Knight and Day

Chapter Twenty-Two

Lucien walked back into the club, passed by Dylan’s table, and strode straight to the bar. Two glasses and a bottle of vodka in his hands, he returned and pulled up a chair at the table.

“Do you mind if I stick to Dylan?” His tone was neutral. “I’m kind of used to it.” He poured two good measures and pushed one across the table.

Dylan scrubbed his palms into his eye sockets. “I’m sorry, man.” He didn’t have any words to explain the weight his brother’s unexpected appearance had dropped back onto his shoulders. His hard won peace had dissolved around him like ice on a hot day, showing up his life on Ibiza for the cheap illusion of smoke and mirrors it was.

There was a long silence. They both drank a measure, not meeting eyes.

“So. You’re nothing like your brother,” Lucien said, eventually.

Dylan swallowed the remaining contents of his glass in one mouthful.

“That’s just about the best thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

Lucien refilled Dylan’s glass.

“There were three of us. Billy. Me. Justin.” Dylan didn’t raise his eyes from the bottom of his glass. “Billy was the best of all of us. Now there’s just me. And him.”

“What happened?” Lucien watched Dylan’s face as he searched for the right words, and he recognised the expressions that twisted his features. Grief, and guilt. He recognised them because he’d shouldered the same emotions for too many years himself over someone he’d loved too.

“Billy… he was my big brother, and… my best friend. Sunshine followed him into every room, you know?”

Lucien didn’t know. Not when it came to family, anyhow, but for the first time he was learning it now about a friend. Dylan had brought a new aspect to his life that he hadn’t even known had been missing. Brotherhood.

“He got himself into trouble… gambling… debts he couldn’t make… I missed the signs. Too busy on my way up to notice, and he was too proud to come to me.” Dylan swirled the vodka in his glass, and Lucien sat still, in silent solidarity opposite him.

“They found him hung by his own belt out in the woods behind his house. Open and closed case.” Dylan shrugged, his face etched with disgust.

“Was it?”

“Hell, no. Billy was no coward, and no matter how much shit he was in he’d never have broken our mother’s heart that way, on purpose.”

Lucien’s affinity with the man opposite increased with his every word. Both of their lives had been overshadowed by loss and consumed by guilt. The difference between them was that Lucien had worked his way out the other side, thanks to Sophie. Dylan was still living in his own version of hell, and his brother’s appearance had just turned up the heat to unbearable levels. To Lucien’s eyes, he looked very much as he had the first time they’d met. Beat.

“Justin has been spoiled his whole life. He grew up with a sense of entitlement, for no good reason. He was always going to get himself in trouble, and I was always going to be the one who had to bail him out. I think he gambled too just to prove he could succeed where Billy failed, to be the big man. Except he wasn’t. He got in way over his head, debt on debt, and then he came to me with his hands out. ‘They’re going to kill me, they’re going to take mom’s house.’” Unconsciously, Dylan adopted his brother’s drawling tone, his expression miserably disgusted. He shook his head, his eyes still downcast. “So I bailed him.” He shrugged. “It took my club and my home, but I did it, because I couldn’t fail a brother again.”

“And then you came here?”

Dylan nodded. “I didn’t plan on lying.” He knocked back the vodka. “I just wanted to be someone else for a while. To get away. Just…” He tailed off.

Lucien sighed heavily. He could understand that.

“Seems to me that you’ve pulled it off pretty well up to now,” he observed.

“I was a fool to think I could make it work.” Dylan’s tone was savage, castigating himself.

“Way I see it, nothing has changed.”

Dylan’s laugh held no trace of humour. “I don’t think Kara is going to see it that way. She deserves so much better than another liar in her life.”

“She told you, huh?”

Dylan nodded. “And trust me, I could not feel like a bigger shit than I do right now.”

“Look,” Lucien sighed. “I can’t tell you what to do, and I won’t lie to Kara and Sophie for you. But find your own way to tell her over the coming weeks. I won’t push you. And in any case, I don’t think that brother of yours is likely to come back any time soon.”

Dylan nodded slowly. He recognised the wisdom of Lucien’s words, and appreciated the trust he’d bestowed by allowing him to dictate the pace. His idyll had to end, but he could choose how and when. It was a bittersweet privilege.

“Don’t underestimate Kara,” Lucien said, leaning back on his chair. “She might just surprise you.”

“She already does. Every single day.”

Lucien nodded, cradling his glass in his hands. He knew a woman like that too, and he recognised in Dylan the signs of a man falling hard.

“About the wedding…”

Dylan looked up, his troubled expression clearing a little at the change of subject.

“We’re keeping it low key,” Lucien said. “Just a handful of people, and I… I kind of wondered if you’d be my best man.”

Dylan was unaccustomed to hearing Lucien sound anything but ultra confident, making the trace of nerves behind his question all the more noticeable.

“I’d love to, man,” he said, feeling the tension leave his body as he reached out and shook Lucien’s hand, clasping it with both of his own. “I’d really love to.”

The bond of friendship between the two men deepened as Dylan added more vodka to their glasses. Maybe there was hope, after all. Lucien would have been within his rights to ask him to leave, but he’d chosen instead to stand beside him, shoulder to shoulder.

“Thank you,” Dylan said. “Your faith in me means a lot.”

Lucien lifted a nonchalant shoulder. “Just don’t expect me to hug,” he said, pushing his chair back as he stood. “I like you, but this isn’t Brokeback Mountain.”

As Lucien walked away, Dylan couldn’t repress an inner smile, a feeling of warmth, despite the disagreeable events of the evening, as he gazed into his shot glass. He hadn’t only found a remarkable woman in Ibiza. He’d made a true friend.

At the villa, Kara and Sophie sat on the terrace beneath the shade of an umbrella, little needed now the evening had drawn in, an open bottle of chilled white wine on the table in front of them.

“Here in Ibiza? In a few weeks time?” Kara repeated Sophie’s words. “I was looking forward to a trip to the land of sexy Vikings.”

“Sorry. Blame my Viking. He wants to get married here.”

Kara shrugged with exaggerated resignation. “I’m probably not in the market for a Viking anyway,” she admitted.

“You’ve changed your tune,” Sophie grinned, topping up their wine glasses. “I take it that the divine Mr. Day is the reason for your change of heart?”

“God, Soph,” Kara said, feeling the flush of pleasure on her cheeks at the mention of him. “He really is divine. He’s like… I don’t even know how to put it. He melts me.” Kara ignored Sophie’s knowing smile. “I mean it, I’ve never met anyone like him before. It’s like… he really gets me.”

“And does he?” Sophie said, raising her eyebrows questioningly. “ Does he really get you?”

“Holy fuck. Yes. God, yes!” Kara laughed. “Does he ever.”

“Good. You deserve someone to make you feel like that,” Sophie said. “God knows, you’ve kissed your share of frogs.”

“You really think he might be my prince?”

“Any man who can make you blush like that gets my vote. I like him a lot Kara. I really do.”

Kara lay back and closed her eyes, a serene smile on her face.

Maybe it was time for her luck to change. Dylan Day was the first man she’d ever met who seemed to genuinely want her for who she was, without any hidden agendas, without any skeletons in his cupboards, without any secret girlfriends waiting to jump out on her if she let herself get in too deep.

Maybe. Maybe it would be okay.

Kara really wanted it to be okay.

She realised that she believed it could be.

It would be. Really.