Claim Me(33)

I expect no answer, and I’m not surprised when none comes. The house is large, and over the last week, the workmen have finished painting the interior and even the grounds are almost fully landscaped. There still isn’t any furniture in most rooms, but even so, he could be anywhere, and in a house this large, “anywhere” covers a lot of ground.

For a moment, I consider returning to bed and trying to sleep. He didn’t wake me, after all, and I wonder if he left the room to find some solitude. He told me the phone call wasn’t about Carl’s threats, and I don’t doubt him. But the call still disturbed him, and I’m selfish enough to want to understand why. I want him to confide in me and turn to me for comfort.

I want him to keep his promise to me about shining light on the shadows that surround Damien Stark.

But is that my only motivation for seeking him out now? If so, I really should crawl back in bed. Promise or not, Damien is entitled to his privacy. And no matter how much it may frustrate me, the promise is his to keep or to break.

My hesitation lasts only a moment, because while I do want to understand the man, I want even more to comfort him. I want to hold him and touch him and silently promise him that no matter what he needs, I am there for him.

I want …

Maybe I am still being selfish, but I’m arrogant enough to think that Damien needs me. And, yes, I’m selfish enough to go.

I see that he left his phone beside the candle. I pause, thinking of the text he received, and then the phone call that came soon after. He either recognized the number or the caller’s name is programmed into his phone. Should I look?

I hesitate just long enough to be disgusted by myself. If Damien went pawing through my call history, I’d explode into a completely justifiable rage. And yet I’m actually thinking about looking at his phone? Have I been miraculously transported back to high school?

The thought is undeniably unpleasant, and I forcefully push it out of my mind as I pad to the service elevator at the back of the kitchen. It opens on the first floor in a utility room off the main kitchen, a magnificent space filled with commercial-grade equipment that hasn’t yet been used. I pass through the kitchen into a sunporch. I expect to find him in the gym that eats up at least a thousand square feet on the north side of the house. But when I get there, there is no Damien.

The room is large and divided into distinct sections. The first one I come to is a weight room, filled with machines, free weights, mats, and a boxing bag. I move quickly across the room to the functional but beautiful polished oak door that separates this room from the larger area beyond. In this second room, there is a running track complete with stations. More free weights, pull-up bars, spin bicycles, another boxing bag, and a variety of other equipment.

As is Damien’s style, an entire wall of the track room is made of glass, giving a view of the property and the ocean beyond. The negative-edge pool opens off the living room on the main level, but it is also accessible from the gym, with one of the glass pocket doors opening onto the deck. From where I stand, I don’t have a view of the water, but at least one of the pool’s dim lights must be on, as I see the greenish-blue light undulating on the deck. For a moment I think nothing of it—Damien has left the light on since the pool was filled three days ago, ever since I mentioned that as a child I loved to sit by the pool at night with my sister and watch the light dance as the wind played across the water’s surface.

Right now, however, there is no wind. Even the three drapes that Damien left unmolested had been still when I’d awakened. And the dancing light is moving in a rhythmic, controlled pattern.