Chapter 13: The Playboy's Facade
The ice had melted in Jeremy’s scotch, diluting the amber into a pale, unappealing gold.He didn’t drink it. He watched the condensation roll down the glass instead, tracing a path through the chill on the black quartz bar. Beside him, Candice’s perfume was a cloying cloud of jasmine and vanilla, cutting through the club’s chemical bergamot.She’d been talking about Milan.
“...and the director said my eyes just captured the light, you know? It’s not just about the clothes, it’s about the story in the face.”
Jeremy nodded, a slight, mechanical tilt of his head.“Must be rewarding. To create an image like that.”
“Oh, it is. My father, of course, he’d rather I was creating shareholder value.” She laughed, a practiced, tinkling sound. She swirled her cocktail, the bright pink liquid catching the strobe.“He runs Harrington Automotive. Ever deal with them?”
“We have suppliers.Not directly.” His voice was flat.Professional.“Figures. It’s all steel and grease and boardrooms.I’d rather die.” She took a long sip. “I’d much rather go around, see other places, you know?Feel something real. Than be detained in four walls of an office pushing papers. That’s a kind of death, isn’t it?A slow one.”
Jeremy’s knuckle pressed against his lips. He thought of Elton’s quiet dignity in his budget-conscious suit, the precise way he handled papers. The stillness in him. “Some people find a kind of peace in those four walls,” he murmured, almost to himself.Candice didn’t hear him. She shifted on her stool, the silver fabric of her dress pulling tight.She was close now, her knee pressing against his tailored trousers. The contact was warm, insistent.
“So,” she said, her voice dropping into a more intimate register, cutting through the thumping bass.“You’re the charmer of this place. I’ve watched.People turn their heads the moment you enter a room. It’s like you’ve got your own gravity.” She leaned in, her breath sweet with liquor and mint. “But… I want to know what’s behind the face. The one you wear in here.”
Jeremy turned his head slowly.Their faces were inches apart. Her eyes were a vivid blue, wide with artificial curiosity and genuine ambition. He could see the perfect, subtle makeup, the false lashes.He felt nothing but a hollow, familiar ache.
“Why do you want to know?” he asked, his voice low.A genuine question layered over a trap. “Is there something wrong with the face I’m showing you?”
His hand moved from his glass, resting on the bar beside her thigh.His little finger brushed the sequined fabric. Then he let his knee press more firmly against hers, a deliberate, steady pressure. He leaned closer still, his lips almost brushing the shell of her ear.The noise of the club swallowed the words for anyone else.“How about you? What do you really want, Candice?”
She shivered, a genuine reaction. A small, victorious smile touched her lips.She turned her head, her mouth by his ear. Her whisper was hot and damp.“I want you, Jeremy Dawson. Every time Dorothy talked about you, I couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like.To be with you. You’re every girl’s dream in Connecticut.The mystery.The money. The… danger.” She pulled back just enough to look at him, her gaze glazing over with desire and conquest. “And so are your brothers.”
Something cold and sharp flickered behind Jeremy’s eyes. It was the mention of his brothers.It was the reduction of them all to a set of props in a Connecticut fantasy. For a second, he saw not Candice, but the ghost of Dorothy’s analytical smirk. A player on a lonely board.He didn’t let the coldness reach his face. Instead, he let a slow, heavy-lidded smile spread across his features. The charm clicked back into place, seamless as a lock turning. He slid his arm around her waist, his hand firm on the small of her back.He pulled her snug against him, her body pliant and eager.
“Then,” he said, the smile not reaching his eyes, “this is not the right place to do what our bodies are asking for.”
He stood, bringing her with him. They slid off the stools together, a coordinated movement. He kept her close, his arm possessive, guiding her away from the bar, through the pulsing crowd.Heads did turn.He ignored them.
They moved down a narrow, dimly lit aisle, away from the main floor. The bass became a muffled throb in the walls.The air cooled, smelling of cleaner and stale cigarette smoke from a previous era. A corridor, lined with plain, dark doors marked only by small, backlit numbers.He stopped at the last door. A keycard appeared from his pocket, a smooth black slate. A soft beep, a green light, and he pushed the door open.The room was a study in muted opulence. Low, indirect lighting glowed behind smoked glass panels. The walls were padded with a dark, sound-absorbent fabric. In the center sat a large, U-shaped sofa of deep black leather, soft and inviting. A low coffee table of polished obsidian held a spread: a silver ice bucket cradling a bottle of champagne, cut crystal glasses, small bowls of almonds, dark chocolate, fat green grapes.Candice stepped in, her eyes widening with appreciation. “A room just for you,” she breathed. “For privacy,” he corrected gently, closing the door. The lock engaged with a solid, final thunk. The roar of the club vanished, replaced by a dense, expectant quiet.He led her to the sofa.She sat, sinking into the leather. He poured champagne, the bubbles rising in a frantic, cheerful column. He handed her a glass, then took one for himself.He didn’t drink. He sat opposite her, one ankle resting on his knee, watching.The conversation meandered. She spoke more of modelling, of the fleeting nature of beauty, of famous names dropped like careless confetti.He asked polite questions, his responses vague, encouraging. He spoke of Dawson Industries in only the broadest, most glossy terms—global reach, legacy, innovation. He was playing a part, the one written for him: the charming, shallow heir.
She grew more animated, more flushed.The champagne bottle emptied. Her words began to slur just at the edges, her laughs coming louder, her gestures looser. She moved from her seat to sit beside him, her body leaning into his side.
“You’re not like I thought,” she murmured, her head tilting back to look at him. Her makeup was still perfect, but her eyes were unfocused.“No?” he asked, his voice a low rumble in the quiet room.
“You listen. Most men like you… they just talk.” Her hand came up, her fingers tracing the line of his jaw.“Dorothy said you were an empty itinerary.She’s wrong. There’s something in here.” Her fingertip tapped his temple. “Something sad.”
Jeremy went very still.The mask slipped for a heartbeat. He saw his own reflection in the dark window of a drinks cabinet: a handsome, hollow man in a velvet blazer with a drunk stranger’s hand on his face.Then she kissed him.
It was sudden, a clumsy, champagne-wet press of her lips against his.She tasted of sugar and alcohol. He was shocked, not by the act, but by the profound disconnect he felt—a vast, echoing canyon between the physical fact and any corresponding sensation within him.His body reacted from muscle memory. His lips moved against hers, reciprocating.His hand came up to cradle her neck, his fingers sliding into her hair. It was a perfect pantomime of passion. He followed the movement of her lips, deepening the kiss, a skilled conductor leading an orchestra he couldn’t hear.
A heat built, but it was hers, not his. It transferred from her skin to his, a borrowed fire. Her breathing hitched, her hands fumbling with the buttons of his shirt.
He felt the momentum shift, the script requiring the next scene.A numbness settled over him, a clinical detachment.He stood, pulling her up with him. His movements were smooth, assured. He turned her, guiding her back until her knees hit the edge of the leather sofa. “Jeremy…” she sighed, her eyes glazed.
He didn’t answer with words. He applied gentle, firm pressure on her shoulders, and she sank down, laying back against the dark leather.Her golden hair fanned out. She looked up at him, a picture of willing surrender.
He followed her down, his body covering hers, blocking out the low light. The world narrowed to the scent of her perfume, the feel of slick leather under his palms, the shallow rhythm of her breath. He lost himself in the mechanics of it, the practiced motions, the whispered nothings that meant nothing. His mind floated free, a distant, cold star watching a body go through its motions. Everything blurred. Sight, sound, thought—all dissolved into a grayscale roar of physical sensation without emotional anchor. He was a ghost in a machine, operating levers and pulleys, creating an effect for an audience of one who was too drunk to see the performer had left the stage long ago.
Later, the room was quiet save for the hum of the hidden climate control. Candice slept, a deep, liquor-heavy slumber, one strap of her silver dress slipped down her shoulder. Jeremy stood by the obsidian table, fully dressed, re-buttoning his cuffs. He felt scraped clean. Empty. The hollowness was a tangible thing inside his ribs.He looked at her sleeping form, a stranger in his private room. Dorothy’s voice echoed. A player on a lonely board. He took out his phone. The screen was blinding in the dim room. No messages. No emails from JCDawson to anyone else. Just the time. He picked up his blazer and shrugged it on.
He left without waking her. The door locked automatically behind him. The narrow corridor felt like a tunnel leading back to a world that demanded a performance he no longer had the energy to give. The muffled bass of the club felt like a dying pulse. He walked towards it, his steps echoing on the concrete floor, the taste of champagne and a deeper, more profound bitterness lingering on his tongue.
==============================
He walked towards it, his steps echoing on the concrete floor, the taste of champagne and a deeper, more profound bitterness lingering on his tongue. The noise swelled, a wall of sound he had to push through to reach the exit. Faces blurred into a smear of hunger and neon.
Outside, the cold night air was a slap. It didn’t cleanse. It just made the hollow place inside him feel colder, more articulated. He walked the kilometer back through the woods, the path familiar in the dark. His mind, desperate for any anchor, skipped away from the quiet of his room at the estate.
It landed, with the precision of a targeted missile, on a different silence. The dead quiet of the Hayes Library stacks, twelve years past. The smell of dust and aging paper. He’d been waiting for Sasha, a bouquet of stupid pink peonies wrapped in brown paper tucked awkwardly under his arm. He’d rounded the corner to their usual spot, a grin already forming.
The grin died. Sasha was there, her back against the philosophy section. A senior lacrosse player named Garrett had her pinned there, his hands under her sweater. Her laugh was a bright, tinkling sound Jeremy had thought was only for him. “Of course I love you,” she was saying, her voice breathy. “But be serious, Garrett. He does all my problem sets. He’s a human calculator with a trust fund. What’s not to use?”
The words weren’t a blow. They were a surgical incision, neat and fatal. Jeremy didn’t make a sound. He simply turned and walked away, the peonies dropping into a grey recycling bin by the exit. He didn’t cry. He went to the dean’s office the next morning with a printed log of shared documents and timestamps. His voice was flat, clinical. “I believe Miss Volkov has submitted work that isn’t her own. I facilitated it. Here is the evidence.”
Her devastation, when the academic probation letter came, was a public spectacle. He felt no triumph. Only a cold, quiet verification: a Dawson wasn’t the one to mess with. That night, alone in his dorm, he opened a bottle of cheap bourbon. The burning in his throat was the only feeling he could access. Philip found him there, slumped at his desk, the bottle half-gone. “Jeremy. What is this?” Philip’s voice was sharp, all eldest-brother disapproval. Jeremy just waved a hand, a sloppy gesture. “Celebrating, big brother. Got an A in… something.”
The change wasn’t immediate. It was a metamorphosis. He observed the world that had hurt him, studied its rules. He spent his allowance on clothes that felt like a costume—silken shirts, tailored blazers. He forced himself into crowded bars, his laughter a loud, practiced performance. He brought a laughing brunette home to the estate during spring break. Philip intercepted them in the grand foyer, his grey eyes glacial. “Get her out of this house. Now.” Jeremy just smirked, the expression feeling alien on his face. “What’s the matter, Phil? Worried I’m tarnishing the Dawson good name?” The reputation as the family headache was cemented that night, a role he embraced like armor.
The armor, however, began to reshape the man inside. Joining the varsity debate team his third year placed him in close, prolonged quarters with men. Luke Irving’s focus was a physical force in the preparation room. One afternoon, after practice, Jeremy walked into the locker room to retrieve a forgotten folder. Luke was the only one there, damp from the shower, a white towel slung low on his hips. Water dripped from his golden hair down the defined planes of his chest and stomach.
Jeremy stopped, the folder forgotten in his hand. His throat went tight. He felt a blush heat his neck and ears, a furious, uncontrollable reaction. Luke looked over, wiping his face with another towel. He saw the stare. He cleared his throat. “Dawson. You’re losing the plot. Everything okay?”
Jeremy jerked his gaze away, fumbling with the folder. “Yes, Irving. I’m okay. Just… blurred thoughts. Lot of them, lately.” He fled, the secret burning a hole in his chest, a new and terrifying map of himself he dared not study.
The following year, at the three-day inter-collegiate business conference, Joshua Culling sat two rows ahead. He had a habit of pushing his brunette hair back when thinking, his hazel eyes scanning complex data slides. Jeremy found himself tracking the movement, the intense line of his eyebrows. On the final day, as attendees milled in the lobby, Joshua approached. His hands were shoved in his pockets, his posture oddly defensive. “Can we get coffee? Please? Just the two of us.”
Jeremy felt a jolt of surprise, and a thrill of fear. He forced a casual grin. “Whoa. It’s weird for another guy to invite me for coffee. But sure. Lead the way.”
In a corner booth of a quiet shop, the pretense melted. They talked about pragmatic things first—professors, startup ideas, the stifling expectations of legacy. The conversation then deepened, stretching into the space between words. Joshua grew quiet, tracing the rim of his mug. “I’ve been noticing you since the first day,” he said, not looking up. “There’s something about you I can’t explain.”
“What do you mean?” Jeremy asked, his heart hammering. “Am I this… attractive? Even to guys like you?” He tried to laugh it off, the sound brittle. “You don’t have to answer that.”
Joshua looked up then, his gaze direct and unguarded. He reached across the table, his fingers brushing Jeremy’s wrist before settling over his hand. The touch was electric. “No. I wasn’t just attracted to you. I… I think I might even be falling for you.”
Jeremy’s eyes widened. “You can’t be serious.”
“Why?” Joshua’s voice softened, pleading. “Haven’t you ever fallen for a guy before?”
The memory of Luke in the locker room flashed, vivid and painful. Jeremy looked down at their joined hands. The silence stretched, and Joshua’s face fell. He began to pull away. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“No,” Jeremy said quickly, holding his hand tighter. “It’s okay. I actually admired someone before. But it stayed a secret. It had to.”
What followed were stolen, secret hours that felt like a separate universe. Hidden corners of the library, empty gyms at dawn, the secluded bench behind the old horticulture greenhouse. In the deepest, most shadowed row of the library stacks, between volumes of ancient economic theory, Joshua leaned in and kissed him. His lips were hesitant at first, then sure. It wasn’t like anything Jeremy had ever known. It felt like finding a language he didn’t know he could speak.
It lasted six weeks. Joshua’s mother, a devout pillar of a prominent Catholic family, found a receipt for two dinners at an out-of-the-way restaurant. Her investigation was swift and merciless. Joshua showed up at their spot, his face ashen. “She knows. She knows everything.” His voice was a shattered thing. “She threatened to call your brothers. To put it in the Hartford Sentinel’s society column. ‘Dawson Scion’s Deviant Proclivities.’ She said she’d ruin you.”
Jeremy felt the old, familiar coldness rising. “Let her try. We’re Dawsons.”
“You don’t understand!” Joshua’s eyes were wild with fear. “It’s not about winning a fight. It’s about the noise. The disgust. I can’t… I can’t watch her do that to you. I can’t be the reason.” He was crying then, silent tears cutting tracks through the dusk. “I have to say goodbye.”
He walked away, and Jeremy let him. The silence that followed was total. It was the silence after the library with Sasha, but worse. This time, he had known what was being taken. He went back to the bars that night. He drank until the world softened. He flirted with a girl named Chloe who laughed at all his jokes. He performed, perfectly. The performance became the man.
Jeremy reached the estate’s service entrance, the memory fading like a bad signal. He keyed himself in, the grand house sleeping around him. The bitterness in his mouth was now just stale champagne. The hollow feeling had a history, a shape. It was the shape of every real feeling he’d ever had, carefully excavated and discarded.
He climbed the stairs to his wing, passing the portraits of his brothers. He stopped before his own door, but didn’t enter. He thought of the blank email he’d sent to Elton. ‘Tomorrow. My office. 7 PM. Don’t be late.’ He saw Elton’s steady, observant eyes behind his glasses, the quiet dignity that refused to be impressed. Elton, who was all the things Jeremy had been before the world had sanded him down into this glittering, empty shape.
For the first time in years, the performance felt like a suffocating skin. He didn’t want to go into his quiet, expensive room. He stood in the dark hallway, caught between the ghost of the man he was supposed to be and the terrifying echo of the boy he had been, a boy who believed a feeling could be safe. The house was silent, holding its breath.
The house was silent, holding its breath. Jeremy stood in the dark hallway for a long time, the chill of the marble floor seeping through his shoes. He finally turned the handle to his rooms and stepped inside, leaving the door open behind him, a rectangle of deeper black in the dark.
He didn’t turn on the lights. He shrugged off his blazer and let it drop to the floor. He walked to the window, looking out over the grounds silvered by a partial moon. The memory of the club, of Candice’s perfumed skin and vacant eyes, was a slick film he couldn’t wipe away. It was just the latest in a long line of performances, each one leaving him feeling more spectral than the last. His mind, desperate for substance, didn’t circle back to Joshua or Sasha. It went further back, to a Tuesday morning two years ago, a point of origin.
He’d been walking with Arthur Schwartz, the Director of Marketing, through the department’s bullpen. The space was a hive of predictable energy, the low chatter about demographics and campaigns a white noise Jeremy usually tuned out. He was half-listening to Arthur’s update on a brand synergy report, his gaze drifting over the cubicles. Then he saw him.
A young man, sitting perfectly upright at a temporary desk near the corner. He was focused on his computer screen, his expression one of deep concentration. He wore a simple, crisp white shirt and a tie that was clearly inexpensive but knotted with precise care. The late morning sun caught the lenses of his glasses—a pair with thin, red frames—glinting as he turned his head slightly to reference a paper file. There was an stillness about him, an island of quiet efficiency in the middle of the corporate buzz. Jeremy stopped walking.
Arthur stopped mid-sentence. “Sir?”
Jeremy didn’t look at him. He kept his eyes on the young man, who was now typing, his fingers moving with a clean, rapid accuracy. He leaned slightly toward Franklin, his voice a low murmur meant only for his ear. “I know most of the faces in this room. That young man in the red glasses by the window. He’s new.”
Arthur followed his gaze, adjusting his own glasses. “Oh. That’s Elton Ryan Reeves. Started today as a junior marketing assistant. Top of his class at state, apparently. Quiet so far.”
“Elton,” Jeremy repeated, the name feeling deliberate in his mouth. He watched as Elton answered his desk phone, his posture not slouching an inch, his voice too low to hear but the cadence professional and clear. There was no performative laughter, no anxious shuffling. Just a grounded, sharp presence. It was like looking at a photograph of someone he used to know, but the image was clearer, the lines harder, stripped of the defensive, joking armor Jeremy himself had once worn.
He leaned in again, his voice dropping even further, a confidential whisper. “Art. I want you to observe him. For six months. His work ethic, his accuracy, how he handles pressure. Consult with his immediate supervisor. If his standing is exemplary after that period, report it directly to me.”
Franklin blinked, confused. “For a promotion track? We usually wait eighteen months before—”
“Not for a promotion,” Jeremy interrupted, his eyes still fixed on Elton, who was now making a note in the margin of a document with a precise, slanted script. “I have a different need. A personal one. I am… fatigued by a certain dynamic. I require an assistant. One whose primary qualification is a formidable mind, not… other considerations. Do you understand?”
A slow understanding dawned on Franklin’s face, mingled with caution. He knew Jeremy’s reputation, the parade of temporary, flirtatious assistants that never lasted. “You want him for a personal assistant role? That’s quite a leap from marketing.”
“If he’s as sharp as he looks, he’ll learn,” Jeremy said, finally pulling his gaze away. He looked at Franklin, and his grey eyes were utterly serious, all trace of his usual playful haze gone. “I am longing for a secretary that is not female. This is not a whim. Observe him. Report to me.”
He didn’t wait for a verbal agreement. He gave a single, curt nod and continued walking, leaving Franklin standing there. The director watched him go, then looked back at the new hire. He’d make the call to the supervisor that afternoon. Jeremy’s tone had allowed no debate.
Now, in the dark of his room, Jeremy remembered that moment with crystalline clarity. He had seen a reflection, but a reflection that had been tempered by a fire he could only guess at. Elton’s seriousness wasn’t born of privilege or a choice to be aloof. It was the ingrained posture of a man who had never had a net, who had become the net for others. He had checked, discreetly. Divorced parents who vanished. A grandmother stepping back into the breach. It was a struggle Jeremy, for all his family’s tragedy, had never truly known. The Dawson fortune was a cushion, however poisoned. Elton had no cushion. He had sharp edges and quiet eyes and a responsibility that weighed down his pockets.
And tomorrow at seven, that man would be in his office because of a blank-calendar command. Jeremy turned from the window. The hollow feeling churned, mixing with something new—a raw, unsettling thread of fear. He wasn’t afraid of Elton. He was afraid of the version of himself Elton’s presence seemed to summon from the past, the ghost of the boy in the library stacks who believed in things before he learned to perform instead of feel. He picked up his phone from the bedside table. The screen lit his face. He opened the email he’d sent, stared at its stark, demanding lines. He did not delete it.
He set the phone face down. The performance would be required again tomorrow, but for the first time, he had no script for it. The house remained silent, but the silence now felt like a gathering storm.