by Marie James
He doesn’t say a word, but the neighborhood as he drives gets better not worse. I want to scream when he pulls into his designated parking spot at his building. He doesn’t say a word as he turns off the truck and climbs out. With arms still crossed over my chest and my stubbornness shielding me, I don’t even look at him when he pulls open the passenger door.
“I’ll throw you over my shoulder again.”
I look out the driver’s side window, refusing to look his direction. “Take me to Riverview.”
“I’m not staying in that shitty hotel when I have a perfectly nice condo.”
“Good,” I snap. “You weren’t invited to stay. Just drop me off.”
“No.”
I growl—this insufferable man.
“Walk or be carried, Remi. Take your pick.”
“I’ll call for a cab.” I can’t really afford it but walking all the way there would take all damn day.
My phone is snatched away, a teasing smile on his lips as he shoves it in his back pocket.
“I need you safe.” His voice lowers, all joking gone from his tone. “I’m not going to force you to stay in my bed. That’s not why you’re here.”
Why does that make me a little sad to hear?
“I have a spare bedroom. It’s yours until we can find something else.”
“I’m not—” He holds his hand up to silence me.
“Just come inside until I can make arrangements for your things to be pulled from your hotel room. You don’t have to make all your decisions right now.”
Needing help doesn’t make you helpless.
Those words are what convince me to get out of the truck.
“I’ll stay today only,” I say more for my own benefit than his.
“Okay.” He doesn’t sound convinced but his delusions aren’t my problem.
I shrug away from his hand when he lowers it to the small of my back to guide me toward the elevator. I’m desperate for his touch, and that makes everything worse.
“Like I said, the room is yours for as long as you want,” he repeats as we walk into his condo.
I was distracted the last time I was here, so I let my eyes roam all around. The space is clean, masculine, if a little sterile. I don’t imagine he spends a lot of time here. It barely looks lived in.
“The room is right down here.”
I follow him through the condo, taking a step forward when he opens the first door in the hallway.
My jaw nearly hits the ground, eyes narrowing as I glare at him.
“Really?”
He shrugs.
“It’s empty.” I look back to the room. Literally the only thing in there are curtains hanging on the wall. There isn’t a spare box, or castaway furniture.
“There isn’t even a bed.”
Did I mention the living room had theater seating, so not even a couch to sleep on?
“There’s only one bed in the condo,” he says, his mouth twitching, threatening to smile. “Make yourself comfortable.”
I’m glaring at his back as he walks away.
Chapter 35
Flynn
If Remington only knew how much her stubborn resiliency turned me on, she might tone it down a couple of notches.
She hasn’t spoken a word to me since she arrived. She hasn’t opened the door to that fucking room except to grab her things from Ignacio when he arrived a couple of hours ago.
The condo feels like a torture chamber with her so close yet closed off from the world.
When the Thai takeout is delivered, I use it as my opportunity to see her face. After re-plating the food, I walk it down the hall, forced to use the tip of my shoe to knock with my hands full. Bringing her dinner isn’t a big deal, but I’m not going to eat alone either.
“Remington. My hands are full. Open the door.”
No sound comes from the room, but I know she’s in there. We’re too high up for her to escape through a window, and since I’ve been hovering all damn day, I know she hasn’t managed to sneak out.
“Remington,” I repeat, smiling when I hear a huff from the other side. She doesn’t open the door. “I brought dinner.”
Silence.
I rest my head against the door.
“It’s going to get cold.”
“I’m not hungry.”
This stubborn girl.
“Liar.”
“I’m not.”
“It’s Thai.”
I smile when she groans, knowing she loves any type of Asian cuisine. In New York, I swear she ate her weight in the stuff at least twice a week.
The door opens, but she walks away as soon as it swings wide. I grin, even though she’s not happy about being here. I take solace knowing she’s near, knowing she could walk out of here at any time but she’s stayed. Keeping her here long term is going to be the problem, but I’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.
Without a word, she props herself against the wall, head hung low over her cell phone.
I place a plate of food by her hip and mirror her position on the other side of the room. Her back has to be killing her, but knowing Remi like I do, she isn’t going to complain.
I thought for sure the unfurnished room would at least force her to settle in the living room, but her stubborn streak is a mile wide. I’ve seen hints in her behavior since we reconnected that she’s happy to see me, that she wants to be in my arms, but I hurt her. I dismissed her like everyone else in her life has, and I have my work cut out for me to come back from that. It’s a good thing I’m determined because letting her get away again isn’t an option.
“Wren told me your phone was disconnected.” Add that lie to the long list of things I want to beat his ass over.
“It’s a prepaid phone,” she responds, surprising me that she’s actually going to talk.
I keep my plate of food in my lap, the smell of it threatening to make my stomach growl, but she hasn’t touched hers, so mine will just get cold as well.
“What are you doing?” I place the plate on the floor beside me, taking some of the temptation away. She didn’t come out of the room, so I haven’t eaten all day either, waiting for her to poke her hungry little head out.
“Filling out employment applications. It sucks on the phone, but I left my laptop behind.”
She left more than that behind. All of her belongings filled a small suitcase and a single duffel bag. She’d mentioned before that if she left, she wasn’t going to be able to take much. Her parents used that to keep her in place for so long.
“I could buy another. It would definitely make things easier, but I’m on limited funds these days.”
I nod in understanding even though she isn’t looking in my direction. I hate being in the room and not having her attention.
“I’m proud of you.”
She huffs, her eyes staying on that stupid phone as her fingers work over the small screen.
“I’m serious. It takes a lot to leave that life behind.”
She shakes her head but doesn’t speak.
I wait her out. The woman has always loved to talk, and in the time I was working for the Blairs, she chattered on incessantly. I’ve wondered more than once if she did it to annoy me. What she doesn’t understand is I love the sound of her voice. I learn so many things about her when she opens her mouth.
“Leaving wasn’t hard,” she finally says. “Staying gone is the challenge.”
I hum in agreement.
“I should just leave St. Louis. There are hundreds of other places where it would be cheaper to live.”
Her eyes never leave her phone which means she doesn’t see the knife she just rammed into my chest.
“Leave?” She doesn’t look up. “What about me?”
Her head snaps up, her pretty mouth twisted in distaste.
“What about you? Why should I concern myself with you? You didn’t have any concern for me when you fucked me and left without a word.”
“You did the same to me l
ast night,” I remind her.
Her eyes narrow, but she doesn’t justify her actions by speaking.
Fuck. I guess we’re doing this now. The confrontation back at the office when she first showed up in town replays in my head, but I was stunned by the sight of her, unable to say all the things I was feeling.
“I thought—” I clear my throat when a lump threatens to form. “—I thought I could get you out of my system.”
“Did it work?” She hisses as if she already knows the answer and is going to hate hearing it from my own lips.
Is she blind?
“No, because when I walked away, I left a part of myself behind.”
Her eyes search mine, and I don’t know what she sees or if she’s interpreting all the things I need her to know just from the look in my eyes.
“Get out.”
“What?”
Not exactly where I need things to go.
“Get. Out.”
“You’re not going to get rid of me, Remi.”
“Just don’t.” Her hands cover her face, but the emotion I need isn’t there. She’s pissed, not heartbroken. Anger is hard to console. “I don’t need your flowery words any more than I need you looking at me like you feel sorry for me.”
I don’t move a muscle as I sit here and debate the best way to approach this. She wrapped her arms around me as if on instinct when I lifted her earlier today. She buried her nose in my neck and breathed me in, her fingers clinging to my shirt like I was her savior. She may be angry now, but her first intuition was knowing I’d protect her from everything that threatens to do her harm.
“Remi.”
“Enough!” The roar of her voice startles me, causing my head to jolt back, skull smacking the wall behind me. “You wanna fuck? Is that what this is about? You want my body? Fine, you can have it. We can fuck, give each other mind-blowing orgasms, but this emotional shit isn’t part of the deal. The sex is good enough to override the shame I feel when it’s over, but you won’t get anything else from me. Being used and manipulated isn’t new for me, Flynn, but at least be open and honest about it. That I can live with.”
“That’s not what—”
“Get. Out.”
There’s no getting through to her when she’s this angry, so I collect my untouched plate of food from the floor and stand. Turning my back on her, even if it’s just to leave the room, guts me. She doesn’t see her value, doesn’t understand her worth, and the fucked-up part is I contributed to that. In her eyes, I used her, got what I wanted, took something valuable from her and walked away.
“You can stay as long as you want,” I whisper as I open the bedroom door. “A night, a month, the rest of your life.”
I don’t know how I manage to walk out of the room when she whimpers in pain.
Chapter 36
Remington
Crying isn’t a new discovery. I’ve shed tears my entire life, sometimes forcing them out for attention but more often, they fall because of disappointment in people, for disappointment in myself for not seeing bad intentions before it’s too late.
This evening, I can’t get them to stop. The front of my Paddy’s uniform top is soaked with my salty pain, my throat sore from sobbing for what seems like an eternity.
I cry for caring about him, for pushing him away when it seems he genuinely wants more from me than what I offered in anger. I cry for the little girl who grew up not knowing or experiencing what real care and affection were. I cry for the woman who feels like she doesn’t deserve love. I cry knowing that being on my own is just too hard, realizing that my parents were right to tell me that I’d never make it without them.
The tears flow, the pain only growing stronger the longer I sit here. I’m strong, at least I thought I was until I was faced with the reality of being alone and wandering through life without anyone by my side. I didn’t have love, but I had enough physical things to make more than half the population of the world envious.
I can’t survive this life, and even in my head that sounds elitist and stupid, but homelessness is a real fear. I don’t know if I have the ability to let things get that far without crawling back home and proving my parents right. No doubt my mother would have a lot to say if I showed my face on her doorstep once again.
It’s the determination not to give her that sense of satisfaction that makes me stand from my curled position on the floor. The plate of Thai food Flynn brought that was once a temptation to devour is now cold and gross, and I feel guilty for wasting it. The old side of me wouldn’t care, but the newer, more frugal side of me wonders if it would be okay to reheat.
Regardless of what I plan to do with it, I can no longer sit in this room smelling it. Using the bottom of my shirt, I once again wipe my eyes. They feel like sandpaper, rough and scratchy from crying so long, but it matches the pain in my throat and the cracks in my heart I’m certain will never heal. When and if they do, hopefully it will form scar tissues, something that will harden me from getting hurt again.
With the plate in one hand, I make my way to the door, wiping at my eyes once again. The tears continue to fall, rolling down my cheeks in fat drops with no signs of slowing. The sight of Flynn leaning against the wall doesn’t surprise me, but when he looks up at me, cheeks wet with his own tears, devastation in his eyes, it almost has the power to make my knees buckle.
“It kills me to hear you hurting.” His throat sounds as raw as mine feels. “Guts me to know I caused it.”
I open my mouth to argue, to tell him he’s only a blip on my radar of agony, but once again, I promised myself I’d stop lying.
I walk away, heading toward the kitchen to deal with the uneaten plate of food. His plate, the one he brought to my room earlier sits untouched on the counter. I set mine down alongside it, placing my hands flat on the marble countertop, head hung low. I’m too raw, too close to going back to him and begging him to promise all the things he said were true, to make him swear he isn’t playing games or just getting a thrill by making me believe he cares. His words sounded sincere, but I’ve been burned too many times, taken advantage of more times than I can count, and those were from friends and acquaintances, not someone who dug inside of me and took part of my heart and claimed it as their own.
Stay as long as you want. A day, a month, the rest of your life.
My broken little heart pounds with the thought, with the idea that he could possibly mean it, that he could want me here knowing I have nothing to offer in return. I no longer have VIP access to the hottest clubs or a swimming pool that would make Olympic swimmers jealous. I no longer have a mansion or enough money to ensure everyone around me has a good time. He won’t get close to my parents, get a foot in the door in Hollywood by being with me.
He would get me and that’s it.
I squeeze my eyes closed, trying to stay strong, but then images of his smiling face flash in my mind. And like a movie reel, it all comes flooding back. The kisses, the way he resisted me, trying to stay professional, trying to keep his distance like he knew crossing that line with me would be more, mean more, than just a night with a starlet’s daughter, more than a conquest to brag to his friends about. The way he protected me, chased after me and was ecstatic when he caught me, simply to have his arms around me rather than happy he did his job. The nights on the sofa watching stupid movies. The way he got territorial when Kyle was sniffing around the night before my birthday party. The way he fought resisting me like he warred with himself and lost the battle every time because he found me irresistible.
Jesus, the look in his eyes when he made love to me the first time, how I felt it then. All the things he’s said since, the promises, the assurances that he isn’t going anywhere. It’s all there, all lined out for me. Am I fool enough to walk away, to let my pride get in the way?
I’m ragged, once again a sobbing mess when I feel the heat of him at my back.
“You hurt me,” I say through my tears.
“I know, baby.” His arms bra
cket me, hands beside my own on the counter. His lips press to the back of my neck. “And I’ll wait for you, however long, whatever it takes to earn your forgiveness.”
I sob even harder.
“I’ll make sure you know every single day for the rest of your life how I feel. I’m going to shower you with attention, make it impossible for you to ever doubt what you mean to me again.”
My fingers twitch, desperate to tangle with his.
“And if you run, I’m always going to fucking chase you.” His arms circle me, wrapping around my middle, fingers splayed on my lower belly. “I’ll catch you a million times if that’s what it’s going to take.”
“How do you feel?” I ask, turning around and focusing on what he said just a moment ago. I search his face. “Exactly how do you feel?”
Warm fingers dash away the tears streaking my face, his thumb lingering on my lower lip. “Isn’t it obvious? I fucking love you, Remington Blair.”
I sob again, but he catches me on the chin before I can look away.
“I loved you the night I took you the first time, possibly even before that. I just couldn’t admit it to myself. Our worlds were so different. I knew I couldn’t fit into yours, and I couldn’t convince myself that you’d ever be happy in mine.”
I blink more tears from my eyes.
“Take time to heal, baby. I’m not going anywhere.”
I cling to him, to the idea that this man still wants me even though I can no longer give him much.
When he goes to pull away, to give me the space he thinks I need, I pull him closer, raising up on my toes to press my mouth to his. His tongue tangles with mine, but he’s holding back.
I clasp the front of his shirt, making him hiss as I line most of my body up with his.
He’s the one to pull away, his forehead against mine as we both pant.
“Remi,” he whispers, tilting my chin up with a single finger. My eyes focus on his red, swollen lips. “I’m not in this for sex that’s just good enough to override the shame you feel after. I want your heart. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I hurt you, and I’ll spend the rest of my life making that up to you if you let me, but it’s going to have to come with your heart in exchange as well.”
