Panting hard, he pulls back and stares down at me, eyes alight with more than passion.
“Too much? Too fast?”
“Not yet.”
His eyes narrow, those arms cradling my hips in a way that is so comfortable it feels like we’ve been doing this for years.
“You set the pace,” he stresses, letting one arm stray from my waist so he can drink his wine.
“Why?”
“Why?”
I just wait. I don’t try to explain.
“Because...” His voice fades out with a deliberative sigh. “Because I don’t know. It just feels right.”
“Do you always do what feels right?”
He jerks his head sharply, breaking eye contact. “No.”
“But you try.”
“Yes.”
“Always?”
“Most of the time.”
“Good enough.”
“Glad you approve.”
I laugh. “Somehow, you don’t strike me as the kind of man who worries about having other people’s approval in order to do something.”
“Other than my dad, that’s true. And even with him, it’s fading.”
I study him. He’s not quite nervous, but there’s something just slightly off.
“Why’s your dad giving over the CEO position to you now? He’s barely sixty. That’s fairly young. James doesn’t strike me as the type to cede control easily.”
Andrew’s mouth sets in a grim line. His hand is at my elbow and he guides me to the couch. “I’ll tell you the answer if you promise to keep it a secret.”
“I still haven’t said a word to Shannon and Declan about your being CEO.”
“I know you haven’t. And I appreciate that.”
Some layer to Andrew’s tone sets an alarm bell off inside me. The wine is loosening me up but this makes me tight with worry.
“Dad has cancer.”
And there it is.
“Oh, Andrew,” I say, leaning forward to hold his hand. “I am so sorry.”
He nods. “It’s not that bad. Prostate. Slow growing. He has many years ahead of him. But it’s shaken him to the core and he’s stepping back. When we make the formal announcement he’s not positioning this as a retirement, not at all. In fact, he’s becoming a venture capitalist and planning a whole new company around seed money and angel investing.”
“Okay.” I don’t know what else to day.
“But he’s freaked out.”
“Declan doesn’t know yet?”
Andrew shakes his head.
“Your dad confided in you, though?”
“Dad and Declan have a complicated relationship. Dad doesn’t like to show any kind of weakness with Dec.”
“Why?”
“Goes back to the incident. My mom’s death.”
“Oh.” This is the first time he’s ever brought it up with me. He’s initiating the conversation, and if I’m careful, he’ll open up to me.
“Dad’s fumed at Declan for all these years. It’s not like Dec could have made a different choice, at least, not the way he tells the story. Mom wanted him to use the EpiPen on me. Dec did as told. Mom died. I lived. The end.”
The way he’s describing this makes some part of me cry for the teen he was when it all occurred. The man in front of me is telling the story with a clinical detachment that is manufactured. I’m not judging. I’m just observing. His entire demeanor changes as he recounts what happened, and it’s giving me insight into Andrew as a man.
What happened that day was horrifying and harrowing for Andrew and Declan and their mother. But the aftermath...oh, how awful. My throat begins to fill with the tangy sense of impeding tears. The bridge of my nose tingles. I blink, hard, trying to drive it away.
Some second date.
I need to reply. He’s looking at me like we’re playing conversation tennis and it’s my turn to return the ball.
“Your father doesn’t feel like he has a relationship with Declan where he can tell him these private details?”
“No.”
“But he does with you.”
Andrew frowns. “Yes. I guess. Apparently so. Dads are so complicated, aren’t they?”
I hold my breath.
He picks up on a change in me right away. “What’s your dad like?”
“I don’t know. He left when I was five.”
“Left? Your parents divorced?”
“Um,” I say, biting my lower lip. This story never gets easier to tell. “Yes, they divorced.”
“Do you see him?”
“No.”
“Never?”
“Not since I was five.”
“When you say he left, you mean it. He just...left?”
“You know the old cliché about the guy who goes to the store one day to get a pack a cigarettes and never comes back?”
He grimaces. “Yes.”
“Substitute a twelve pack of beer for cigarettes and you have my dad. Doug Warrick’s been gone for more than twenty years.”
“And absolutely no contact?”
I wobble. I hesitate. There is a truth here. There really is. But the true truth is deeper below the surface truth than anyone who hasn’t lived my life can possibly imagine.
“No.”
The lie slips through my teeth so easily, like a wiggly fish on a line that finds a way to escape, the hook deep enough to have caught it but not so embedded as to keep it pinned in place.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry about your mother.”