Page 81 of Make Me Sin (Bad Habit 2)
I’m shocked, and pleased. I can’t remember the last time a man brought me flowers. Eric once told me that buying a florist flowers would be like buying a jeweler a diamond ring, or a winemaker a bottle of someone else’s wine. He thought it was bad manners.
“No one ever buys me flowers!”
“That’s what I figured. Which is exactly why I did.” A.J. smiles at me, and my heart melts. He seems happy, almost carefree, which makes me happy, too.
“Do you have a vase?” I look around the kitchenette, but see nothing that would be a likely candidate.
“Oh. No.” He’s momentarily crestfallen, but then brightens. “Maybe in the downstairs kitchens, though. There are all sorts of containers there. Or in the concierge closet, or one of the storage rooms. This place is full of stuff the prior owners left behind.”
Whistling to himself, he starts to unpack the bag of groceries. It’s a little thrilling, and a lot scary, how this domestic side of him turns me on. Though it’s weird, it’s also comforting, and comfortable. We could be just any other couple in their apartment on a Saturday morning, looking forward to spending the rest of their lives together.
And not just their final week.
I push that nasty thought aside, and busy myself with filling the small sink with water. I submerge the stems of the roses so they can drink until we can find a more appropriate container. I want desperately to ask questions, but know I can’t, so instead I mount what I hope is a subtle fishing expedition.
“Speaking of this place, did you ever see The Grand Budapest Hotel? It totally reminds me of that.”
“Hmm.”
Okay, not exactly the explanation of how he’d come to live here that I hoped for. I try again. “Was it empty a long time before you bought it?”
“Years. It was originally built as a resort hotel but never made it. Too far from the beach I guess. Then it was bought by some religious sect. They had it for a few decades before the leader committed suicide and it went on the market again. Then a corporation bought it, tried to make it into an exclusive rehab center for rich drug addicts. Don’t know what happened there, but it wasn’t successful, so a private investor bought it, tried to fix it up and flip it, but the economy took a shit and he lost everything. The IRS repossessed it to cover his unpaid taxes. Then some old eccentric guy bought it at auction and lived here with his nurse until he died. It’s been empty ever since.”
That this poor, abandoned hotel that A.J. bought, because it looks like he feels, has had such a string of failures in its past makes me unreasonably depressed. I try not to think it might be jinxed, but of course I start to obsess over exactly that.
“Weird that it has such a checkered past,” I mutter, staring out the window to the view of the hills.
From behind, A.J. snakes his arms around my waist. He kisses the back of my neck, nosing aside my hair to gain access. “That’s one of the reasons it makes me feel at home.”
His confession is so unexpected I blurt, “Because you have a checkered past, too?”
He doesn’t growl or freeze me out, as I expect him to. He simply rests his chin on my shoulder and stares out t
he window. “Exactly, Princess. Birds of a feather.”
He kills me when he’s like this. His self-loathing is so deep. I wish I could take it away.
Without turning, I softly say, “If I found a magic lamp and a genie came out and said he’d grant me three wishes, they’d all be for you to be able to forget whatever bad things happened to you, and for you to be happy forever.”
I can tell he’s moved by my words, because a little tremor goes through him. He turns his face to my neck. “Not everything bad in my past happened to me, angel. Some of them were bad things I did to other people.”
My heart beats faster. “Whatever you did, I know it was because you had to. I know it was because you didn’t have a choice. You’re a good man, A.J. I know that.”
His arms tighten around me. “You believe that because you’re good. You see the best in people. But we always have choices, angel. Even if they’re hard, or shitty, every decision we make involves a choice.” His voice drops even lower. “And you’re wrong about me being a good man. I made every bad choice with my eyes wide open . . . even the ones that hurt other people. I always knew exactly what I was doing. There’s no excuse for the things I’ve done.”
Without hesitating, and with a vehemence I wasn’t intending, I say, “I don’t care what you’ve done. I don’t care if you’re Jesus or Hitler or something in between. None of that matters to me.”
With his hands on my shoulders, A.J. turns me around. He stares down at me, his eyes devouring. “It should.”
I shake my head. “It doesn’t. And it never will, no matter what happens. No matter what you say to try to convince me, no matter what I find out.”
“You can’t mean that. Not if you don’t know the facts.”
I don’t know how we got here so quickly, when all I was trying for was a few random tidbits to fill in my knowledge about how he came to own the hotel, but here we are. I’m not missing the opportunity. “Tell me then. Try me out.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
