I looked at the table again with new eyes. If what Quinton had told me about Dash’s life with his mother and grandmother was true (and I didn’t think he had lied to me about that. What would be the point?) then I could completely understand why this was his favorite room if he saw his dad sitting at the table every time he walked in here.
I wanted to tell him how sorry I was for his loss, but I didn’t want to change the subject away from the Council and what he was telling me about them. He was giving out an awful lot of information and I wasn’t sure when I would get another chance to learn this much about them.
He cleared his throat while he walked across the room to open a door.
“Bathroom,” he said as he opened the door. “Pretty standard. Do you want to look inside?”
“Nope,” I told him, and he shut the door. I had no desire to check out his bathroom, though, I probably should have checked it out seeing as I would be living here with him soon enough.
“Let’s go back to the living room,” he murmured.
He got us each a bottle of water out of the refrigerator as I made my way back to the living room. He’d entirely skipped over the upstairs tour. I had no desire to scope out his bedroom, but I was nosy enough to want to know what the upstairs looked like. I mean, come on, that’s where my room was going to be, he should have brought me up there and showed me around.
After picking a spot in a corner of the couch, I sat down. I slid my feet out of my flip-flops and drew my knees up to my chest.
I felt bad for having my bare feet on his couch and wished I had socks on.
My mind drifted as I stared into the fire, watching the logs burn while the flames danced around.
I pressed my cheek into my knee and closed my eyes. The next thing I knew Dash was gently shaking my shoulder, waking me up.
“Hey,” he said as I sat up and looked around.
How long had he been gone for? It felt like I had only closed my eyes for two seconds before he was shaking me awake.
“Hey,” I muttered back in a rough voice. I cleared my throat and scooted further back on the couch. I let my feet drop to the floor and I sat up straighter.
A tray sat on the orange ottoman. Mugs of hot chocolate and a plate loaded with cookies rested on the tray. Ah, so that had been what took him so long.
Without being invited to do so, I picked up a steaming mug of hot chocolate and held it between my hands. I blew into the mug before taking a sip from it. I couldn’t remember when the last time I had hot chocolate was. It was delicious, even if it did burn going down.
“Anyway,” he said as he picked up a cookie from the tray, carrying on with our previous conversation. “She had problems before the Council tried to get her to join a coven. She didn’t like going outside because her father had only allowed her outside at night and even then, she wasn’t allowed to leave their fenced in backyard. The whole thing is fucked up and the Council was just trying to do right by her, they’d been appalled by the way she had been treated. And, can you really blame them for taking her out of there and getting her away from that man? I don’t. And I don’t think it’s their fault she killed herself, either. Marcus’s father got drunk and drove his car into a tree a week after she died. That whole family has suffered one loss after the next, especially Marcus. First his mother, then his sister, his father, his wife and now his brother. Not to mention this shit with your mom. I can’t really blame him for getting the hell out of here.”
My eyes filled with tears I refused to shed. I didn’t want to talk about Mr. Cole and his sad life anymore. It was making me feel guilty. Guilt for being upset with him for not staying with me. Guilt with myself for not telling him the truth about my mother and keeping this gigantic, hideous secret from him. And guilt because part of me was relieved he was going so that I no longer had to lie to him. The lie was eating at me, festering inside, threatening to poison me. Yeah, I had guilt, I had bucket loads of it. And I really did not want to be talking about Mr. Cole anymore today.
I plunked my mug on the tray and asked, “Do you think they will want to meet me?”
In my head I saw a bunch of wrinkled old dudes wearing suits and huge sunglasses that covered up half their faces. Were there women on the Council? Somehow, I doubted it.
“Shit,” Dash exclaimed as he slammed his mug down on the tray. The brown liquid sloshed over the rim of the mug, spilling all over the tray.
“What?”
“With you here I forgot I had shit to do today.” He muttered. “Damn. I have to get ready.”
He scrambled to his feet and practically ran out of the living room, leaving me baffled as I watched him go.
What the hell just happened?
Chapter Fourteen
“What are you doing?” I asked Dash curiously.
He was rolling out some sheer black fabric across his large dining room table.
“Prepping for my client who is going to be here in about half an hour,” he grunted.
I had found out Dash was excellent when it came to giving out information, even if it was a little awkward.