“I don’t want you to go. Not like this. All I wanted to do was keep you safe.”
“For what, Mr. C’s pleasure? Or for Mister’s twisted needs? Oh, no, wait, maybe I was gonna be for Garrett Chadwick? Who the fuck are you? Huh? Who are you? You wanna keep me for a fuck, but not for all the other parts? I’m not good enough to take home and love, be something more than a fucking convenience or entertainment? Fuck you Mister-Garrett-Mr.C-fucking-Chadwick.”
My heart’s crashing into my chest, the only thing I can think of doing is hitting him, and so I pick up the alarm clock next to the bed and chuck it at him. Everything pressing down on me, everything lost, nothing’s safe, my body and mind twisting up to a complete knotted mess.
“It didn’t have to end this way. I care about you, Rose. But this is your choice, not mine.” He walks over to the safe, opens it and pulls out two rolls of hundred dollar bills. “Here. It’s eight grand. What we agreed on. I wish it didn’t have to end this way.”
“Yes it does. See, I’m Rose, the fucking hooker you picked up in the tenderloin of the city. I did my job and it’s time to move on. There ain’t enough room for people like me in the lives of all the Garrett Chadwick’s of the world. I knew better. Never again.”
He pulls on his pants and a white undershirt. His demeanor runs cold, unattached and distant.
“I’m going to give you some space. Take your time to collect your things. The dresses in the foyer closet are yours, please take them. When I get back, I’ll expect you to be gone,” he states as he calmly puts on his socks and shoes.
“That’s it? Just like that, you’re done! Just because I don’t take your deal and you can’t keep me, you’re gonna wash your hands of me? You’re one cold-ass bastard. You know that?”
“Rose, you’re such a beautiful woman, much too beautiful to talk like that. And, you’re much too smart to be selling your body. You’re still young, your whole life ahead of you. Take the money I gave you and make something of yourself, outside of this.”
“Fuck you!”
I go to slap him, but he grabs my wrist. His eyes constrict, his cock hardens and presses firmly against my thigh.
Was he getting turned on watching me suffer . . . lose . . . hurt?
Sick motherfucker.
He pulls me against his chest, his words are just above a whisper.
“I like you, Rosebud. I really do, but I’m not going to stand here and tell you what you want to hear.”
I crumble in his words. He doesn’t want me. I’m not good enough. Torn apart, shredded and lost. This is all I’m ever going to be to him, a convenient fuck . . .
IT HAD BEEN over a year since Garrett Chadwick, AKA-Mister, AKA-Mr. C, AKA-whoever the fuck I thought he was, left me broken in the penthouse suite of the Shelby Hotel. From that point on I promised myself I wouldn’t give my heart to anyone ever again. And up until Shane, I had kept that promise to myself.
It only took Mister three days to make me open up, and fall in love with him and just one night to completely break me. He destroyed every last drop of trust I had mustered to be with him. Sure, we fucked, but it was different with him. Mister peeled back my walls, dug under them and broke through like nobody before. He made me vulnerable and unprotected, and he methodically collected everything I gave to him. Selfishly, he took the small broken pieces of who I was, molded them into something presentable, something that made me believe I was worthy of a man’s loving touch. I never thought he’d have the power to convince me to then turn my own weapon of insecurity in on myself and pull the trigger. Garrett Chadwick was the worst kind of devil who contaminated me with the most venomous type of poison, love.
He broke me, destroyed the delicate, and was the annihilator of who I thought I was going to become. He was responsible for the iron-clad lock around my heart. Looking back now, maybe I was in love with the idea of him loving me.