“It doesn’t have to be secret forever.”
“Well,” she says, brightening, “as long as you’re okay with it. You’re not afraid to get fired?”
“Oh, I’m totally afraid to get fired.” I feel myself turn serious. “But Car—I have to see where this goes. I have to. I know he’s a womanizer and a playboy, but there’s something…there’s something else there. I can’t give up the chance to find out what it is, where it may lead. You know?”
“I know,” my roommate says, her eyes sparkling. “I’ve never heard of him going to a woman’s place before,” she comments, a note of wonder in her voice. “You could really be the one.”
Chapter 26
Christian
I feel so fucking good as I’m tiptoeing out of Carolyn’s apartment in the early hours of Thursday morning that I almost forget that this thing with Quinn—this mind-blowing, heart-stopping thing with Quinn—is bound to crash and burn. We’re speeding toward the inevitable fallout the moment I tell her the truth about what happened that fateful night.
I walk a block and a half before Louis pulls up to the curb. I didn’t give him much advance warning, but the guy’s a fucking professional. He doesn’t so much as rub—or roll—his eyes.
I collapse into the back seat and let everything wash over me.
It felt so damned perfect to lie there with Quinn resting gently against my chest, my arms wrapped around her lithe body. In that moment, there was nothing standing between us. She was mine to protect, although I’m learning every day that she doesn’t need protection. I’ve never met a woman who can bounce back like she can.
And she was willing to jump in with both feet, despite the way things have been going the past couple of weeks.
The truth is that I just needed time to make the shift.
Nobody’s going to think anything of it.
I’ve taken a few weeks off from my nightly trips to the Swan, only going there once or twice every week, and never with a date. At least, not one that I take home at the end of the night. Sooner or later someone’s going to ask what happened to the Christian Pierce who gleefully adds notches to his belt without a second thought. I’ve long since lost count of the women who have sat by my side at the Swan for three dates and then never seen there again.
At least this way, it won’t be a sudden shock. At least this way, when word gets out that I’m seeing someone—and it will get out—they’ll look back and see that I wasn’t quite so active at the Club, and they’ll chalk it up to a new obsession, maybe even real love.
Real love.
That’s what I confessed to Quinn last night, consequences be damned, and now, as Louis steers the car through the pre-dawn gray of the morning, I don’t regret a word of it. Instead, my heart pounds with a kind of electric thrill. It’s the kind you only feel when you stumble upon something so true, so deep, that to lie about it would be unthinkable.
I rub at my forehead.
Here I am, back at the thorn in my side. The one thing that’s going to bring us crashing back to earth.
Don’t tell her.
It’s the obvious solution, right? I could just keep my secret buried deep inside, like I have for the past decade. I could just let it fade away into memory, take it to the grave with me, just like I was planning to do before Quinn came along and changed everything.
Louis hits the gas and I flash back to that party.
I was drunk, but not that drunk—and definitely not high, like my brother. Cheap beer, a shot or two—I paced myself, like I always did. I was always the responsible one. Always the one who held back, just a little, just in case.
The music was loud, just not so loud that it would draw any attention. Not that the police ever stopped by this building anyway. Too many wealthy apartment owners stacked one on top of the other, all the way up to the penthouse—it was always a waste of time to investigate, a waste of time to prosecute.
I don’t know how late it was by the time everyone filtered out, stumbling off in high heels and short skirts. My brother had invited the best of the best from our class, children of investment bankers and owners of corporations rivaling Pierce Industries. Some of them were far more adventurous than I ever was, going to underground parties that routinely got busted by the cops. It didn’t matter. Money could buy you out of anything.
Maybe that’s what I was thinking when I realized how silent it was in the apartment, realized my brother was nowhere in sight, not anywhere in the cavernous living room.
Where had he gone?