Unfinished Seductions

by Raleigh Davis

  If Logan can’t turn to me now, then I might as well sign the papers and leave.

  His hand finds my upper arm, lightly at first, unsure of his welcome. I don’t push it away, but I don’t lean into his touch either. I’m shocked into stillness, to be honest, because this is way more intimate than sex, which is crazy.

  But this is what we used to do, back when we were happy. Share simple things, like a work call. Like a touch.

  “Shut up,” he growls at the phone.

  I jump, although he’s not talking to me. I’ve forgotten how the Bastards talk to each other—insults that would make my hair curl, they toss out with affection. That kind of rough-and-tumble, I-can’t-show-you-how-much-I-care male affection has always been odd to me.

  “I should have fucking well known,” he goes on. “Look at all the bullshit they print about me. Something was up.”

  Is it Finn? I mouth to him.

  Logan opens his mouth to answer, then interrupts whoever’s on the phone again. “They went after Callie.”

  His hand tightens on my arm, and his gaze flicks to mine. There’s a promise there, deep and sure. He’s going to protect me, no matter what. Even if I don’t want him to.

  “Since they did that,” he says, “I want to bury them. Sue them out of existence.”

  My nape prickles. Logan’s always been ready to protect me, but this… He sounds like a bad movie script. It feels wrong from him. He’s not a “Hulk smash” kind of guy. Subtlety is more his style, even when it comes to ruining someone.

  “I don’t care how long it takes, Elliot—”

  Oh great, it’s Elliot, not Finn. And he’s talking Logan out of suing? Isn’t suing people what lawyers do for fun on Friday nights?

  I pull my arm out of Logan’s grasp and gesture at the phone. “Can we discuss this before you start a lawsuit?”

  Logan cups his hand over the end of the phone. “I can put it on speaker.”

  Right, so I’ll have to deal with him and Elliot at the same time. Anything I say, Elliot is sure to shoot down with his logic missiles.

  “No.” I reach for the phone. “I want to discuss it with you, not you and your brother. I’m not married to him.”

  There’s a flicker in Logan’s gaze. He’s either pleased or shocked I’ve brought that up. Maybe both.

  Without breaking eye contact with me, he says, “Elliot, I’ll have to call you back.”

  He hangs up but not before I hear Elliot’s angry yelp. I can’t help my smile.

  “Okay.” Logan sets the phone aside. “Let’s talk. But if you’re thinking I’m going to let this slide, not when you ran away from me because of it—”

  I put a finger to his lips. God, after not touching him for so long, to have that freedom again is like a drug. And taking that freedom is also a bad idea, just like taking drugs.

  “TidBytes didn’t make me run.” I keep saying it to him, and I hope this time it finally sinks in.

  “The hell it didn’t. Seeing those pictures every day must have hurt. Must have destroyed your trust in me.”

  I can’t deny that they did hurt. And that, yes, it was harder to trust him. But we’d been pulling away from each other before that.

  “Okay, so they didn’t help.” I can admit to that. “But you were never home. I gave up my job, my career, to sit at home waiting for you, and you were never there!”

  He stares for a long moment. Never before have I spoken to him with such rage, such venom. “I never asked you to do those things. Callie, if you wanted a job, you could have had one. I’m not some caveman.”

  I roll my eyes because I have no idea how to make him understand. “I went into this marriage thinking you wanted a partner. But in the end, I was only a wife.”

  The moment I say wife, my eyes widen and I clap my hand over my mouth.

  I said those words, but they were my mother’s before this. That phrase popped out of me because I’ve heard her use it so many times.

  I’ve never met my father. At least I don’t remember him. And not because my mother used him like a sperm donor—no, they were married. I came along twelve months after they did, so it wasn’t even necessary for them to get hitched.

  I have to assume they married because they loved each other. Why else would my mother have done that?

  But when I was two, my mother left him and never looked back. She didn’t hide that from me, and she wasn’t resentful of my dad and the fact that he wasn’t around. She never really talked about what it was like when they were together though, only how she left in the end.

  When I asked her about him—why my mother married him, why she left, she said with perfect honesty: “I thought he wanted a partner. But it turned out all he wanted was a wife. And that’s not who I am.”

  She warned me of that exact same thing when I told her I was marrying Logan. And I told her that Logan was wealthy enough that he didn’t need a wife. He didn’t need someone to cook or clean or watch his kids or even to keep his bed warm—so if he married me, it was because he wanted me.

  Not every relationship has to be some patriarchal power struggle, and I was going to show her that mine definitely wasn’t. That love could win.

  Somewhere around the fiftieth picture of Logan on TidBytes, as I got ready for yet another charity board meeting that didn’t really need me, I realized my mother was right all along. And that I needed to get out.

  I have no idea how to explain that to Logan though. He’s never appreciated my mom.

  Logan is furious now, but he’s holding it back, his nostrils flaring with the effort. “Only a wife? I don’t want a wife. I wanted you.”

  “Then why weren’t you ever there for me?”

  “I was!”

  “No, you weren’t. The numbers don’t lie. Those eighty-hour weeks away didn’t lie. And pictures don’t either. Otherwise, how could TidBytes have all those pictures of you to publish?”

  “It was work!” He roars that, as if by pure volume he can make me accept his argument.

  “Right.” I cross my arms and suddenly realize that we’re fighting in a crappy hotel room. But it’s too late to stop now. “It was work. Always. All the time.”

  “I can’t…”

  Logan doesn’t finish, but I already know what he can’t do—slow down. Even now, he’s pacing like a caged wolf, rangy energy animating him.

  I dip my head and sigh. “You think it’s just that simple,” I say, “that while you’re working eighty-hour weeks, I’ll find something to do and be waiting and ready whenever you come back.”

  Suddenly he stops, shakes his head. “We’re not doing this again. Can’t you see this is exactly what Fuchs wants? A wedge between us?”

  He’s still not seeing what I mean. “I don’t know Arne Fuchs at all. He has nothing to do with this.”

  “But he does.” Logan starts pacing again. “Imagine if you never saw those pictures, never had them shoved in your face every morning. Imagine where our marriage might be if you’d talked to me, trusted in me.”

  It would look the same. Him never around, me rattling around in a role I couldn’t be happy in…

  But those pictures did worm their way into my brain, whispering evil thoughts to me. Why else would I look at TidBytes every damn day if it wasn’t getting inside my head, exactly like Logan claims Fuchs wanted?

  I put a fist to my forehead to stop the spinning behind my eyes. I just don’t know. I knew within a month of being with him that I wanted to marry Logan. But I don’t know if I want to end this.

  I let my fist drop, rub my hand over my mouth. I have to tell him everything. It’s bubbling inside me like hot-spring mud.

  “I thought I was pregnant.”

  Logan looks as sick as I feel, his limbs slowing like time is stopping. “What happened? Did you… Have you seen a doctor?”

  I shake my head. “I was late, that’s all. About a week. I thought I’d tell you, and we could take the test together, and… I let myself get excited. About ever
ything it might mean.”

  I was happy, thrilled, things I hadn’t been in a long, long time. I had hope, another thing that had been in short supply.

  Then it was all gone, and I couldn’t keep living like that.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t see you for five days straight.” My eyes sting, and I rub away the tears. “Do you remember?”

  I did. I had this wonderful, beautiful thing to share with him, a renewal of all our hopes… and he left me completely alone with it.

  “The launch for that GPS app was fucked up.” He tugs at his hair, and I can’t tell if he’s upset about my not telling him or about the launch going wrong. “I slept in my office all those nights.”

  “I was getting ready to call you. I figured…” I shrug, because whatever I was thinking then—about how he was busy, how I shouldn’t disturb him—seems so unimportant now. “That morning I was ready to call you. And then my period started. I was crying, realizing that everything I’d imagined wasn’t going to happen.” I take a shaky breath. “And there was another picture of you on the front page of TidBytes. I was waiting for you so long, and there you were, so far away from me.”

  I look away, because it’s easier than looking at him and remembering how badly he’d let me down.

  “There was?” he asks. The confusion in his voice is large and genuine. “But I was working. I swear.”

  “I know that. It was an old picture they put on a story about the GPS app launch. But it still hurt like all hell. And I knew I had to get out. I couldn’t breathe anymore.”

  I can’t breathe now. Maybe that’s my answer. I can’t breathe without him and I can’t breathe with him. Yes, these months apart haven’t been good—numbness is never good—but it’s better than slowly suffocating to death.

  “Callie.” Logan’s close enough to make my hair stir with his breath. “I’m so, so sorry. I had no idea about any of this.”

  My entire body wants to turn to him, tuck myself into the curve of him. I hold very, very still instead. Because he’s not sorry he wasn’t there for me—he’s sorry because he didn’t know. Which is a very different thing.

  “I’m okay now,” I say, which isn’t entirely a lie. I’ve accepted that there won’t be a baby and that the hope I had for our marriage was an illusion. It doesn’t feel good to accept those things, but the truth hurts sometimes.

  He threads his fingers through mine and holds on tight. “After everything you’ve told me, all the things with TidBytes, we need to—”

  “Don’t ask me to try again.” My fingers clench instinctively on his. “Fuchs didn’t make you sleep in your office that week. Or any of the weeks before.”

  There’s a long beat of silence, and I’m certain we’re thinking the same thing. No, it wasn’t Fuchs who made Logan do that—it was Logan’s own innate nature that did, his unholy drive.

  He brings my hand to his lips, kisses my fingers softly. “I wish I had known,” he says. “I wish I’d been there for you. And I wish you’d told me. I was only ever just a phone call away.”

  He was, but he also wasn’t. “It’s over now,” I say. There’s no point wishing things could have gone differently, because they didn’t.

  “It’s not over,” he says. “Not with Fuchs targeting you. Hell, he targeted both of us, hurt both of us with his bullshit gossip site. We both need to take it down.”

  I definitely don’t want TidBytes to target some other poor couple, but corporate power plays are his style, not mine.

  “You don’t need me to sue it out of existence. You’ve got Elliot for that.” I practically spit out that last sentence.

  His brow crinkles. “You make that sound bad.”

  “It seems… underhanded.” I shrug. “Not like you. You don’t fight in a courtroom, you fight out in the real world. Remember when that patent troll moved in on you?”

  He smiles. “Yeah. Instead of paying him off, I invented something that did the job better. And he didn’t get a penny.”

  Electricity crackles down my neck, lights up my spine. “Wait.” I shake my finger at him, thoughts jostling through my mind. “You invented something better.”

  Ideas are zapping through my brain, and I can already see the outlines of a logo—bold but also inviting. Come in and chat, share the news, it says.

  Bigger and better than TidBytes, it says. I release a low exhale as the image coalesces into something more than a notion. Something that we could actually build. Together.

  “Callie?” Worry vibrates through Logan’s voice.

  “We don’t sue him,” I say. “We invent something better.” Of course—exactly what Logan did before. My hand tightens on his. “I’m saying that we build our own tech news and gossip site and outcompete him.”

  Chapter 8

  Callie’s so damn animated, with her eyes flashing and her cheeks flushed, I want to eat her up. I haven’t seen her like this in forever, and it’s like finding a roaring fire after being stuck in an eternal blizzard. I need that expression of hers, if only to make all the work I do worth it.

  But a gossip site? “I can’t build a news site. I have no idea how to.”

  “How did TidBytes do it? We’re not engineering a rocket here.”

  A rocket would be easier: I understand the general principles there. A gossip site means getting people to talk to you, tell you their deepest secrets.

  I’ve fucking failed at that with my own damn wife—how will I do it with strangers?

  But she loves the idea. She’s gone from shattered and crying and confessing to excited and enthused all in the space of a few minutes, thanks to her idea. I mean, it’s a crazy idea—what the hell do either of us know about media companies?—but it’s hers.

  And she keeps saying we. I’d do just about anything to keep her saying that. Which means I have to do something to make this website happen.

  “We’ll hire some people,” I say. “Give them the funding. Back in the office we’ve probably got a hundred prospectuses from people wanting to start a news site.”

  She shakes her head, her long hair sliding across her shoulders. “No, we can’t hand this off. It has to be us managing it if it’s going to mean a real victory against this guy.”

  That makes a… certain sense. I’d like to personally shove Fuchs’s face into a wall rather than hiring someone to do it, but Callie’s not vicious like me. She’s supposed to be the nice one.

  It seems I’ve underestimated her appetite for revenge.

  But that doesn’t change one simple fact: “I’m just not the person to do it.”

  “You are. We are.” She’s believing that so hard I’m almost convinced. “You’ve got contacts with all the CEOs and VCs in the Valley, and I know all their wives. Plus aren’t journalists getting laid off left and right? I bet we could find a ton of talented writers dying to write about the Valley the way TidBytes does.”

  I can’t refute any of that. “We’ll make enemies if we do this.”

  There’re a lot of people in the tech world who think the press has no business reporting on us, at least about the things we don’t approve of, like personal lives, product failures, or dropping stock prices.

  She makes a dismissive noise. “So does TidBytes. I bet we’re not the first people they’ve targeted. I bet there’re a lot of techies out there who’d love some revenge.”

  She’s right about all that. Every one of the Bastards would be happy to see TidBytes go down, and I can think of at least three CEOs who are pissed about their coverage on the site. Ultrapowerful CEOs.

  If we launch a site that eclipses TidBytes, Fuchs will explode. He’s amazingly thin-skinned. It would mess with his head much worse than simply shutting TidBytes down.

  And if we started spreading around that he was the one backing the site…

  I fold my arms and lean back against the wall. Yeah, we could do a lot of damage to Fuchs here beyond just suing him. “I guess it makes sense.”

  Call
ie giggles.

  “What?” I ask.

  She folds her arms in imitation of me. “You’ve put on your corporate face. But you’re wearing a towel in a crappy hotel room. It’s just cu—” She swallows the rest of that, hard. “Funny. You look funny.”

  Callie is the only person to ever call me cute. Not even my mom did that; she was too busy keeping us clothed and fed since my dad couldn’t contribute shit.

  Cute was on Callie’s lips all the time, or at least it used to be. The way I ate chips was cute, the way I read a book was cute, the way I cussed out other drivers under my breath was cute.

  I didn’t feel cute, but I did feel loved.

  “We could adjourn to the business center.” My voice is too serious, but I can’t help it. I can only hope she sees the joke and keeps laughing.

  “This place doesn’t have one. It’s not a motel for that kind of business.”

  No, it’s for tourists and trysts, this place. My pulse leaps at the way her gaze cuts to the bed, shy but remembering.

  It hits me then how I can turn this to my advantage. I still want her even though she left me. And now that TidBytes isn’t fucking with her head, she’ll see how ridiculous it was to run from the life we had.

  She wants this website to take down TidBytes. And I want her.

  Callie doesn’t realize it, but we’re negotiating here. I really have put on my corporate face.

  “So we are doing business then,” I drawl.

  Her gaze cuts to mine, wide and startled. “Business?”

  “You want something from me.” I roll my shoulders. “And I want something from you.”

  I hold her gaze, never letting go, impressing on her how dead serious I am.

  She puts a hand to her throat, finding the high neck of that ugly sweater she’s wearing. I can’t see it, but I’m guessing her pulse is going a mile a minute.

  Excellent.

  “You’re negotiating with me?” Her voice is faint. “You’ve never talked like that before.”

  “Not to you.” I lean forward, coming into her space. “But it thrilled you, didn’t it? My being the hard-assed businessman.”