys in his pocket and grabbing his coffee. “Every actress or female producer I talk to is going to wind up deciding she wants a little touch of something. Besides, you’re clearly good advertising. Everyone who sees you assumes I did your work and wants the exact same thing.”
