“That, too,” Allison said. “So he needs to tell me something to get me to stay. He says it was Oliver. Why? Oliver’s dead. Not like we can get a dead person into trouble. It’s safe to blame Oliver. And your dad wouldn’t want to tell me it’s Kendra because I’d ask why she did it and then he’d have to tell me about you and her. He knows she hurt me out of jealousy, but he doesn’t want me to go after your ex-girlfriend for something that happened so long ago. Does that make any kind of sense to you?”
“I suppose,” he said. “It’s logical.”
“And my aunt thought it was me calling her. That means it was very likely a girl. So that leaves Kendra or Thora.”
“It wasn’t Thora,” Roland said. “It’s just so hard to picture Kendra doing that.” He rubbed his forehead as if the very idea of it gave him a headache.
“She was a young girl in love. Girls in love do dumb, risky things—for example, kiss your big brother on the beach even though you’re twelve and he’s almost seventeen.”
“You have a point there,” Roland said.
He sounded resigned, as if the force of her reasoning had finally overwhelmed his objections.
“I do get why Dad would keep it a secret from me,” Roland said at last. “I mean, if Kendra did do it, I would go and talk her about it. But Dad, he wants us to move on, to heal, to let go of the bad stuff we can’t change. Sometimes there’s just...too much bad stuff to ignore.” His voice sounded more bitter than she’d ever heard it. They drove in silence again for a few minutes before Allison asked a question that had been on her mind since learning Roland and Kendra had once been together.
“Will you answer one more question for me, please?” Allison said, trying not to sound as frustrated as she felt. “Is there anything else you’re not telling me? Anything at all I should know that you’re keeping from me?”
For a painfully long moment, Roland said nothing. Allison lived and died in that silence.
“Yes,” Roland finally said.
Allison’s heart jumped in her chest a little. Her hands gripped the steering wheel tightly.
“Are you going to tell me what it is?”
“Do you really want to know? It’ll change things between us. Really change them.”
“Yes,” she said. “I want to know.”
The long terrible silence came and went again.
“I think I’m falling in love with you,” Roland said.
Allison took a long hard breath.
“Yeah, that does kind of change things.”
“Told you so.”
“When were you planning on telling me this?” Allison asked.
“I wasn’t,” he said, almost laughing, though it was clear he found none of it funny. “You asked.”
“True,” she said, and blew out a long breath. “I asked.”
By ten they arrived back home at The Dragon and in the dark it looked even more like its namesake than it did by day. The uneven outline of the house loomed tall, strange and humpbacked in the moonlight. The Dragon seemed sad to Allison, slumped almost, like the poor thing had heard about Oliver and bowed his old head in sorrow and in respect.
She and Roland had said almost nothing to each other since his declaration of—well, not of love but of almost-love. What could she say? She’d been in a relationship for six years before she came home. Could she trust her feelings for Roland? She adored him. Every time she looked at him with his father she felt a deep and deepening tenderness for him. She loved bringing him tea at night when he was reading to Dr. Capello. She even liked folding his underwear, especially when she had to fight Brien over them. These were all novel experiences for her. As an adult, she’d never been a girlfriend, only a mistress. She’d never folded McQueen’s underwear. She never brought him chamomile tea at bedtime. With Roland she felt love, but was it love for him? Or for the idea of him and home and family? If that love was real, was there any difference?
Allison thought about the moment McQueen had left her two weeks ago, the moment he’d finally walked out the door and out of her life. She remembered the sorrow and the panic. Then she tried to imagine Roland leaving her, walking out the door to return to his old life at the monastery. She couldn’t. If there was leaving to do, he would let her do it first. And for a girl who’d been left behind more times than she could count, that felt like real love to her.
Roland started to go into the house and she reached out to stop him, touching his arm, holding him by his sleeve.
“Roland,” she whispered.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m falling in love with you, too.”
He narrowed his eyes at her.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Let’s see... I’ve been home, oh, nine days? No, of course I’m not sure. I’m insane and so are you.”
He laughed, which she appreciated.
“It’s not like we’re strangers,” he said.
“No, but it’s not like we know each other, either. But I do know this...when I was here as a little girl, I would pray for rain, because that was my excuse to go crawling into bed with you. I’m twenty-five now and I don’t need an excuse. But I still keep hoping it rains. Does that mean I’m in love with you?”
“Close enough,” he said, and moved to kiss her. She put her hands on his chest.
“You’re a monk,” she said. “You do remember you’re supposed to go back to the monastery, right?”
“Not tonight,” he said.
He took her in his arms then and kissed her in The Dragon’s long shadow. It was a passionate kiss, hard and hot and sensual. He paused and whispered against her lips, “Maybe not ever.”
Allison took his hand and led him into the house and up the stairs, quietly, very quietly so no one would know they were home yet and dare to interrupt them.
Inside the bedroom that had once been his, then hers and now was theirs, Roland shut the door behind them and locked it. Allison was already undressed by the time they reached the bed, and Roland was already inside her by the time her head hit the pillow. Before, all the times they’d been together, it had felt like they were making love. And that’s what she would have called it, and that’s what it was. But now they’d admitted they did love each other, or almost did, and for the first time it felt like Roland was fucking her. He held her down on the bed, hands on her wrists, which he’d pinned over her head. His thrusts were rough and she had to work to keep up with him, and what delicious work it was. She came faster than she’d known she could and even came a second time when he let go inside of her. She understood the difference between the times that had come before and this one. Before there was always the chance Roland would go back to the monastery. He’d been holding back with her because he knew it would end eventually, and he didn’t want to risk doing anything he regretted. He’d been on his best behavior. Not anymore.
Truth was, she liked this Roland even better than the other one.
And she told him.
His chest moved in silent laughter as she lay across his body. They were both sweating together, breathing together, dripping wet together.
“When the beautiful girl you’re crazy about tells you she might be in love with you, it makes you a little wild,” he said. “Not too wild?”
“The perfect amount of wild. I didn’t know you had it in you.”
“I believe, technically, you had it in you.”
She grinned and kissed his chest.
“I love it in me,” she said. “Feel free to have it in me again anytime. Or right now.”
“Thirty-minute nap,” he said. “Then we go for episode two of Wild Kingdom.”
“Take your nap. I’ll wake you.”
He kissed her forehead and rolled over. She went to the bathroom, and by the time she came back, he was already breathing the rhythmic breaths of deep sleep. Men.
She looked at him and his long muscular back and remembered how she’d seen it, as if for the very first time, that day at the ocean’s edge when they’d crossed a line a foster brother and sister shouldn’t cross. Maybe it was for the best, really, that she’d left and gone to live with her aunt. Maybe it was for the best that years passed between that day and this one. Instead of her thirteen years away from this place acting as a wall between them, the time apart had become a bridge, the path from what they had been to what they could be.