“Explain, and save me the ambiguity.”
“Are you too precious for eye contact anymore? Is that now saved for the moments I’m writhing under you and you want to see me vulnerable?”
I couldn’t believe the words had left my mouth. Shakily, too. I glanced back. Brianna wasn’t in the hallway anymore. Phew.
Célian dragged his gaze up slowly, his cobalt blue eyes extra frosty on this warm day.
“Do. What?” He highlighted every word.
“I know you paid my father’s medical bill. All of it. You’re not my sugar daddy, Célian. I appreciate your good intentions, but I don’t need help. I’m not a damsel in distress. I don’t need anyone to save me.”
I don’t want you to pity me. I don’t want you to look at me as anything less than an equal. And I don’t want you to be engaged. In fact, I especially don’t want you to be engaged and pay for my things. It makes me feel like the other woman.
Those were all the things I wanted to say but knew I never would. It wasn’t anyone’s fault but mine that I’d agreed to be put in this position, or that I still craved him like a junkie, even though he was a drug that could kill me.
He leaned back in his seat, his index fingers tapping.
“Do you have any way to prove it was me?” he asked.
Was he kidding me? There were no other suspects. The money hadn’t simply fallen from a tree straight into the wide, black hole called my debt.
“Are you really going to play that card?” I folded my arms over my chest.
He shrugged. “Not many cards I can play. I’ll take what I can get.”
I laughed, despite still being furious. He was goofy and charming when he wanted to be. Unfortunately, most times he was content with being a jerk.
“Now I feel like I owe you, and I hate it.”
“Don’t. I didn’t pay your medical and student debt because I’m fucking you. I paid them to unfuck you.”
“You paid my student loan, too?” My eyes were ready to pop out of their sockets and roll on the floor. I still stood by his open door, trying hard not to have a mental breakdown. It was flattering, but also infuriating, this assuming I needed him to save the day, that he had the power to make my problems go away like some kinky fairy godfather.
He looked down, flipping another page of the newspaper in front of him. “You were riding a full scholarship and living at home. It was hardly a substantial amount.”
“For you,” I gritted. “Not a substantial amount for you.”
“Tuck your pride back in, sweetheart. You’re coming off as a little ungrateful, and it’s unflattering.”
“Screw you, Célian.”
“Please tell me that’s an invitation.”
“I hate you!” I yelled in his face, stomping—actually stomping, me, a grown woman. He looked up and raked his eyes over my body quietly. Our gazes halted on my Chucks. Red. Anger, passion, war.
“Do you, now?”
He had no business butting into my life more than I had allowed him to, more than I had willingly shared with him. I didn’t share this with anyone. There was a reason why I’d never told him about my debt or my family life. Not even about Dad.
Dad.
My blood froze in my veins. No. There was no way. Still, I needed to ask, just to make sure.
“Do you…do you know about my father’s situation?”
He got up from his chair, grabbing his pea coat and sliding into it.
“I need another cup of coffee for this conversation. Walk with me, Chucks.”
I followed behind him. His broad shoulders were big enough to carry the entire world. He gestured for me to get into the elevator before him, and the minute the doors closed behind us, I turned to him.
“You know about my dad, don’t you?”
I didn’t know why it upset me so much. Sure, Célian was rich, successful, and prevailing, but in my eyes, we were still on the same level, as crazy as it sounded.
He now offered me his sympathy, but I rejected it, wanting to toss it back in his face. I wasn’t ashamed of my father’s illness. I just wished it was for me to decide when and where I told people about it—if I told them about it.
“I do,” he said tonelessly.
“Please don’t tell me…” I cupped my mouth. Not that it would have made any difference. My father was going to proceed with the experimental treatment, even if I had to donate a functioning lung to make it happen. But I didn’t want it to be true. Didn’t want to know that that’s what we were, Célian and I: a rookie Brooklyn reporter with a nice pair of tits and a sugar daddy boss who was about to get married to someone else and had guilt-bought his way to her affection.
I was officially the mistress, silenced by shiny, pretty things—by money and a healthcare program, and a good, steady job. A role I’d never agreed to take.
The power imbalance was now personal, and degrading, and real. I was indebted to a man I was sleeping with, no matter how we tried to spin it. A man who was taking more and more space in my life, conquering lands in my heart without claiming them. Without civilizing them. Without nurturing them.
The elevator slid open, and I walked out first. I was desperate to put some distance between us so he wouldn’t see how flustered I was, how embarrassment colored my cheeks, how I felt my whole body turning pink.
I heard him groaning behind me. I looked down and realized I was wearing a conservative, pearl-colored sheath dress that was snug around my waistline, and probably highlighted my butt.
“Like what you see?” I gritted sarcastically.
“It would look better with my hand marks all over it. Are you going to stop running?”
“Are you going to explain yourself?” I pushed the door to the building open, and we were on the busy sidewalk, facing each other and blocking the downtown human traffic by standing there like two statues.
He ran his big palm over his face, and for the first time since I’d met him, looked somewhat affected. I shouldn’t have felt so triumphant for being the one who’d put agitation there, but I was.
“It’s not like that.”
“Then tell me what’s it like.”
“I didn’t pay it because I wanted you happy or content or on your fucking knees.”
“Really? Did you know Jessica’s mother has Alzheimer’s? Did you help her out? And what about Brianna, your PA? Did you pay her student loan debt? Oh, let me guess—Elijah, who you actually talk to pretty often, also didn’t get a fat bonus this year so he could help his parents with their remortgaged house.”
“How do you know all these things?” He frowned.
“They’re my colleagues, my new friends, and I talk to them.” I flung my arms in the air. “Maybe you should do that sometime. Actually make an effort. Be nice.”
His jaw tensed and locked in anger, and I figured I had two choices: either get out of there or slap him across the face, a treatment he’d earned fair and square. I chose the option that wouldn’t land me in hot water with HR. I turned around and crossed the street toward the Duane Reade on the other side of the road. The light was green, but New York drivers were being…well, New York drivers. A purple taxi came to a halt, screeching three inches away from me and sputtering a cloud of black smoke. The scent of burned rubber filled my nostrils, and before I knew what was happening, I was on the ground.
Shielded by Célian’s body.
All of him.
On top of me.
On the hot, stony crosswalk.
I squirmed against his hard body, balling my fists and hitting his chest on instinct. I was angry. So angry. Beyond reason, belief, and logic. Another girl might feel elated to be saved—both by a man’s money and his own body. But it wasn’t just my debt, or Dad and Célian lying to me. It was the fact that I had begun to truly care for him, knowing I could never have him. Not really.
“The heart is a lonely hunter, Jude.”
No, no, it’s not, Mom. It’s the prey, and Célian is digging his claws deep into it.