Chapter Four
“Ms. Lopez, you’ll be dining in one of the private rooms upstairs. Please follow me.” The host leads me up a short flight of stairs and toward a white door with gentle gold embellishments. “Someone will be along for your order shortly. Your drink is waiting for you.”
“Thank you.” I wait until he disappears before opening the door. The room is empty—which means my client is late. Fantastic. Just what I need.
I pour a glass of wine from the bottle on the table and set my purse by my feet.
“Dayton.”
I freeze. “Please tell me this is a bad coincidence and not something you organized.”
Aaron says nothing as he takes the seat opposite me. “We need to talk.”
“We’ve spoken plenty over the last few days, don’t you think?”
“Not nearly enough.” He fixes me with a hard stare. “Sit down, Dayton. You’re not going anywhere.”
“Really?”
“The door is locked from the outside.” His lips quirk. “And on my orders, it won’t be unlocked until one hour from now.”
“Let me guess. Your uncle owns this restaurant, and that’s why you’re playing caveman.”
“I could walk into any restaurant in Seattle and have a private room booked quicker than it takes you to blink.” He looks up at me, and I feel the truth in his words. “Now, you can stand while we talk or you can sit. I really don’t mind, but we’re most definitely talking. You’re not leaving this room until I’m finished.”
“I think I’ve made it perfectly clear I don’t want to talk to you.”
“And I’ve made it perfectly clear you’re going to, and we both know who is going to get their way. You’d be much more comfortable sitting down, I’d imagine.”
I sit back down and take a deep breath. “This is underhanded, you realize that?”
He shrugs one shoulder, leaning back casually on his chair. “I’m not above playing dirty to get you back. I’m not above anything to get you.”
I take a long sip from my glass. “What are you doing in Seattle?”
“That’s the middle of the story.”
“Fine. Why don’t you start from the beginning? I’m always good for a fairytale.”
He chuckles lowly, and I feel it down my spine. F*ck you, body. F*ck you.
“When you left, after…” He pauses.
“After I discovered you’d been lying to me for weeks.”
“Ah, it wasn’t really lying.”
“It was a lie of omission, and that’s still a lie.” I hold his gaze for a few beats. “But we’re not discussing your idiocy, so please continue.”
“When you left, I confronted Naomi, and eventually she admitted she organized the party deliberately. She was trying to make my life difficult for me, and she’s succeeded.” He runs his finger around the rim of his glass. “I spent the next few days in Paris doing business and headed back to New York. A divorce agreement was already drawn up—my final offer—and if she didn’t sign it, we’d go to court and she’d get a hell of a lot less. She agreed. Dad flew her into the city and we signed the papers.”
“Congratulations,” I repeat my halfhearted sentiment from the other night.
“And then I fired her.”
“Excuse me?”
Aaron smirks and loosens his tie. “Our lawyer, Mr. Carlisle Sr., pulled out the documents and I took over the company. Then I fired her. She no longer has a place at Stone Advertising or modeling.”
“Making your mark quickly, aren’t you? Starting off as ruthless as you intend to carry on?”
He rests his elbows on the table and leans forward. “She f*cked with you, Dayton. I don’t take kindly to people f*cking with the most important person in my life.”
“Are you firing yourself then? Because you f*cked with me pretty damn good too.”
His eyes darken. “I don’t need to. My punishment is my own personal pain in knowing I hurt you. Not to mention the way your eyes haunt me. I can’t close my eyes without seeing your face as you found out about her.”
“Good.” I grab my glass tightly. “I hope it hurts like a bitch.”
“Worse,” he says honestly. “Being without you is like my soul has been shredded in the most brutal way. There isn’t a second where I’m not thinking of you and the way you feel in my arms or the way you taste when your lips are against mine. Being without you is the worst kind of torture, and I brought it on entirely by myself.”
I swallow. I know, I want to say. I know because I feel that and more.
“So why are you here? In Seattle? Other than to harass me, of course.”
“I control the Seattle branch now. The person in charge here before me was all too happy to relocate to New York.”
“Happy to relocate? I’m sure he was.”
“I may or may not have convinced him a false happiness was better than no job.”
I shake my head. “You’re a bastard in and out of the boardroom.”
His lips quirk to the side. “I prefer powerful or influential, personally.”
“I’ll stick with bastard, thanks.” I meet his eyes. “You should have stayed in New York, Aaron. It would have been better for us both. You should have stayed just like you did the first time around.”
“And the first time around, I made a colossal mistake. I f*cked up. I should have come running after you and never let you out of my sight, but I was too weak to do that. I didn’t realize you were the best thing I would ever have in my life. Now I know differently. Now I know that nothing or nobody will ever compare to you, and I’m not giving you up again.”
“It’s not a choice, Aaron.”
“I’m not giving you up. Hear that, listen to it, understand it, and accept it.” His eyes are focused, his voice edged with a rawness that hits me hard. “No matter what you convince yourself, Dayton, you’re mine. Your heart and your body belong to me. You know it as well as I do.”
“I’m not convincing myself of anything. Only what I know to be true.”
He stands now, leaning closer to me—so close I can feel his breath across my lips as his eyes search mine. “Then start convincing yourself of how entirely you belong to me and the fact it isn’t changing anytime soon.”
***
The cab pulls up outside Monique’s house, and I slam the door behind me. Anger is circulating crazily in my body, so much so I can barely think. Yet again, she knew. She knew he was there and she made me go.
I see red as I storm up to her house and shove her door open.
“Monique! Monique! Get your ass here now!”
Her husband, Ross, appears in the living room. “Dayton? Are you okay?”
“Where the hell is she, Ross?”
“She’s upstairs. Hang on.” He eyes me curiously as he passes me, and I take a deep breath. My fists are clenched at my sides, and footsteps on the stairs alert me to her presence.
“Dayton. What a surprise.”
“Surprise? I’ll give you a f*cking surprise, Monique!” I follow her into the kitchen. “What the f*ck? Are you trying to drive me insane?”
“You’ll have to explain yourself.” She pours herself a cup of coffee. “I’m not following.”
“Of course you’re not following the fact you just sent me to lunch with my ex-f*cking-boyfriend boyfriend who broke my heart for a second time just two weeks ago!”
“Ah.”
“Ah. Ah. F*cking ah! What the f*ck, Mon? You knew! You knew he was there and you sent me anyway!”
“I know.”
“Why? Why the hell did you let me go?”
She turns, her coffee clasped to her chest. Her ice-blue eyes are warmer than I’ve ever seen them. “You told me you wouldn’t fall in love.”
I desperately rake my fingers through my hair and spin on the spot. “I loved him, Mon. Do you get that? Once upon a time, I loved that man so f*cking desperately that my life wasn’t worth living without him. I loved him so damn fiercely that he was the center of my universe, but I moved on. I stepped into this world after my parents died, into this world where love isn’t allowed. I forgot what it felt like, what love and adoration were, what it was to be addicted to the touch of another person. Until I saw him again. Until he took me on a f*cking worldwide trip you allowed to happen, one you shouldn’t have allowed. And now… Now I know a secret everyone knew but me, and I’ve had my heart shredded into a million inscrutable, unfixable pieces because of it. Because of him. And you let me go. You let me go!”
She looks at me hesitantly, regret filling her eyes the way tears are filling mine. I wrap my arms around myself.
“I am so in love with him that it hurts every time I breathe. Every time my heart beats, I feel the pain of not having him by my side, and you let me go. Why, Mon? Why the hell did you let me go?”
Her heels click along the tiled floor as she approaches me and wraps me in her arms in the first comforting contact I’ve ever had from her. I bury my face in her shoulder and cry, the hot tears soaking her shirt. She sighs as I sob so hard that it really does feel like my heart is being torn from my chest.
“Because,” my agent says in a soft voice, “despite my job and the way I act around you girls, I believe in true love. I believe in the power and the magic of true love, and I will always send you down that path if you’re lucky enough to ever cross it.”
“This isn’t love,” I whisper. “This is pure pain.”
“There’s no love without pain. When it hurts as much as you do now, that’s when you know its love.” She smooths her hand over my hair. “Dayton, honey, when it feels like your whole world has been tipped upside down and shaken so hard that nothing makes sense except for the steady pounding of your broken heart, that’s when you know it’s true love.”
***
Liv’s apartment is quiet when I let myself in. This is the only place I can bear to be right now. It’s the only place he hasn’t been.
I know she won’t be back until tomorrow since her shoot was today, but her tabby cat, Angus, immediately rubs himself against my legs.
“Hey, buddy.” I bend down and scratch his back, much to his delight. “Let me in, will ya?” I lock the door behind me and dump my purse on the table. “Hey, Angus, do you know if your mommy has any wine in this place?”
He jumps onto one of the barstools and purrs loudly. I sigh. Of course he wouldn’t know. His food tray is nearly empty, so I grab a can of food from the cupboard and dump it into the bowl before I turn to her fridge.
There’s a bottle in there. Bingo.
I pour a glass, kick off my shoes, and curl up on her sofa. After I find some trashy TV show and Angus curls up on my lap, my eyes close briefly.
I’m exhausted. Completely, utterly, mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted. I think the only thing that could revive me now is a year on a remote island with no contact with people, a stack of books, and a supply of wine.
And possibly my vibrator, because, y’know. A year is a long time to go without an orgasm.
I smile at my own thoughts and shake my head. Jesus.
A heavy sigh leaves me. I wish I could go back a couple of months, back to when everything was simple. When I knew exactly what to expect from my days and where my life was going. This crazy limbo I’m hanging precariously in is almost too much to deal with.
I could end it all now. I could give in and give Aaron what he wants. Me.
I just don’t know if I can. I love him, but I don’t know if I respect him anymore, and I sure as hell don’t trust him. How can I? How do you trust someone who kept something so critical to their life from you?
That doesn’t stop my heart or my body crying out for him though. It doesn’t stop the heavy thumps in my chest when he’s around. I still want to sink into his arms and never leave the comfort of them.
I almost want him to convince me he’s worth it all. He took so much from me so readily, but he never really gave me any of himself in return. He so easily told me to give everything up for him when he couldn’t even give up a skeleton rotting in his closet. And now… Now he’s fighting.
Now that he’s sorted his shit, he’s back and he’s fighting. I wonder if he knows what he’s fighting for. I wonder if I know what he’s fighting for.
I don’t. I don’t have a clue what he’s doing.
All he says is that I belong to him. I do. I’m not na?ve enough to believe I don’t… But it’s not enough. Maybe if he said them, the words I want to hear, it might change things.
Telling me that he never stopped loving me isn’t enough. If he stands in front of me, looks me in the eye, and tells me that he loves me, then it could change everything. I’d know what he’s fighting for, I’d know why he’s fighting, and perhaps I’d be willing to fight for the same thing.
Perhaps.