by Tara Brown
She fidgeted with her hair, biting her lip and nodding as Jordan started asking her questions. His body language was off the charts. He turned in his chair, facing her and leaning on the bar, tilting himself so he was all hers.
I died a little inside as she batted her lashes and toyed with her hair and propositioned him so obviously.
He grinned and nodded, looking as smarmy as a guy could.
I died fully.
My whole body went numb except for the raging ache in my chest. My knees nearly buckled, but she got a glass of champagne and they toasted. He seemed really into her. He leaned forward, whispering something that made her eyes widen as she lost her charm. She met my gaze for a second and then regained her composure.
Tears were threatening me, but so was my lunch, which desperately wanted to come back up. I gagged and turned away, fleeing for the washroom so I could throw up like a normal person for once, in a toilet.
Chapter Twenty-Two
FREEDOM, FOR A COST
Jordan
The trap made my heart sore.
The girl the Test Dummy had sent was like watching amateur night at the strip club we used to go to when we were underage. But I knew that when I got that video link, it would make me look like a giant douchebag—exactly what I needed if this breakup attempt didn’t go smoothly.
After that sad business was finished, I sat across from another heartless wonder, Amy, who couldn’t be bothered to put her phone down. We’d sat through the usual pleasantries for an hour, and now it was time for the real talk. But she was texting a mile a minute and smiling to herself. Or whomever she was talking to.
“Amy,” I said again, getting annoyed.
“Just a sec.” She sent one more message and lifted her gaze, losing all that humor the moment our eyes met.
“We need to talk.”
Her eyes widened like she might panic. She glanced around the fancy restaurant and began to sweat. It burst from her pores like beads, and her hand began to tremble. “Okay.” She lifted her water and took a gulp.
It made me laugh. I knew what was happening, and I decided to play along. I reached across the table, taking her sweaty hand in mine and staring deeply into her eyes. “Amy, since we met I’ve had one question I’ve been dying to ask you.”
Her pupils dilated, and she made a face like she might gag or cry, I wasn’t sure which.
I tried to keep a straight face. “My parents, and I suspect yours as well, have an idea of where this is all going for us. And I wonder sometimes if we’re on the same page.”
She nodded along, desperately upset. Her eyes darted to the phone as it vibrated on the table.
“So I have to ask this question. Are you ready?”
She started to shake her head and then nodded, her eyes beginning to well.
“Will you, Amy Weitzman, please do me the incredible honor of being my ex-girlfriend?”
She looked like she was about to cry and then paused. “Ex?” Her words came out in gasps. “Ex-girlfriend?” She started breathing normally again.
“Yeah. You and I don’t match up, and I know our parents are forcing us into this. I think we’d be better off just shutting this down. Ending it here and now. Before it gets too serious and they start planning the wedding.”
“Oh my God.” She squeezed my hand back. “Seriously? I mean, it’s not you. It’s me. I’m in love with this guy, and my parents hate him. And when my dad found out, he threatened to disown me. So I lied and I said I had a thing for you. You were the first person I could think of—you and your brother are notorious. Everyone knows your family.” She said it like it wasn’t a compliment, which was fair.
“So you want to end it as well?” I was lost.
“Of course, duh. But what are we going to tell our parents?” She pulled back, having just realized the repercussions of us cutting romantic ties. “My dad wants me to marry you. He wants a lifetime of financial security with your dad and your grandpa, it’s more like. And he refuses to let me date anyone who isn’t part of our world, so.”
“Marry?” I choked a bit. “He said marry?” Her dad was worse than mine.
“Yeah. So I couldn’t break things off. At all. But if you do it—”
“Whoa, no. I was thinking we need to do this together. Both of us need to keep it as peaceful as we can. I tell my parents it isn’t really working, we’re more like brother and sister, maybe. And you tell your parents the same thing. We like each other, but not in a romantic sense. We spent the week together, and it felt wrong.”
“Ew.” She wrinkled her nose.
“Okay, not brother and sister. Best friends,” I offered. “We just tell our parents we’re totally cool being friends and they can keep up their own charade?”
“Oh.” She sat back down, losing all that excitement, and a little switch in her flipped. Her tone changed, and that stupid look on her vacant face disappeared. “I assumed you were taking one for the team and dumping me so I would be free and you would be the one in trouble. My dad could concentrate on hating you and not me.”
“I was sort of hoping we could make it so that our dads can still be on good enough terms to close this deal.”
“I’m not doing that. I’m not taking any of the blame.” She leaned in. “I can pretend to love you for the rest of my life. We can get married.” She was no longer the shy, ditzy girl she had been a week or an hour ago. “I can marry you and still have my boyfriends and trips. Who I marry means nothing to me. But I am not getting disowned because you can’t man up to your own dad,” she mocked.
“I see,” I growled back.
“Right. So, this has to be on you. You have to be the one to ruin this and hope your dad forgives you.”
“It’s like that, then.” I took a deep breath, hating that I would have to do this, plan B. I’d really hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but I couldn’t continue. It was worth throwing myself on the sword to end it. “I might have a way for you to dump me that would be legit; your parents would completely understand, and it might help me save face with my family.”
“Go on. I’m listening.” She sounded smarter than she ever had.
“I am expecting an email any minute with a video of me hitting on a random girl. It was made by a service called the Test Dummy. They test fidelity. I hired them under your name—”
“Whoa, wait—”
“Hear me out.” I lifted my hands. “No one has to know how the video came to you; there’s no receipt or anything. They sent a girl to hit on me, and I pretended like I wanted her. They recorded the whole thing, my propositioning her to go to a hotel room and everything. I did it to free us—to free both of us. It’s my plan B. You can dump me with proof of my shitty behavior. Your family will be satisfied with your ending the relationship, and mine might possibly forgive me, given every male in Manhattan has been caught with his pants down. It’s my best shot at possibly not being disowned. I didn’t dump you or end the relationship, staying within my agreement with my father. You ended it, and with good reason. I had no control over the matter.”
“That’s insane.”
“Yeah, well, it’d be more insane to stick this out for the rest of our lives to make our dads happy.”
“Why all the charades?” she asked. “Why not just break things off with me?”
“This way, I’m a victim of the videotape, and you’re a victim of me. Neither of us will really be to blame, just the circumstances.”
“Damn, look at you all Sherlock Holmes and shit.” She sat back. “I am impressed. I honestly thought you were a fuck boy like your brother. But you’re actually smart. That is fucking devious. It’s disgusting, but I think it might work.” Who the hell was this girl?
It was the longest conversation we’d ever had, and I actually didn’t mind being near her. She played dirty, but at least she had some personality now.
“Well, my dad is not going to want to be involved with your dad after this. So you understand you’re losing the busin
ess deal, right?”
“I know.” I took a deep breath, certain I was also going to be disinherited by Dad, but the important one, Grandpa Jack, could possibly understand. The entire plan B was for Grandpa Jack. Maybe he would get that I slipped up and made a mistake and got caught by someone else. It was my best shot. “I’ll get the check.”
“It was not very nice meeting you, Jordan.” She put her hand out. “But thanks for being cool and coming up with this insane scheme.”
“You’re welcome?” I took her hand in mine and shook it delicately, trying so hard not to hate her or blame her for this. It had been the worst week of my life. “And I will text that video to you the moment I get it, from an unknown number. Don’t show it to anyone but your mom, please. I don’t need to be ruined everywhere.”
“I won’t, I swear. I have to go home and start preparing myself for the meltdown of the century.” She got up and left as I watched her in silence.
Taking my drink in my hand, I contemplated how I was going to break the news to my dad, but the only thing I cared about was that I was free. I was single and free, and Amy was no longer my problem, and I didn’t have to pretend anymore.
I lifted my phone and dialed my brother.
“Jordie, what’s shaking, bro?” he answered a little too excitedly.
“It’s done.”
“Oh, man. You broke up with the little princess?”
“No, she’s dumping me.”
“How? And even better.”
“No, I’m still a dead man. But Grandpa Jack might commiserate with me. I fell on my sword a little, but if this works, I’ll only come out looking like a cheater who got caught, giving Amy an excuse to leave. Not a son who disobeyed his dad.” I cringed but remembered his and Lacey’s words. “I asked her to break things off amicably and let the dads be friends, but she didn’t think that was possible. So this was the next best thing.”
“Oh, well, fuck it. Congrats, man. I’m stoked for you. You wanna go out and get drunk and celebrate?”
“No, I’m going to the poker game with Monty.”
“Awesome. I’ll meet you guys, and we’ll go out. I know a sweet spot. You are gonna need to get laid. It’s been a while. We’ll find you a moderately attractive chick so you don’t end up like Forrest Gump after this massive sex recession.”
“I don’t want to have—”
“No one cares what you want. I’m already texting Monty. This is gonna be a sweet night. I’ll see ya later.” He hung up, leaving me hanging with my nerves and the next call I would have to make.
I learned early on that owning your bullshit to Grandpa Jack was way better than letting him find out from someone else. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath before I dialed his number and tried not to have a heart attack.
“Jordie, my dear boy.” He talked like he was Hugh Hefner. “What are you doing calling me on a Saturday? You know this is Grandpa’s fun day. No grandkids allowed.” He chuckled, also a little too happy.
“I have some bad news.” I cringed.
I might as well get it over with.
“I just had lunch with Amy, and she broke up with me. She got ahold of some video of me hitting on another woman at the bar. Someone took a recording. It was from last night.”
“Caught with the cucumber out. How the hell did this happen? We talked about this. You agreed you were going to be careful for the sake of the company.”
“I don’t know. I saw the video and couldn’t believe I’d been set up. The girl was stunning. Huge boobs.” I tried to focus on the parts he would care about.
“Huge boobs, eh. Well, what can you do, my boy? Everyone has a phone nowadays and no regard for propriety. They’ll record you doing anything to make noise and a buck. There’s even one of me floating around out there. If you google old man with his dick—”
“Yeah. Everyone and their phones.” I almost wished for the crabs story.
“I can’t say I’m happy, kid. In fact, I’m really disappointed. But this deal was your dad’s baby. I’ll let him handle how to proceed with the Weitzmans. He’s going to be pissed you got caught with the kielbasa out. I don’t know how to fix this. Weitzman is going to pull away from your dad, and the deal’s going to be ruined. It was a billion-dollar deal, Jordie. You couldn’t play nice for a billion dollars?” He laughed, but the bitterness was there, riding the sound.
“I played nice, just to more than one woman,” I lied. “I’m really sorry. I honestly didn’t know I was being set up.”
“I’m not happy, but we’ll bribe or cut the right people to make the video go away. And I guess we’ll have to come up with some alternate ideas to try to land that account.” His casual threat disturbed me slightly, but I’d take it in exchange for having the deed done. “You’ve disappointed me, son. But . . . we’ll figure it out. There’s not much to be done. We’ll discuss it Monday. Try to behave for the rest of the weekend, kid.” He hung up, and I tried to swallow down the discomfort that was going to be my life.
What were my options?
No, I needed to contemplate my worst-case scenario, because I had just landed in it.
Chapter Twenty-Three
SCUMBAGS EVERYWHERE
Lacey
“And then he said he wanted me. Like, he wanted me, right then and there. He asked if I was staying at a hotel nearby. I said no, and he wrote down a hotel and a room number and said his family kept it on hand for occasions such as this. He asked if I knew who he was, and I pretended I’d never seen or heard of him. And then he put a hand on my thigh, like, really brushing it softly. It was so crazy.” Hennie talked a mile a minute while I tried not to think about anything else that might make me sick.
She looked closely at me. “You okay?”
“Yeah. I just feel awful for his girlfriend. He’s clearly a douchebag.”
“Why, because he’s unhappy in his love life and wants out? She doesn’t even know him. She has a thing with that drummer dude.” She sounded like maybe he was going to become a hard limit for her. As in I couldn’t bash him anymore because he’d hit on her. She didn’t realize it was because he was a pig and would have hit on anything. And I wasn’t going to ruin that for her.
So I nodded along.
“So, you’re going to hand the evidence over to Amy?” Her eyes widened, like this excited her.
“Yeah.”
“Wow. I can’t believe your first mark was Jordan Somersby.”
“It’s wasn’t. I mean it was, but only because I can’t get to DJ Dipshit until tonight. I figured, why not get this one out of the way while I had tabs on him?”
“Are you upset?” she asked.
“Oh, no. I mean, sort of. I just expected more from him. He’s a friend of Monty’s, and I don’t like it when Monty hangs with guys who are a bad influence. You are who you hang with, ya know?” The lie was horrid.
“I guess so.” She sighed. “Except I don’t think that’s true. It can’t be considered cheating when your relationship isn’t real. And when it comes to bad influences, look at you and Marcia; you are different as night and day, but you stick to your guns.”
“I guess you’re right.” I shrugged and lifted my bags up, carrying everything like I was her help and she was a celebrity. She floated on her high all the way to my house.
When we got inside, Martin was walking out of the kitchen with a sandwich. He froze midbite, scowling. “Hey.” He didn’t look impressed. In fact, he was suspicious.
“Hey.” Hennie gulped, losing some of her high. I suspected she wanted Martin to be impressed with her makeover, but it was abundantly clear he wasn’t. She didn’t realize that he was more than most men and not interested in her looks. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine. A little sleepy.” He took another bite of sandwich and sat on the arm of the chair. “Grandma is driving me nuts.” He gave me a look. “She was panicking because you weren’t home yet and she had to leave to get some groceries. And she’s been going on and on that toni
ght she has to be at the theater forty-five minutes before the movie starts, but she doesn’t want me to be here without a babysitter.”
“Yeah, I got the impression she’s going to be weird for the next couple of weeks while this is ongoing.”
“Awesome.” He groaned and gave us both a nonchalant stare. “So, you still on for tonight?”
“Yeah, I’ll leave here, catch me a DJ, and come back, and we’ll upload the videos I got. Should be exciting.”
“I don’t think you should go to a club alone.” He tilted his head, like he was Dad.
“I was thinking about that too. I can see if Marcia or one of the other girls wants to go. They love to club.” I rolled my eyes. “Which means I’ll have to disguise myself extra, make sure Marcia drinks a lot and I drink nothing, and ensure I don’t get caught talking to Miguel. Which shouldn’t be that hard if the club is packed.”
“Just don’t go by yourself. Be smart. And careful not to get caught.” He nodded approvingly at me before asking Hennie, “You want a sandwich?”
“I’d love a sandwich.” She smiled wide, and her face screamed, Jordan who? She followed him into the kitchen, and I left the garment bag and took my makeup upstairs to start the plastic surgery I would need to make myself into someone DJ Spark wouldn’t recognize.
When I got into my room, I pressed my back against the door and tried taking deep breaths, but I couldn’t. My ribs were killing me. It was like Jordan had stabbed me.
It was in that moment I had to own up to the fact that I liked him.
A lot.
It was why I was so disappointed in him. I wanted him to be better than the average rich guy.
There was no denying I was attracted to Jordan or that I liked the fact that he called me Cinderella and asked my friend about me. He was taking chances to get to know me and showing up at parties I was at, hoping. And he apologized for being a douchebag when he wasn’t even really that much of one. He was weak, which I didn’t admire, but I understood his reasons. In his world, the rules were different. And how hard would it be to walk from your own family? I couldn’t imagine doing that with my own.
