by Cassia Leo
“How do you know Milo?” I asked, trying to keep my cool as I made my way to the kitchen to fix us some drinks.
He followed me into the kitchen and leaned against the counter as I pulled two glasses out of the cupboard. “He got kicked out of MIT seven years ago for hacking.”
“Hacking what?” I asked as I pulled a bottle of vodka out of the freezer.
“You seriously don’t know this?”
I poured us each a glass and slid the bottle back into the freezer. “No, I don’t. Should I?”
“He hacked into the NeoSys mainframe and stole the personal and financial information of their executives who were involved in a major lawsuit with employees at the time. He threatened to release the information to the public if they didn’t wire him $10 million.”
I dropped the olive in my fingers and it bounced across the kitchen floor. “Are you kidding me?”
Luke laughed as he scooped up the olive and tossed it into the sink. “Nope. The best part is that instead of pressing charges, when NeoSys found him, they offered him a job.”
I handed Luke his martini and took a sip of mine. “Interesting.”
“So you worked at NeoSys over a year ago and you still keep in touch with Milo? You two must be pretty good friends.” He set his martini on the counter without taking a sip as he waited for my answer.
I resisted the urge to take another sip before I placed my drink next to his. “He has a crush on me. He still tries to get me to go out with him every once in a while.”
This wasn’t a lie. It was a small, insignificant truth teetering atop a mountain of lies.
For fuck’s sake, tell him, Brina! Ryan’s voice was sharp in my head, like the last time we argued, three days before he died. He found out I had been sending my parents money every month and he laughed at me.
“You are such a fucking sucker,” he said through tears of laughter. “They can sell the fucking house if they need money.”
“They shouldn’t have to sell the house. And don’t call me a sucker. You’re the loser who still lives with them.”
I did apologize later for calling him a loser, but that doesn’t change the fact there are some uncomfortable truths that should never be spoken aloud.
I reached for Luke’s tie and began loosening the knot. His hands found the button of my jeans when my phone vibrated in my pocket.
“I guess I can’t blame Milo for trying,” he whispered before his lips fell over mine.
I pulled away from him and wrapped his tie around my hand as I slipped my phone out of my pocket. It was Jill. “Hello?”
“I’m coming over, and I’m bringing drinks and that new surfing movie. I’m in the mood to gawk at some hot guys.”
I could hear that she was on the move, probably walking through the parking lot at the travel agency.
“Jill, it’s not a good time for me. Can we do it another night?”
The movement stopped. “Are you with him right now?”
I glanced up into his gorgeous blue eyes. “Yes.”
“At your apartment?”
I smiled. “Mm-hmm.”
“Have you told him yet?”
I sighed at her buzz-kill question. “No. But I promise we can get shitfaced and ogle some surfers soon. I’ll talk to you later, hun. Love ya. Bye.”
“You’d better tell h—” She didn’t have a chance to finish before I ended the call.
I couldn’t explain to her my reason for not telling Luke the truth when I had multiple opportunities to do so in Vegas. She wouldn’t understand.
“You didn’t have to turn her away. We could have all hung out,” Luke said as I laid the phone on the kitchen counter.
“Jill is very understanding.” I dragged him by the tie into the bedroom.
He hooked his finger through my belt loop to stop me from sitting on the bed. “So am I.”
I sighed as I thought to myself, I sure hope so.
Chapter 6
I woke the next morning with Luke’s hand on my breast. I cleared my throat and his eyes fluttered open.
“Excuse me, sir, but I believe you have something that belongs to me.”
“This is mine,” he said as he took my nipple into his mouth and slid his hand between my legs. “And you make sure to let Milo know that.”
I arched my back as he teased my nipple with his tongue while his fingers tormented my clit. I moaned as my body began to tremble. He removed his hand and positioned himself between my legs, and he kissed my ribs as he began to move down, but I grabbed his ears to stop him.
“No, I want you inside me. Please.”
He grinned at the sound of my pleading. His chest slid over mine as he entered me. I wrapped my legs around him as he placed his hands on either side of my head. He looked me in the eye as he moved slowly, grinding against me as he sank in and out of me, and when I looked down to watch, he lifted my chin.
“Look at me.” He sank down to his elbows so our noses were inches apart, but he never looked away. I could feel myself getting close.
“Oh, Luke.”
“I love you,” he breathed.
“I love you.”
He slipped his finger between my folds without breaking eye contact, and I came as soon as he touched me. Within seconds, he collapsed on top of me, shaky and breathless.
“Oh, fuck,” he whispered, his breath hot on my face as he rested his forehead against mine. “See what you do to me?”
I kissed the tip of his nose and looked him in the eye. “I don’t want you to leave.”
“What are you talking about? I’m still inside you.”
“I want to spend the day with you.”
Today was the day. I would accompany Luke to his party, as I had promised, and after the party, I would come clean. I couldn’t live like this anymore. If tonight was our last night together, I wanted to at least spend the entire day with him in blissful ignorance.
He smiled. “How about we spend the whole day right here?”
“Inside me?”
“Inside, outside, on top, below…all over you.”
“Ooh, sounds like it’s going to be a very long day.”
He finally pulled out of me and laid a soft smack on my hip. “Then we’d better eat a big breakfast. Come on. Let’s go to IHOP.”
I ogled his perfect ass as he climbed out of bed and pulled on his underwear. “You’re going to blow your billions on IHOP?”
“You’d better get dressed, or there’ll be no Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruity for you today.”
I threw the sheet off and poked the back of his leg with my toe.
He turned around, took one look at my naked body, and shook his head as he climbed on top of me. “All right. Maybe a just a little rooty tooty.”
After a hearty breakfast, and a very hearty afternoon of sex so amazing it should be illegal, Luke left my apartment to get ready for the party. As soon as he left, I began rehearsing my confession in the shower, and continued as I blow-dried my hair and applied my makeup.
“Luke, I have something I need to tell you,” I said to my reflection for the thousandth time. “No, don’t use the word need. It makes you sound needy. Okay, let’s try this again. Luke, I have to tell you something. No, that doesn’t sound right either.”
Just spit it out, Brina.
I shook my head then pulled my mascara out of my makeup bag. I didn’t need to rehearse my lines. I needed to tell him the truth, and I needed it to sound real. Besides, he was going to dump me no matter how I said it.
Luke’s car pulled in front of the curb of my apartment building at 7:50 sharp. I slid into the passenger seat and his eyes slid over me from head to toe.
“You look amazing.”
I smoothed down the red dress I had bought earlier this week specifically for tonight and crossed my ankles. “Thanks. You don’t look so bad either in that tux,” I growled at him, and he leaned over to kiss me, but I turned my cheek. “Not on the lips. You’ll ruin my lipstick.”
He shook his head as he pulled out onto the street. “You won’t get away with that much longer looking like that. Don’t forget whose birthday we’re celebrating tonight.”
Not a chance I could forget, though I wish I could. It would make what I was planning to do tonight just the slightest bit easier.
The party took place at the Four Seasons in Seattle and was given by Jerry Wilshire, a sixty-something tech tycoon, and his wife. I didn’t know what I expected, but I didn’t expect four local indie bands performing while people two and three times my age danced along to the music and feasted on canapés and shrimp. Though I didn’t feel it was necessary, Luke stayed by my side the entire evening, making sure to introduce me as his girlfriend to everyone who wished him a happy birthday.
As the night wore on, the ropes in my stomach coiled tighter and tighter. When Luke was certain he had greeted everyone, we finally took a seat at a table to enjoy some birthday cake in peace.
“Did you choose the entertainment?” I asked as I fed him a bite of chocolate cake.
He swallowed his cake before he answered, “I did, actually. It’s the only part of this whole charade that I had any say in.”
“Charade?” I asked as I wiped a bit of frosting from his lip and licked it off my finger.
“Hey, I was saving that for later.” I gave him my best look of disappointment and he sighed. “There are fewer than a handful of people here who actually give a shit about wishing me a happy birthday. Everyone else is here for the free drinks and the schmoozing.”
I set down my fork and took a deep breath as I looked him in the eye. “Luke, I have something to tell you.”
My phone rang, and Luke looked as perplexed as I felt. I hadn’t heard my phone ring in weeks, since I bought the thing and was testing out the ringtones. My phone was always on vibrate.
“Are you going to answer that?”
I reached into my purse and pulled out my phone. It was Milo. “Hello?”
“Yes, I hacked your phone to turn on the ringtone. And, yes, your time is up, so you are going to meet me in the lobby right now to give me Josh’s phone. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
He hung up, and I tried not to appear absolutely terrified as I tucked the phone back into my purse. “I have to use the ladies’ room. I’ll be right back.”
I kissed the corner of Luke’s mouth, leaving a red imprint of my lips, and set off toward the restroom. I looked back a couple of times and smiled as he watched me walk away. The third time I glanced back, he was going for another bite of cake, and I seized the opportunity to scurry out into the corridor. I raced down the corridor as fast as my heels would allow and turned the corner to make it to the lobby just as Milo came through the front doors of the hotel.
“You cannot come here and make a scene!” I whispered furiously. “This is a bad time. You need to leave.”
“I’m not leaving without the phone.”
“You don’t even know if there’s anything useful on that phone.”
“Save me the stall tactics, Brina. I’m sure Luke told you what I’m capable of. I don’t think you’d be surprised to know what kind of data I can get off that phone.” He held out his hand and I wanted to vomit. “Don’t make me go in there and break the news to your boyfriend.”
I glanced around the lobby, searching for some sort of escape route, some sort of lifeline, and then I saw it. Just a few yards away, sitting in the center of a coffee table, was a small tabletop water feature. I would throw Josh’s phone into the water.
I slipped Josh’s phone out of my purse and held it behind my back. “If I give you this, you take it with my resignation. I want no part of this. Do you understand me? I want out.”
I waited for him to say the word, but all he did was stare at me with what looked like a semi-frightened expression on his normally smug face. Before I could prompt him for a response, someone seized the phone from my hand.
I turned to find Luke staring at Josh’s phone. “I didn’t think you would actually do it.”
“It’s not what you think. I wasn’t giving him the phone.”
“No, you were just exchanging it for your resignation.” The disappointment in Luke’s eyes made me want to tear my heart out. “I was so certain you wouldn’t do this.”
“I wasn’t going to. I was—” My heart raced as I processed what he’d said. “Wait a minute. You knew and you never said anything?”
The muscle in his jaw twitched as he clenched his jaw. “I was hoping you’d come to your senses.”
“Were you playing me this whole time?” I whispered, my chest aching with this realization, though I suspected it all along.
“Don’t turn this around on me, Brina,” he replied, and the disgust in his face was like a knife twisting in my gut. “You’re the one who walked into my office last week. Yes, I knew why you were there from the beginning, but I didn’t think you’d actually do this. Everything you showed me told me you didn’t have it in you.”
“Have it in me?” I repeated these words as if he’d spoken them in a foreign language. As if he couldn’t possibly have been speaking of me. “Have what in me?”
“To be so heartless,” he replied matter-of-factly. “Don’t bother coming in on Monday. I’ll have someone deliver your things to your apartment. And you,” he said, pointing at Milo. “If I ever see your sorry ass again, you’re going to wish you never sold your soul to NeoSys.” He shook his head at me as he turned and walked away.
That was it. I had been anticipating this moment for days, but I never anticipated it would feel like this—as if I’d been ripped in two. He knew this whole time, and he still believed I would do the right thing. And I would have if he hadn’t interrupted me.
Milo put his hand on my shoulder. “Do you need a ride?”
I smacked his hand away then made my way toward the hotel entrance. “Fuck off, Milo.”
Chapter 7
Five weeks later
“Are you ever going to turn on the TV? I need some background noise.” Jill glared at me from the other end of the kitchen counter, where she was busy sorting through my junk drawer for stuff to throw away.
Tomorrow was moving day, and I hadn’t finished packing. I had been putting it off due to a crazy superstition that, if I finished, everything that had happened in the last five weeks would suddenly be true. It was true whether or not I packed, but I couldn’t afford to pay for a moving company anymore, so I enlisted Jill to help me finish sorting through my stuff before the landlord came by tomorrow and physically booted me out.
The only good thing about this day was the amazing June weather. With the front door open and the sound of the water fountain outside trickling in on the breeze, I might eventually succeed in pretending I was somewhere else—or someone else. On second thought, it would probably take more than a few drinks or some serious hallucinogenics to achieve that level of nirvana right now.
“I can’t. Every time I turn on the TV, someone’s talking about it,” I replied as I wrapped a dinner plate in newspaper and tucked it into the bottom of the cardboard box at my feet.
I was referring to the developers’ conference, of course. It was all anyone was talking about these days: What was Luke Maxwell going to unveil? What was Blaze, and how was it going to change the world?
Just thinking of the word Blaze made my stomach flip, and twist, and, well, just about every circus trick a stomach could do. I couldn’t bear to turn on the TV and see his face. Five weeks felt like a heartbeat in the world of extreme heartbreak.
I gazed across the kitchen floor at the boxes and shook my head. “I can’t believe I’m moving back in with my parents.”
“You wouldn’t have to if you had taken that job with the medical supply company.”
“Call me crazy, but I do not want to spend the foreseeable future sitting in an office, drawing up marketing plans for catheters.”
“No, you’d rather sit in an office, answering phones and opening packages, because that
’s a much better use of your business degree.”
“Answering phones wasn’t my main job. I was a competitive intelligence officer.”
“Face it, Brina; you sucked at it.”
“I blew my last assignment, but I did not suck at my job.” She raised her eyebrows at me and I sighed. “Man, I really sucked.”
“You need to go to that conference,” Jill insisted for the twentieth time this week.
“I’m about as welcome at that conference as a giant cockroach wearing a NeoSys t-shirt. Can we please talk about something else?”
“Knock, knock.”
If I hadn’t just wrapped the dinner plate I was holding in my hands, I would have thrown it at my front door, where Milo stood wearing, no kidding, a NeoSys t-shirt.
“Speak of the fucking devil. What are you doing here?”
“I came to apologize,” he said, stepping into my apartment without my permission.
“Apologize for what?” The truth was I had already shifted the blame for what happened at the party onto myself. “You were just doing your job. We were all just doing our jobs.”
“That’s no excuse for what I did.”
“I expected nothing less from you. I’m over it.” I grabbed a glass out of the cupboard and began rolling it in newspaper. “I’m more angry with myself than anyone else.” I dropped the wrapped glass into the box and hoisted myself onto the counter to reach the top shelf. “The thing that stings the most, the worst part of all of this, is that I was about to tell him everything right before you called me. Not to mention the fact I had a million chances to tell him before then and I hesitated.”
“Even the best of us choke sometimes,” Milo replied as he began pulling spices out of the cabinet behind me.
“I always hesitate,” I muttered.
“Brina, honey, you know I love you, so please don’t take this the wrong way,” Jill began, and I immediately looked over my shoulder at her. Her round face was wrought with concern. “You have got to stop blaming yourself for what happened to your brother. I have seen you beat yourself up for eight months, and I’m really starting to worry. What Ryan did had nothing to do with you. You have to believe me.”
