The brittle silence told me I’d done something I couldn’t ever undo. I’d changed everything.
I knew it with the terrible sixth sense that I’d developed over the years, that specific and terrible skill of knowing when something was falling to pieces around me. “I know that’s not going to happen,” I said in a rush, desperate to try and put back together this thing that I had shattered. “I do. I get that. I have my own reasons for why that’s a really terrible idea. But I watched this girl dance on this guy’s lap. She was facing him and he was…he was grabbing her ass. So hard with both hands that the skin around where he was grabbing her was white. And it was like he couldn’t hold her close enough, or hard enough against him, and I’ve…I’ve never been held like that. Not once. Not ever. And I wondered what that would feel like. What would it be like to have someone want me that much that he…just grabbed me and held on as hard as he could.”
“Layla—”
But I didn’t stop. I was on a roll. “What would that be like with you? And what would it be like to hold your cock in my hand and to put it in my mouth? Or to slip my fingers into yours, my fingers covered in my—”
“Layla,” he said, his voice sharp. Almost a crack. “Stop it. You have to…We can’t.”
“I know. But I want it. Don’t you…want that?” Just tell me you want that.
“Listen to me.” His voice was different. Totally different. “This is over now.”
“What?”
“It’s over now. I told you not to…build anything around me and I meant it.”
“I don’t know anything about you!” I cried.
He was silent for a long moment. “That’s not true and we both know it.”
“I know you wear a tux to parties,” I said. “You work on cars.”
“You heard my voice mail message, didn’t you?”
Dylan Daniels.
“Yes.”
That’s when I realized why he always answered the phone so fast. It wasn’t eagerness for my calls. It was so I wouldn’t find out who he was.
“Is this because I’m poor?” Because I wasn’t. I was actually far from poor. My name was on the deed to a thousand-acre farm in Oklahoma, one of the biggest corn providers in the state. I was actually pretty fucking rich in my own right.
Not that I had ever, not once, thought about it that way.
And now, actually, I was pissed. “If it is, fuck you. Fuck you—I don’t give a shit about your money.”
“It’s not money. It’s not…it’s just not anything that should have started. I’ve had someone look in on Ben for five years and I’ve never, ever started anything like this. I’ve barely given a shit about them before, Layla, and then you come around with your bad jokes and wanting to be brave and I’m…” He stopped and I waited, breath held for him to keep going.
“And you’re what?”
“Breaking my own goddamn rules.” I didn’t know what to say to that. To the grief and the frustration that filled his words. Who gave a shit about his rules? He was rejecting me. I’d gone to a strip club for this guy. Laid myself bare for him. Opened myself up to the worst kind of ridicule and he was worried about breaking his own stupid rules? Bullshit! “The phone is yours. I’ll keep the plan going.”
“I don’t want your fucking pity,” I spat at him.
He did that groan. That weird, sexy, half-laugh, half-groan thing that I had believed all along meant that he liked what I was saying, that whatever it was that I was saying was exciting to him. And now I didn’t know what it meant.
I didn’t know what any of it meant.
“It’s not pity. I want…God, Layla, I want you to call me if you need anything.”
“Not fucking likely.” I could not believe how angry I was. I was furious with him. And I couldn’t stop.
“I’m not kidding. If there’s an emergency—”
“I’m not kidding, either. I won’t call you again. I won’t even think about you.” That was a lie and we both knew it.