by Shen, LJ
Dad fingered his empty bowl of soup and sucked on the leftovers. He liked Milton. Every time I asked him why, he said, “Because he is smart enough to love my daughter.”
“Hard to say, Dad. We’re both very busy with work.”
This was tearing me apart. I hated not being honest with my father, but I hated the idea that the truth would hurt him even more.
The minute my head hit my pillow, I started sobbing. Not just crying, but full-blown, so-sorry-for-myself bawling with tears and snot. The whole shebang.
I was not a crier. I’d cried the day my mother died and on a few occasions after that, like the day I’d gotten my period without her there to calm me down and after I’d stolen that wallet. But tonight, it felt like the weight of the world rested squarely on my shoulders, and I wanted to throw it away or let it bury me in the ground.
The thing about crying for hours is, you always end up sleeping like the dead afterward. It happened to me the night after my mother died. (The night she did, I couldn’t sleep a wink—was too afraid the world would collapse if I let my eyes drift shut.) Misery has a way of pulling you down and drowning you in it. It’s sweet and suffocating, like a lullaby, soothing you to sleep.
That night, I slept like a baby.
Living alone was a choice I made rather happily.
The alternative was living a lie, and I didn’t do lies, nor theft—not since both things had exploded in my face in spectacular fashion. Even though I had a car, I took the subway to work every morning. And since everyone in my family for the last three generations had personal drivers, I was seen as the black sheep of the tribe. Luckily, the tribe had dwindled and was nearly nonexistent, so it’s not like I had anyone to impress.
Besides, I liked the smell of piss and the general misery of harsh city life. It reminded me that I was a lucky motherfucker, even on the days I felt like God—if he existed—had made a point of pissing all over my plans.
On my way to work, I thought about what had driven me to pull Judith into the power room on Friday and fuck her mouth into what could have been a mass power outage in one of the largest skyscrapers in New York. My jizz definitely shouldn’t have been anywhere near all those electrical switches.
I was definitely trying to piss all over my territory, but in the process, I’d also pissed over my no-repeats rule, as well as my professional relationship with her. Currently, I was trying to decide if I should go back to normal and act like she didn’t exist until she quit and the problem took care of itself, or figure the damage had already been done and make her a booty call for when I was too tired to go on the prowl.
Pros: the Manhattan singles scene was beginning to grate on my nerves. I was starting to see the same faces in the same clubs. Every hookup and Tinder profile blended together in my head. At least with Judith, I had sexual chemistry.
Cons: her pussy aside, she had an annoying, holier-than-thou attitude, not to mention, she was mouthy, and I really couldn’t fucking stand her.
When I got to the office building, I had to take a phone call. Lily. I normally sent her straight to voicemail, but this was the third time she’d called since I’d gotten off the subway, so I wanted to make sure Madelyn, her grandmother, was okay.
“Anyone dead?” These were my exact words when I took the call.
I didn’t go into the building, knowing things could get pretty crappy and fast when it came to Lily and me. I rarely raised my voice, but for her, I was always happy to make an exception.
“What?” Her default voice was whining. The kind that sounds like a fork scraping against a plate. “No. Grams is doing great. I was just wondering if—”
“No need to wonder. The answer is no.”
“Célian, wait! I—”
But I’d already hung up. I turned around to walk through the double glass doors and spotted Judith sitting on the top stair reading, soaking in the first rays of sun like a thirsty flower. She wore one of her crumpled, wannabe-grownup black suits and hugged her backpack.
Her Chucks were red today. Oh, boy.
She wiped her eyes quickly, but I wasn’t sure whether she was crying or about to. She was talking on the phone, and any other bastard would’ve turned around, walked away, and vowed to stop making her life more difficult.
But I was programmed differently, carved from stone like the very people who’d created me.
I rounded her tiny, blond figure, half-listening to her conversation.
“Okay, Milton. Just…please don’t tell him.”
Milton sounded very much male and very much like a douchebag. The latter wasn’t based solely on his affiliation with Judith, but also his name. Now I was fully invested in the conversation.
“I’m really not interested in hearing what you have to say.”
Pause.
“Please don’t make it any more difficult than it already is. Promise me you won’t tell him. That’s all I ask.”
Pause.
“Yeah, well, I have a job to go to. Bye.”
She stood up. I pretended I didn’t see her, pushing the door open and waltzing to the open elevator. She was a few feet behind me, so when I turned around, our eyes met. She hurried to catch my elevator—of course I didn’t push the hold button—and sneaked in at the last second. There were two more people inside. Two assholes who went to the second floor. HR.
“Hi,” she breathed, turning around to give me her back and ass. Not a bad deal.
I nodded solemnly.
Silence. Silence. Silence. She didn’t act shy or awkward. Something about this morning told me she had more pressing issues to deal with than sucking her boss’s dick, and I decided on a whim that I needed to know what was on her mind.
Naturally, talking to her was out of the question. She sassed way too much and always nagged me about my behavior. No. I fired a quick text message to one of my reporters, Dan, with her name and address while the elevator made its way to the sixth floor in record negative time.
Célian: Judith Humphry. Her file is with HR. I want to know everything there is to know about her, from her education to her favorite color. Who she fucks, who she lives with, who she talks to.
I fingered my chin, watching my message and firing off another one immediately.
Célian: And how many pairs of Chucks she has.
Strictly speaking, it wasn’t any of my business. But Judith was shaping up to be such a trainwreck—stealing from her boss, then fucking him, then avoiding him, then sucking him off, then having public fights with people on the phone outside her work building—I wanted to make sure she was on the sanity spectrum.
When we got to our floor, we walked straight into the newsroom. The first rundown meeting was in ten minutes. She walked over to her desk with that damn notebook clutched to her chest.
“Humphry, join us in the conference room,” I heard myself say.
She perked, bit down a smile, then opened the notebook and scribbled something into it. Fast. Lord. She was so fucking thirsty for the job. I let Brianna dispose of the iPad in my palm and shooed her away.
“You’ll be taking notes, Judith, not making suggestions,” I said.
I was careful to treat her exactly as I would any other reporter in her position. I was already an insufferable prick, so I wasn’t particularly awful to her. But I was also fair, and after a week, she’d earned the right to sit, listen, and absorb.
She kept her eyes on her notebook. “A girl can dream.”
“Happy to fulfill your other fantasies.” Good thing Brianna had started working on her cardio and was already on the other side of the floor. We were almost alone, early, eager fuckers that we were.
“I actually have one you could help me with.”
“Unless it involves me tying you to a bed, I’m not really interested in hearing about it,” I said, setting fire to the entire conversation we’d had last week about my dancing on a red line. I sprinted through that fucker all the way to the finish line of sexual harassment. Not that I was haras
sing Jude, as evidenced by the enthusiasm with which she sucked my dick, but if she wanted ammo on me, I’d stupidly given her that.
“It actually involved me tying you to a bed.” She batted her lashes, and for an unknown reason, didn’t look annoying doing so.
Normally, I liked being the one doing the tying, but for Humphry, I could make an exception. She stepped toward me, her tongue sweeping over her lower lip.
“Then I’ll strap a ball gag to your mouth…”
I curved a brow, raking my eyes slowly over her body and undressing her item by item. She was high if she thought I’d put anything in my mouth that wasn’t a part of her body. By the time she was in front of me, she was stark naked in my head, her voice dripping honey and sex all over my fucking loafers.
“Then,” she whispered, her pillowy lips moving against my ear. “I’ll set the whole damn thing on fire, with you in it.”
I smiled. Judith Humphry was a massive pain in the ass. Not only was she a natural blond, shit-hot, and the owner of the best pair of lips in the tristate area (both pairs, if we’re perfectly honest), but she was also sharp as a razor—the opposite of my usual pushover flavor of the night.
“If you ever had the pleasure of getting in bed with me again…” I narrowed my cold eyes on hers. “You would be the one to catch fire, and we both know it.”
With that, I curled my finger, motioning her into the conference room. People had begun to trickle straight into it with their coffee cups and sleepy eyes. Judith obeyed, her catlike, limber walk telling me she knew I was looking.
James Townley opened the door for us before he walked in.
“Son.” He clapped my back.
“Call me that again if you want a one-way ticket to early retirement,” I muttered.
“Junior.” He winked at Judith.
“Mr. Numbers.” She saluted.
They shared a knowing smile. I punched him in the face. Internally, of course. My limits were few and far between, but they were there. Besides, James had just married the morning show’s latest weather girl—who was thirty, both in age and IQ points—in a Hamptons ceremony that made Harry and Meghan’s royal wedding look like a karaoke evening for a low-budget Jersey Shore bachelorette party. That thing got more news coverage than the North Korea threat. I shot James a don’t-fuck-with-me frown—just to make sure he knew that I knew he’d checked out Judith’s ass when she walked in—and he pretended not to notice me.
From that point forward, it was same old, same old. My staff presented me with their ideas for tonight’s show starting with Kate beside me—my right hand—then moving to the person next to her and so forth.
Kate (forty-something, happily married, and openly gay) suggested we start with the volcanic disaster in Maui. Jessica (twenty-something, single, and clingy as saggy balls) came up with new details about the EU crisis, and Steve, the newbie who was shaping up to be a little less useful than a bag of unwashed anuses, suggested we talk about the cheese crisis in Belgium. I braced my hands on the back of the chair I stood behind so I didn’t accidentally punch him from across the table.
“Junior?” Frankly, I did it because I didn’t want James and her to have something uniquely theirs—a pet name, a connection.
“Me?” She pointed at herself, looking up from her abused notebook.
I shot her a condescending glare and punctuated it with a raised eyebrow.
She tucked her hair behind her ears and cleared her throat. “Yes. Okay. Good thing I have Kipling.”
Kipling? Who the fuck is Kipling?
“So, there’s a YouTube blogger…”
“Next,” I barked.
This wasn’t Couture. I doubted our viewers wanted to hear about some chick showing people how to apply eyeliner for twenty minutes, unless she was dead and chopped into tiny pieces, spread across the five oceans.
“Wait,” she bit out, her teeth grinding together. “There’s a YouTube blogger with over two million viewers. He just posted a video telling people he hid a body part of someone close to him who passed away in the woods near his house. Whoever finds it will get ten grand in cash.”
“What?” Kate nearly spat her coffee all over the desk. “How did we not hear about this until now?”
“First of all, we are the news.” Judith smiled apologetically, and my jaw ticked, fighting a smirk. “And it happened literally ten minutes ago.” She swiveled to Kate, her chest rising and falling. “Honestly, I doubt it will warrant much reaction at first. Most of his viewers are minors following his journey as a pro skateboarder. But this is definitely something we should be alarmed about. Can I?”
She pointed at Steve’s iPad. Steve dragged his eyes to me, a question mark and boredom shining through them.
“Give her the iPad, doofus.” I shook my head.
Five seconds later we were looking at Cody McHotson—not his real name was my wild guess—wearing a Viking helmet, sleeveless Billabong tank top, and a smug smile that flashed bleached teeth. He looked like the reason they invented guns, but he was actually doing this—sending minors out to look for a body part.
“It’s not gross or anything.” He tucked a lock of his blond side-bang back into his hat. “Like, don’t expect to find something super weird. But it’s there, and hey, if you feel like making a buck, you should go for it.” The stoner laughed into the camera, sending a plume of smoke toward the lens.
“Is he a minor?” I turned to Judith.
She shook her head. “Twenty-one.”
It was official. This generation was too dumb to repopulate. Hard to believe I would be dependent on his likes fifty years from now.
“Good lead, Humphry. Jessica, follow it.”
“I’m on it.” Jessica saluted, typing away on her phone.
“Hey, what about me?” Steve flung his arms in the air.
“You gave me a lead about Belgian cheese. Be happy my shoe is not in your ass.”
“Ugh,” he wailed, picking a pastry from the basket and stuffing it into his mouth.
He was of the Phoenix Townley brand—a rich boy who’d wormed his way into my newsroom through connections. My father had paved the way for people who were incapable of consuming a latte without burning themselves in the process, let alone making one, yet simply had the right last name. Of course, same could be said about me. With two differences: I hadn’t asked for this job, and I’d goddamn well earned it.
People were leaving the conference room when I jerked my chin toward Judith. “A word in private.”
“Here?”
“Yes, Einstein.”
The room had floor-to-ceiling glass walls, exactly what I needed to keep my hands off her. Once we were alone, I shut the door and sat down in my seat, linking my fingers together. She straightened, her chin high, watching me closely.
“This can’t happen anymore.” I motioned between us.
I wanted to make sure she wasn’t going to blow our dirty fucks out of proportion. The last thing I needed was for her to think we were in a relationship of sorts. I needed to keep my work area efficient and professional.
She clicked her pen, nodding. “Agreed.”
“Anything you need help with?” I gestured downstairs with my finger, but I could see by her flaring hazels that this was not the way she interpreted it. “I saw you crying outside this morning.” My lips flattened. “This was not an invitation for a cock-ride.”
Her cheeks pinked. “I fail to see how that is any of your business.”
“My employees are my business,” I shot back drily.
“Their performance is, yes. You don’t have to worry about that. I assure you.”
Judith didn’t have the tools and means to fight me. But other than that, she did a damn good job of standing up to me.
I was getting tired of beating around the bush, so I just gave it to her straight.
“Was the phone call about us?”
She tilted her head back, laughing. “No. There is no us.”
“Quite ri
ght. Good job on the YouTuber.” I stood up, ironing my shirt with my palm. This was good. I could go back to ignoring her from now on. I was about to do just that, marching over to the door, when I saw the face behind it and froze.
Lily Davis stood on the other side, her glossed lips grinning at me.
Lily Davis, as in the woman I should’ve been fucking.
Lily Davis, as in the woman Humphry knew nothing about.
Lily Davis, as in my fiancée.
Some girls looked like they had the world at their Louboutin-clad feet, and the leggy brunette who burst through the glass door with a megawatt smile was one of them. Her flowery perfume made my eyes water, but maybe I was just on the verge of crying because of my exchange with my boss. She gripped Célian’s collar—flashing an engagement rock the size of an entire Tiffany’s store—and planted a wet kiss over his scowling lips. He held her shoulders and took a step back, giving her a frosty onceover, as if assessing the damage on a recently purchased wrecked car.
“Lily.”
“Fiancé.”
What?
It shouldn’t have surprised me. Célian was gorgeous, successful, and a billionaire in his early thirties. Why wouldn’t he have a fiancée who looked like sex on heels? But the irony wasn’t lost on me. He had managed to put me firmly in Elise-the-editor’s shoes. The other woman. The homewrecker. The moral-less girl. Only difference was, Elise had known for a fact that Milton had a girlfriend. I, on the other hand, had had no clue.
I stood on shaky legs, waiting for Célian to introduce us. He did no such thing.
Throwing Lily a cold glare, he ground out, “This is a surprise.”
And not a good one, his eyes said.
“I had a fitting just around the block, and Mom wanted to buy macarons for Grams, so I thought I’d drop in and say hi. You know how I get stabby when there are carbs around since I started keto.” Her thick eyelashes fanned against her cheeks as she clung to him, as if worried he could slip out of her hands like butter. On top of being a brunette version of Blake Lively, with a summer dress and bright yellow sandals, she looked wildly in love. Undeniably so.
