I Was Always Second. Until I Left. novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Lydia Without a Title

Ward Hill was a low stone building at the end of a gravel road, with a barrel room in the back and a hand-painted sign that said TASTING BY APPOINTMENT.

I drove the whole way in forty minutes with both hands tight on the wheel.

A white convertible was parked crooked across two spaces.

The barrel room door stood open a hand's width, and I heard my sister's voice before I saw anything.

I stopped on the other side of it, in the shade, and did not go in.

"I'm not asking for much," Lydia was saying.

"I know what she's got, and I know what Dad's got on paper, and I know every contract in that building."

"I know where Dad kept things."

"That's useful," Malcolm said, in the voice he used for people he had already decided about.

"It's more than useful. It's the whole company."

I put my eye to the gap.

She had put on a plain black dress and no makeup, and she looked younger and thinner than I'd ever seen her.

She stood close to him between two rows of barrels, with her hand flat on the front of his shirt.

"You've been alone a long time," she said.

"I'm tired of being the loud one, Malcolm. I'd be good at this."

"At what?"

"At being the woman at your side," Lydia said. "I'm a Whitman. I know the wine, I know the people."

"She's a girl who found out about her money two weeks ago, and she'll be a Whitman the way Dad's a Whitman, hard and cold, in a year."

"I'd be warmer."

She slid her hand up, to his collar.

Malcolm took her wrist, quite gently, and lifted her hand off his shirt.

He put it back at her side.

"Lydia," he said.

"Yes?"

"I'd like to tell you something, and I'd like you to hear it all."

She nodded, hopeful, and my stomach turned over for her.

"Your sister has a name," he said. "It's Gillian."

"You've said it twice since I met you, and both times you were sneering."

Lydia's mouth opened.

"I was twenty-one the first time I stood at your father's gate," Malcolm said.

"A girl at an upstairs window watched me stand there with a letter in my hand."

"That was you."

"You were fifteen," he said, "and you looked right at me and shut the window."

Her face went very still.

"I don't want a Whitman," he said. "I've had that offer for fifteen years in every shape, and I've watched what it costs."

← Chapter 17 · All chapters · Chapter 19 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend