One Last Time (Loveless Brothers 5)

Seth: Perfect.* * *I put my phone back and finish cleaning up, locking all the doors, and leave through the back. It’s been a week and a half since I slept over at Seth’s house, a week and a half since I found the panties under his sink, and it’s been fine except for every moment that I get some reminder of his popularity.

Mindy’s tattoo. The fact that Stacey Hepp, who once sent him naked photos, is in my morning yoga class sometimes. The way women I don’t even know look at him when we’re together, like I’m invisible and they’re remembering something nice.

It bothers me, and I hate that it bothers me. I hate that I can’t do what I said I would and give us a clean slate, but I’m trying. I swear I’m trying.Chapter Thirty-EightSeth“Is there anything else, Miss Radcliffe?”

The concierge smiles attentively at Delilah, who’s pulling her purse back onto her shoulder.

“Can you remind me when the happy hour is?”

“From five until eight.”

“Perfect, thank you so much!” she says, and grabs her glass of champagne from the counter. “Ready?” she asks me, taking a sip.

I, too, am holding a glass of champagne, which was offered to me upon checkin at the Allegheny Crest Mountaintop Resort. It goes nicely with the massive stone fireplace, the leather sofas and armchairs, the carefully curated bowls of fruit, and the huge landscape paintings that adorn the walls.

“At your service, Miss Radcliffe,” I say, following her down a plushly-carpeted hallway. Someone met us at the car and whisked away our luggage, and I presume that it’s been taken to the condo and not stolen.

“Don’t you dare start,” she says, and takes my hand in hers as we walk.

“You did say condo, not condos. It’s an important S.”

“Slip of the tongue?” she says, making a face.

“I thought we were gonna be sleeping in a bedroom next door to Ava and Thad,” I say, still drinking the champagne. “I packed for sleeping in a bedroom next door to Ava and Thad.”

“Technically, they’re still kind of next door,” Delilah says.

We turn a corner, walk past a windowed nook with leather armchairs and a bowl of fruit. How much must this place spend on fruit that no one eats?

“In a separate condominium isn’t next door,” I say. “I thought I was sharing a bathroom with these people.”

Delilah laughs out loud at that.

“Vera would never,” she says, taking another drink. “Can you imagine if someone left an unused tampon where a man could see it? My God. Perish the thought.”

Then she glances over at me.

“Sorry,” she says. “I probably should’ve warned you. Though I also kind of forgot you didn’t know.”

I wonder, briefly, what else I don’t know, and then I push the thought away.

I know Delilah’s family is beyond rich and into the realm of wealthy, and I also know she feels weird about it even though it obviously benefits her. The vast majority of people can’t drop out of college once and art school twice, then open their own business debt-free and she knows it.

Anyway, she owns a condo, as do all three of her sisters. Her parents own the penthouse upstairs. There’s a whole Radcliffe wing of this place.

As someone whose family vacations almost always involved tents, I feel a little out of my element.

“You forgot I didn’t know you owned a condo in a ski resort?” I ask, still walking. This place is huge. “Tell me now if you’ve got a private island somewhere.”

“I don’t think so,” she muses. Pauses. Then: “The condo was a gift, actually.”

Hell of a gift.

“From your parents?”

Delilah drinks the last sip of her champagne, then stops at a door near the end of the hall.

“It was a wedding present,” she says, pulling out the key. “It sort of became a tradition, because then Winona and Olivia and Ava also got condos when they got married and now there’s a whole compound up here.”

She pushes the door open, walks in, looks at me over her shoulder.

“Voila!”

This was his. This place belonged to him. He stayed here, he slept here. He sat on that couch. He ate in this kitchen and all this was his and now I’m here, in the place he’s already possessed and left.

“I know it’s kind of a lot,” Delilah is saying as she tosses the keys on the counter, hangs her coat on a row of hooks near the door. “But I actually don’t come here much and we mostly rent it out, and there’s a certain look that people really want in their slope side ski condo.”

I finally unzip my coat, hang it next to hers.

“I guess you got it in the divorce?” I say, hoping I sound casual.

There’s a stone fireplace, a huge flat-screen TV, leather couches. A kitchen with marble counters and a huge stainless steel fridge. It’s all sleek and rustic at the same time, all perfectly matching. It doesn’t look a thing like Delilah’s house.