50 Shades of Drake 3 and 4

Torn: Chapter Twenty-Two

    "You look surprised."

    "Because I am." Destiny held her fork in mid-air for so long, that her hand started shaking. She set her fork down.

    His eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled. "Did you expect me to tell you no?"

    "Yes, I did," she said quietly. 

    "How would you have reacted to that?" he asked, spearing a few leaves of lettuce with his fork.

    "I would have been disappointed," she replied honestly.

    "Brian would have won a bonus point, and you would have been closer to choosing him," Aubrey guessed.

    She frowned. "Is that why you said you would reconsider?"

    He shook his head. "Of course not. I wouldn't lie to you, or mislead you, just for the sake of the arrangement we have. It wouldn't even make sense. If I were that heartless, then I would have never proposed the arrangement in the first place. I would have allowed you to stay with me and only me, no matter how tormented you were, no matter how much you thought about him."

    "You mentioned a dream," she remembered. "You said something like 'It wasn't just a dream.' What did you mean?"

    His cheeks reddened again, and he seemed at a loss for words.

    She saw the nervousness in his eyes. "Aubrey?"

    "That was nothing," he said, after a moment. "I was just...it wasn't anything."

    "It sounded like something," she told him.

    "What you said about the biometric scanner...it just reminded me of a dream I had," he said.

    "What happened in the dream?" she asked, genuinely interested.

    He turned his head and gazed out of the window.

    "You know you can talk to me about anything, right?" she pressed.

    "Yeah, but...not this. Not yet. It's not the right time."

    Her mouth slanted in disapproval. "Okay," she said softly.

    "I'm not...closing myself off to you, if that's what you're thinking," he said. "I will tell you. I'm just not ready yet. I'm still processing it myself."

    "I trust you," she told him, before forking bits of salad into her mouth.

~~~~~~

    After lunch, Aubrey and Destiny walked around the park across the street from the cafe. Destiny was still reeling from the fact that he told her he'd consider marrying and having children. She was disappointed when he'd closed up afterwards, but the fact that he'd become guarded didn't do much to damper her excitement over the possibility that he'd consider marriage and fatherhood. She linked arms with him and leaned into him.

    "So...what's this about you getting back into music?"

    He laughed and squinted against the harsh sunlight. There was a slight breeze, but the day was incredibly warm for early September. "What can I say? I miss it."

    "I seem to recall a conversation we had, what now seems like ages ago, about the fact that you should get back into music," she said, walking alongside him. "I seem to remember a very wise woman telling you that you should, actually."

    "A very wise woman, huh?" he questioned, playing along while angling a look down at her.

    She tilted her face up. "As I recall, you got very angry that night."

    "That was wrong of me. I'm sorry. I was defensive about it, because I wanted to get back to it. I just...didn't feel like I could. I've been out of it f or so long, and I have other priorities now."

    "So, what changed?" she asked, tucking gleaming curls behind one ear.

    "My experiences. What I'm going through...I've been writing about it." He rolled his eyes upwards and added, "And the experiences I'll be going through with this whole allowing you to date Brian thing...you can't make stuff like that up. It's unique, it's crazy, it's...perfect material that could generate amazing lyrics."

    "Using me and my indecision for musical greatness," she mused aloud with narrowed eyes. "Genius."

    He laughed. "I'm not - I'm not using you."

    "No, I get it," she said. "I was just kidding, kind of. But you're right. This situation has the potential to help you create amazing music that no one else would be able to create. Could I give you some advice, though? Since you're finally deciding to take advice that I gave you months ago?"

    He grinned. "Sure, go ahead."

    "You should consider writing about the BDSM stuff," she suggested.

    He started coughing, and raised a hand to smother it.

    "What?" she asked, frowning up at him. "Those are unique experiences, too."

    "A little too unique, Destiny," he said, still coughing. "God. The last thing hip hop heads want to hear about is me giving it to a woman while using whips and chains and shit."

    She giggled. "You could write about it in an abstract way," she told him. "It's not like you have to come out saying, 'I fuck my bitch while using whips and chains and shit.' Although, that does almost rhyme, so you might want to use that line."

    He detached his arm from hers, just so he could form both of his arms into one huge "X."

    "No?" she asked, laughing.

    "That's a negative," he told her, laughing. "A huge negative."

    "Hmph." She linked her arm with his again. "I think it was amazing."

    "So you do it," he told her.

    "No way. You've heard me sing. I'm vocally challenged."

    He tilted his head to the side and didn't disagree with her.

    She punched him in the arm. "Jerk."

    "Your singing...is the kind of singing that is meant for the shower only," he admitted, chuckling. "But I had an amazing vocal coach. I could introduce you to her."

    "Ass," she muttered jokingly. She flipped her hair over one shoulder.

    "Sometimes," he confessed, and stopped walking.

    She stopped walking, too, and raised a hand to shade over her eyes so she could look up at him. "Why did you stop walking?" she asked him.

    "So I could do this," he said, taking a step closer to her and grabbing her by the hips. He pulled her against him and lowered his head. He didn't have to lower it that far, because she rose on her tip-toes and met him halfway. The kiss was chaste and sweet...the kind of kiss that was given at the end of a first date. He brushed his lips against hers while pressing the length of his body against hers.

    Neither one of them cared that pedestrians and dogwalkers were all gaping at them. Whenever they kissed, other people didn't seem to exist.