by Alice Ward
She came for a second time that morning, breathing hard, and then whispered into my shoulder, “It doesn’t matter.”
I grabbed her hair by the roots, yanking it enough to rip a few strands free, lifting her face to mine, fervently searching her eyes for something that could make me understand. “Don’t say that. It matters. It fucking matters.”
I came then, unleashing my white-hot fury into her, as if I wanted to punish her too. But I didn’t. I wanted… something I couldn’t give. Something she couldn’t give me.
We stayed there for minutes, locked in an embrace. As our breathing quieted, she uncoiled her legs from around my waist. Beside her, my phone pinged, and I groaned. I didn’t want anything to interrupt what we had together.
Cassandra smiled gently and picked it up, handing it to me. Then froze, staring at the screen.
My balls tightened, and the hair rose up on my arms. I didn’t know what she was seeing, but from the look on her face, it was bad. Really bad.
“So… Bernadette?”
I frowned, confused, and held out my hand for my phone. “What?”
Her fist tightened around it. Very slowly, I pulled out of her, my flaccid cock dropping between us. She shoved me away, her jaw tightening in anger. “I saw pictures of her. Online,” she said, and all at once, I knew what the tension underneath her skin was all about, even if I didn’t know the context. “You’re together, right? Tight?”
I could have lied, which wouldn’t have been a lie at all. Because I wasn’t with Bernadette. Not at all.
“It’s… complicated.”
“Are you going to marry her?” she asked, her nostrils flaring.
I pulled my boxer briefs over my withering cock. “My family expects me to propose to her.”
She nodded, very calmly, then looked down at herself. She pulled the sweater’s hem down over her thighs and then looked at the lovely breakfast of eggs, toast, and bacon she’d plated for us, now no longer steaming. She let out a shaky breath and slid off the counter. “So then, what was this?”
I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t adequately phrase what this was. It was everything. My hopes, my dreams, everything normal I didn’t know was possible for me to have.
Before I could find a way to explain how things were with Bernadette, she said, “So this is a bon voyage to your life as a free man? Fuck the girl from the sex club as much as you can before you assume your real life?”
“No. That isn’t what this is.” I held my hand out for my phone, needing to know what had set this off.
Cassandra began to pace, ignoring me, my phone still tight in her grip, pacing. “Morals and convictions,” she muttered under her breath. “Is this what you call honesty?”
“Wait, just listen to me,” I said, reaching for her, grabbing her in desperation, forcing her to face me. “I’ll tell you what this is. This is my sanity. Okay? My entire life, out there—” I thrust my chin toward the front door. “It’s crazy. With you, I feel sane.”
She scoffed and jerked away. “Well, I’m glad you’ve found your Zen with me. So what if you have to hurt people in the process, huh?”
“I never meant to hurt you. What’s this about? Is that why you wouldn’t give me your name? Was it just the sex?”
She shook her head. I tried to grab her, to pull her to me. I wanted her to say it. To tell me that not only did it matter, but it was everything to her too.
But she pushed me away like I was a virus. Her eyes were fire. “Get the fuck away from me. You’re fucking proposing to her? Really?”
I shook my head. “Why do you think that?”
She finally slapped my phone in my hand. I looked down. It was a message from my father. Bernadette’s engagement ring arrived today. It’s a beaut. All arrangements confirmed for Thursday night. Make me proud.
I stared at it. “My parents…” I shook my head. “They expect… the country expects… the polls… I have to…” I couldn’t make my thoughts make sense in my head.
“You have to?” she sneered. “We only really have to do two things in life, Cameron. Pay taxes and die.”
I got it. What guy didn’t have the balls to make his own decision who he married? Answer: this one. She only thought of me as a fucking puppet, a stupid idiot. And she’d be right. I didn’t deserve her.
“Cassandra… whatever your name is… I—”
She laughed, bitterness dripping off the wound. “You want to know why I never gave you my real name, Apollo?”
I met her eyes. “Why?”
She lifted her chin. “Because it really was all about the sex. I just tolerated your blathering conservative bullshit because you’re hung like a bull.”
The air left my body.
She ran down the hallway, and not a minute later, returned, holding her overnight bag. It wasn’t so hard to pack, I realized dimly. She hadn’t used anything in it at all, except for her toothbrush. She was wearing a phenomenal pink sundress that bared her newly sun-pinked shoulders, and her hair was in loose waves. God, she was gorgeous.
I knew the second she left that my life was over. Not my life as a free man, but all of it. I’d go on living, but the thing inside me that gave me purpose? It would be gone.
And I had to let her go.
“I called for an Uber,” she said in a dull monotone. Mr. Fluffers whimpered for her attention at her feet, sensing my desperation, but she just ran a hand over his head once and tossed her hair over her shoulder.
“Uber?” I started. “I can—”
She didn’t wait for me to finish. She opened the door, slipped through, and slammed it behind her, without a look in my direction.
I pushed aside the curtain and saw her standing out there, waiting. Fuck. I tried to compose myself. All the speeches I’d given to rooms full of dignitaries and the fucking president of the United States, and I couldn’t think of one intelligent thing to say to her. I wanted to convey what she meant to me. I wanted to convey that no other woman would ever make me feel half as alive as she did. But all of those things wouldn’t ring true because she didn’t want me, and my path lay in a direction she couldn’t tolerate.
And unless that changed, there was nothing I could do.
I stepped outside, just as the Uber was pulling up. “Cassandra,” I said as she wrapped a hand around her bag and stepped off the porch.
She turned, her face already distant and detached.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She lifted a shoulder as if she didn’t care. “It’s Brooke,” she said. “My name is Brooke.”
And then she got into the car, and it drove away on the road cutting through the dunes, kicking up sand as it went.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Brooke
It turned out to be quite easy to find dirt on Cameron Brice.
All it took was what I’d lacked from the very beginning. Now, I had the desire.
During the three-hour car trip back to the city, I found the number of the person who’d texted me anonymously. Luckily, I hadn’t deleted it from my phone. I typed in a text to that person. Who is this and what have you got?
I arranged to meet the person named Jack at a bar in the Northeast on Tuesday evening. He said he’d bring all the documents, and that they’d definitely bring him down. After that, I shoved my phone into my expensive overnight bag and started to think about everything that had happened that weekend.
All of those new experiences, the trip across that monster bridge, the lobster, the champagne, the swim in the bay… as thrilling as they’d been, they’d all been tainted now. It was hard to look back at the way he’d held me, made love to me, looked at me, and spoken to me so sweetly and with a care no one had ever shown me, and think it had all meant nothing. He was fucking marrying Bernadette. He wasn’t just casually dating her. He’d invited me out to his getaway knowing that he was going to propose to another woman… in the same week! What kind of utter snake did something like that?
The only answer I could
think of was the kind who shouldn’t be holding public office. Besides, it didn’t matter that he’d obviously become pro-life because of a little girl named Kelsey. It didn’t matter that he’d treated me like a gentleman, like I was a queen. It didn’t matter that he felt like heaven inside me.
Like I’d always said… it didn’t matter.
And I was about to show him just how little it mattered to me.
I decided to meet this Jack at a public place because I wasn’t an idiot, but even as I squeezed into a booth across from the bar and ordered a beer from the waitress, I felt nervous. When a man came up to me and introduced himself, though, I relaxed and settled into the seat. The man was older and bald, and rather grandfatherly. He slid into the booth and said, “I’ll buy you that drink if you haven’t paid.”
I smiled. “Nonsense. I should be thanking you.”
He shook his head. “Nah. Just get Brice out of commission, and you’ll be doing us all a favor.”
I nodded, even though I felt sick at the prospect. A part of me hated him, but he wasn’t completely terrible. Even now, I couldn’t bring myself to think that he had no redeeming qualities. Did I hate him enough to destroy his career?
No. The truth was, he could show up at my doorstep and tell me he was sorry, and I’d take him back in an instant. Sometimes, I missed his touch so much, I thought that he could’ve still married that plastic Barbie, and I’d consent to stay his “other woman.”
I was entirely, wholly, completely whipped.
And I hated myself for it. I needed to cut out the disease.
Steeling myself, I said, “What have you got?”
He reached into a beaten leather satchel and pulled out a few manila files, which he slid over to me. “His campaign has been accepting illegal donations for months.”
I studied the papers, doubtful. Cameron had lied to me. I could only surmise that he’d also lied to Bernadette. But still, he didn’t strike me as someone who’d lie about this. “Isn’t his campaign manager in charge of all this?” I asked, thinking of Bob. After all, Cameron had nothing to do with the campaign finances. He left that to the people he trusted.
“Doesn’t matter. You tie this to his campaign, and it’ll bring him right down too.” He grinned and whistled. “Pop goes the weasel.”
“And if I don’t.”
His eyes narrowed. “Then I find someone else.”
I gnawed on my lip. At that moment, I was sure that Cameron knew nothing about this. “Okay,” I said, looking around. I pulled the papers together and pocketed them in my backpack. “Thank you. Um. Where did you get this?”
“That’s a secret.” He looked around. “And if you want to know why I didn’t bring it in myself, it’s because I need to distance myself from the spotlight, if you know what I mean.”
I shook my head. I had no clue how any of this worked. “How did you know to contact me?”
He lifted a shoulder, clearly refusing to answer the question and goose bumps raised on my arms. “Just... be prepared,” he said, sliding out of the booth. Before I could ask him more, he disappeared.
Be prepared for what?
Worrying my lower lip, I finished my beer and headed downtown to meet Kiera and Lorenzo at The Blue Duck, my choice for dinner. Lorenzo was, as usual, his typical prick self, draped over Kiera, sampling her mac ‘n cheese before she’d even had a bite of it. I thought he’d had one too many beers. Meanwhile, all he could do was prattle on and on loudly about stupid Republicans and how they were ruining the country. I tried to listen politely, but people in tables surrounding us were scowling at him.
I leaned forward, making a slicing motion across my neck. “You might want to—”
He leaned closer to me. “Hey, girl. You think I care what those GOP assholes think?”
I rolled my eyes as Kiera grabbed him. “Hey. Chill,” she said, looking around nervously. “My dad wouldn’t want you making a scene like this.”
“Making a scene? I’m not making a scene!” He looked at me. “You spending all your time in that office, I think you’re starting to bleed red.”
I turned to Kiera, my eyes widening. “You told him?”
She shrugged, her face pinking. Then she shoved him so hard he nearly fell out of the booth.
He scowled at her. “I gotta take a leak, anyway.”
He stumbled to his feet, knocking over chairs as he made his way to the bathroom. She sighed. “I know how to pick winners, don’t I?”
“I thought you said he was cool?”
She pressed her fingers to her temples. “He is, when he isn’t drunk, which is most of the time. I mean, I’m going to graduate from law school in a year, and then my dad will probably expect me to — god forbid — work.” She stuck a finger down her throat and pantomimed vomiting. “I swear, wouldn’t it be nice to find a mature, respectable guy for once? I don’t think they exist.”
My mind trailed back to Cameron, where it often wound up, despite my trying to force thoughts of him away. As much as I tried to harden my heart, I’d hear a song that played in the club when I met him, and think of him. Or I’d see a fluffy dog and think of the story he told me while I was wrapped in his arms in the tub. I even saw a sign that said, “Fresh Lobster!” outside a seafood store and nearly burst into tears. I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out.
Kiera studied me. “What is with you? You look half dead.”
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
She leaned closer. “Is it the assignment? Daddy told me he’d pressed you for info. He’s stressing about the debate. So, you haven’t found anything?”
“Not exactly.” I reached into my bag and pulled out the files, which I shoved over to her side of the table. “His campaign has been accepting illegal contributions.”
Her face brightened. “Really?” She opened the files and studied the papers inside. “And this is the evidence? Oh my god, girl, you did it!”
I tried to smile, but I couldn’t. At that moment, my face felt the furthest away from a smile as it ever had. The room was hot and spinning, and I’d never wanted to crawl into a hole and die as much as I wanted to just then.
Kiera eyed me suspiciously. “Okay, so… what’s going on?”
“Well…” Emotion clawed its way from my stomach and up my throat, burning my face with its intensity. It felt like lava as it spread to the backs of my eyes but I somehow managed to stop it from pouring down my face. “It’s Cameron.”
She frowned. “What about him?”
“He’s actually not as big a douche as we thought,” I said, starting to shred a napkin in front of me. “In fact, I happen to think he’s the opposite of a douche.”
Her face fell. She leaned forward. “Wait. What?”
“Well, you know how I’ve been tailing him, right?” I swallowed hard. Now the napkin was a pile of messy little pieces in front of me. My shoulders tensed as I looked around the room. “A month ago, I followed him at night, to a bar, and… well…”
She narrowed her eyes. “A bar?”
“A club. Yes.” I couldn’t bring myself to tell her just what kind of club. “And we talked, and well…”
She brought her hands to her mouth and gasped. “Oh, my god. Are you telling me you fucked Cameron Brice?”
She said it loud enough that people turned. I swallowed, too embarrassed to shush her. “It wasn’t fucking,” I said softly. “Well, maybe it was the first time. But then… then…”
“There was a second time?” Her voice was now getting dangerously loud. “And what? A third? A fourth? You said the first time was over a month ago?”
She looked utterly outraged, and I couldn’t tell if it was because of Cameron or because I had withheld vital details about my sex life from her. “You see…”
Lorenzo stumbled back, and Kiera shoved the check at him. “Go find our waitress and pay,” she told him, looking intently at me. When he left, she whispered, “You’re in love with him.”
I shook m
y head. “No!” I shouted as tears threatened to spill out of my eyes. “I’m a foolish idiot. I just kept sleeping with him, even though he was practically engaged to marry Miss Heir to a Coffee Dynasty.”
She squinted. “And that doesn’t make him a douche?”
I sighed. “No, it doesn’t. Because I think he’s only doing it because it’s expected of him, despite how miserable it’s going to make him. I got the feeling that if he just grew a pair and told them to go to hell, he’d find that the entire world wouldn’t explode on him. That maybe, just maybe…”
I stopped. I didn’t know what the feeling was. Just that, when I said it didn’t matter, maybe, it could matter. When I said it was the end, maybe, it didn’t have to be.
“Maybe you belong together?” she said softly.
I nodded. “But it’s stupid, isn’t it?” I said, wiping the tears from my eyes and letting out a laugh. “That’s not the way the world works.”
Kiera stuck out her lower lip, and I could tell she was feeling my pain intently. She reached over to grab my hand. “Aw, honey. You know I love you, no matter what. Even if you got yourself involved with a douche.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. I guess I really had. What had I expected?
The truth was… I hadn’t started out looking for it, but somewhere along the line, I’d begun expecting the fairy tale. Cameron did that, with all his wealth and good looks and his silver tongue.
But I’d been so stupid. Fairy tales weren’t real, especially since, in this one, I was the dragon.
And I was supposed to breathe fire and kill the crowned prince.
I snatched my hand away and pushed the folders across to her. Then I pulled them back, clutching them to my chest. I exhaled and shoved them back across the table. “Just hold them for me until I know what I want to do,” I mumbled, swiping at my face. “I’m sorry. I’ll see you later.”
I grabbed my purse and stepped out into the night, feeling the lowest I’d ever felt. But it wasn’t until I got back to my lonely apartment and sank into my bed, that I not only allowed the tears to flow… I howled.
