by Ava Claire
So I whirled around, my heart rocketing to my throat.
Pulsing.
Choking me as I locked eyes with my tail.
The guy was in one of those button-down, short-sleeved shirts that made me think about bowling alleys and liquid nacho cheese. Paired with shorts and flip flops despite the cold wind that whipped my scarf around my neck, I almost relaxed, thinking he was just another tourist—but his camera was bulky and professional looking.
His surprise melted into a predatory smile as he pointed the camera in my direction. "Melissa, how does it feel to be the biggest slut in America?"
His question screeched in my ears like he'd cupped his hands around his smug mouth and pushed the words straight from his diaphragm to every ear in the Bay Area.
His camera was flashing, capturing my horror in every frame. There was nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run. I could feel the interest buzzing around me, building like the terror in the pit of my stomach.
Just turn around. Keep walking. Don't say a word.
But my legs weren't working.
The flow of movement staggered, phones hovering in my direction.
“Who is she?”
“The girl dating that billionaire.”
“She stole him from Delilah James!”
“That pregnant actress?”
I finally found my voice, the words haunting my vocal chords as I fought to catch my breath. “It’s not like that.” The sentence was a feeble whisper that was consumed as the paparazzo asked another question, saying the name that the curious onlookers would know instantly unless they lived under a rock.
“How does it feel to be the slut that stole Delilah James’ boyfriend? Do you even care about the baby? How about your rich boyfriend?”
Tears stabbed my eyeballs like a hundred tiny needles. It didn’t compare to the shame. The agony burned me from the inside out.
“I’m right here, Melissa.”
The familiar, rich voice flooded me with relief. My tears were streaks of joy when I saw Stacia. She looped her arm in mine, wasting no time pulling me through the crowd that had gathered around me and the photographer.
We were only a few blocks away from the cafe, but I didn’t dare let go of her arm or look anywhere but the light at the end of the tunnel.
No more questions. No more eyes. No more judgment. No more carrying the brutal truth that no, I didn’t care about the baby. No more fighting the urge to tell the world that the baby wasn’t even Logan’s.
Stacia cleared her throat as we stopped by the entrance.
I gaped at her obtusely, then realized she probably needed her arm back.
I followed her inside, snapping out of the lull of my run-in with the photog. I came to the realization that whether she saved me or not, my best friend still had a bone to pick with me.
I’d never been out of the States, but visiting Paris was on my list. The Eiffel Tower. The Arc de Triomphe – just sitting at a cafe with a coffee, drinking it all in. I always made it a point to stop into Cafe De La Fleur when I was in the city. It was always an experience; what I imagined Paris would be like, alive with sounds and smells and conversations.
We walked past the bar area and a wall lined with magazines and books down the stairs to a room filled with booths and cafe tables. Our host guided us to our table, leaving us with our menus. Even though I already knew I wanted, I stared at the menu, pretending the words weren’t swimming before my eyes. Now that I was still, the confrontation rushed over me like a runaway train. I balled my fists in my lap, ignoring Stacia’s glare. I couldn’t talk about that photographer or the reason he wanted to take pictures of me in the first place.
“So you’re going to make me pry it out of you?”
“Pry what out of me?” I said innocently.
“Put the menu down. I know you, Melissa. You’re a creature of habit—you’re not trying anything new.”
“Sure I will.” I picked a menu item I hadn’t tried. “I’ll do the smoked salmon benedict.”
“Or maybe I don’t know you,” she said darkly, completely disregarding my attempt to prove her wrong. “The Melissa I know doesn’t dash off to San Francisco, saying to hell with her job and friends. The Melissa I know doesn’t freeze me out for days.”
I lowered the menu and let my eyes follow suit. “Stacia—”
“The Melissa I know would be able to look me in the eye and tell me what’s going on, without me having to pull teeth. Because we’re friends. Best friends, I thought.”
“Best friends?” I snorted, raising an eyebrow. “Are we in the third grade?” I meant it as a joke, but it fell flat. I winced, backpedaling as fast as I could. “I didn’t mean that.”
“I was under the impression that we were both adults, but sneaking off is something children do,” she fired back.
“Touché,” I muttered, shoulders slumping. Our waitress took our order. I got the same thing I always ordered. Stacia ordered the salmon.
“I’ll let you have a bite of it,” she offered.
I met her eyes and saw the spark of warmth I had no right to. I fanned it nonetheless. “Thanks, Stacia.”
She took an angry swig of her mimosa. “Don’t mistake my generosity for forgiveness.”
I chewed my bottom lip, then took a slow and sobering gulp of espresso before finally facing the firing squad. I’d been so caught up and eager for escape that I didn’t even look at Stacia. But face-to-face, eyes wide open, I saw her. She wore a crisp black blazer with a charcoal gray blouse beneath. Her dark hair was pulled into its usual bun at the nape of her neck. Her makeup was flawless, brown eyes fierce and lips blood red, ready for battle. None of it should have been jarring; she was a lawyer, suited up, and no frills was her uniform. The only time she let her hair down was the rare occasion when she wasn’t entrenched in a case. But the last time I saw her, she was miles away from the woman in front of me. The bright colors she’d worn seemed painfully so in the face of the monochrome ones she was currently in. The light in her eyes had darkened, the happiness I’d seen back in Sacramento so distant that I wondered if I’d imagined it.
Something had happened to my friend...and I wasn’t there for her.
“Is it your ex?” I hung my head, ready for her judgment. “I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t want you to be sorry.” She sat up taller, her face so closed off that I could almost make out the snarled barbed wire and the sign that read ‘KEEP OUT’. “And I didn’t come all this way to talk about me. I came here to talk about Logan Mason.”
I polished off my espresso, the bitterness of it coating my tongue. “Where do you want me to start?’
“The beginning is just fine.”
I drummed out a nervous beat on the table, memories piling on top of each other. The weight of it made me want to the change the subject like a coward. Talk about the view. About her work. Hell, my work. Or maybe talk about the subject she was clearing avoiding herself—but that just reminded me that I’d been a bad friend, and that’s why I was in this predicament in the first place.
One of those calls and texts she sent may have been at a pivotal moment when she felt like her whole world was crashing down. I’d declined every one, focusing on Logan. Love (and the other L word) were no excuse, and she deserved to hear that.
“Remember the trip to Santa Cruz? The rental at Pleasure Point?” I leaned back against the cushion of the booth, wishing it would swallow me whole because she was about to rip me a new one. “Logan owns the property. That’s how we met.”
“WHAT?!” she bellowed. An elderly woman beside us cleared her throat pointedly, but she cowered when Stacia whipped her head in her direction. She reserved the brunt of her anger for me. “You met him in Santa Cruz.” Her emphasis on ‘met’ wasn’t so much shook hands and said hello. More like, our naked bits got acquainted. “But that can’t be true, because you told me nothing happened besides a gnarly sunburn.”
I squeezed my thighs together, but it was too late. My core
was throbbing at the memory of Logan’s hands gliding over my skin; the bite of the sunburn and the cool of the cream. I relived the aching need when he kissed me, and all I wanted, all I needed was Logan.
“I wasn’t being completely honest.” I peered around us and when I was relatively sure no one was listening, I continued. “We were together, Stacia. And it was-” I gulped, knowing full well whatever word I came up with wouldn’t do it justice. “Amazing.”
Her face softened, the faintest smile fluttering across her lips. “I knew some vacation dick was just what you needed.”
“Stacia!” I gasped. Her voice wasn’t remotely lowered or discreet.
“Let’s call a spade a spade.” She crossed her arms, tracing her bottom lip thoughtfully. “But it was more than sex. That’s why you didn’t tell me.”
“I wasn’t ready to face what it was,” I answered truthfully. “And by the time there was no running from it, when I was in so deep that I...” I meandered as our waitress slid up to the table. Even though I doubted this was another situation where the waiter was really a reporter, I still waited for her to walk away before I picked up where I left off. “He sees me, Stacia. With Jason, I felt like it was so much work trying to be perfect. Trying to be everything he needed. But with Logan, it’s effortless. I’m not losing pieces or hiding parts of myself. He sees it all. And he loves it all.”
Stacia’s eyebrows nearly lurched to the ceiling. “Love?”
I nodded slowly, holding my breath. Waiting for her to tell me that there was no way I could be in love with a man I’d barely known a month. Or that he could love me. But she didn’t say a word. She wielded her knife, the blade gliding through the egg and spilling the creamy yolk over the salmon. I watched her, my appetite forgotten. I just wanted to get the lecture over with.
I waited for her to eat half of it before I broke the silence. “You’re not going to tell me how ridiculous this all is?”
She dabbed at her mouth with her napkin, her eyes finally settling on me. “Your picture plastered all over TMZ and random Internet trolls calling you a slut? That’s ridiculous. You running off to San Francisco with a billionaire? That’s crazy. But love? Love isn’t supposed to make sense. It’s random and complicated and frustrating and heartbreaking and beautiful. If you guys are in love, I’m happy for you, and sad all at once.” Her voice went shaky, tears drowning her words. “B-because love will rip your heart out if you let it.”
I gripped her hand, not pushing it. Not picking at the wound. She didn’t have to go into it. This had her ex written all over it. I wanted to shake him, to make him see what an amazing woman he had. An amazing woman he kept breaking over and over again.
Stacia forced a smile, giving my hand a squeeze before she steeled herself, flicking her tears away. “We’ve got a lot of catching up to do. I took the day off, and I want every leg-shaking, pussy-dripping detail.”
Chapter Three
Logan
I walked into the conference room, the usual nostalgia that swept over me confronted with another emotion: dread.
I'd purposefully had the top floor outfitted to accommodate the expansive room we used for board meetings. It was a psychological move. Even though the company was mine, a seedling that I nurtured into the Fortune 500 Company it was today, I still had to answer to a board filled with people that had been cautiously skeptical of my vision—until the profits started rolling in.
They had to come to me. Climb every floor to the place in the sky they didn’t believe I could build.
I'd always felt a sense of accomplishment, of power, when I walked through the door. I was always the first in. Drinking in the long glass table and empty leather chairs. Appreciating the view of the city from the window.
But today, I just walked to my seat at the head of the fragile table and sank into the chair with a sigh. The creeping ache wasn't soothed by the silence; it was magnified. The dread took root and taunted me with everything I had to lose if push came to shove.
With the exception of my mentor, Roman McLeod, I had no friends on the board. They tolerated me, a man half their age calling the shots, because Mason Acquisitions was profitable and heralded as a pioneer in our field. We turned something cutthroat into greater opportunities for everyone, from the account managers to the janitorial staff. We fostered a sense of community: when we all pulled together, we all succeeded.
That wasn't some byline I was told to sell by the PR team. As someone that grew up with very little, I made a point to ensure no one on our staff went without.
It didn't endear me to men who were used to putting their needs, and wallets, first.
I gripped the cup of coffee that was waiting for me, ignoring the tremble in my hands. The brand I'd built was tarnished. It was now synonymous with Delilah and the pregnancy. I worked so hard to separate myself from the herd, but if you followed the headlines, I was just like every other cold, filthy rich douche bag.
I stared into the mug, sinking into the pitch-black nothingness. The color of my heart, if you asked any number of commenters on the articles and blog posts I pretended I didn’t read. They poised rhetorical questions about what kind of man would abandon his child. If they only knew I'd been ready to be there for my little one. Really be there. Yes, I could provide for them financially, far beyond the average person's dreams, but I wanted to be more than a bank account. More than a flick of a pen on a birth certificate.
But she took it all away.
Delilah gave me a piece of something I never knew I wanted, then snatched the earth out from under me.
And I would repay the favor.
"Seems great minds think alike."
Roman's thick, Scottish lilt jerked me from the dark. Even though everything had changed for me since I was paired with him in the outreach program in high school, he looked exactly the same. Up until the moment we met, I'd associated suits with church and funerals, but he’d looked like he could move mountains in his. He had an authority when he walked into a room. I sat up straighter. Paid attention to the man with the red hair slicked back from a face that tolerated exactly zero nonsense. Green eyes that seemed to find every shortcoming and challenge me to do better with a single glance.
There was one difference though—his smiles were a rarity back then, but these days, they created permanent wrinkles beside his eyes. The one he wore today had a hint of sadness and melancholy. I pretended that I wasn't the one behind that sadness. That I hadn't been the one to disappoint him.
I unbuttoned my jacket, rising to shake his hand. Neither one of us wasted time talking about emotions. It was one of the things I respected most about him as my mentor. He didn't try to save me, he just pointed out my potential and laid out the roadmap. It was my job to make the journey.
But this handshake wasn't a quick, abrupt, business-like transaction like the other countless times. He held onto my hand, enclosing it between his.
"You okay, son?"
Hearing him use that word was like he'd slugged me. I yanked my hand from his grasp, taking two steps away from him, toward the head of the table. I was in control of my emotions. I would not break down here of all places.
"Everything is fine, Roman," I said, ironing the discomfort from my voice. After I took a breath, it came out as indifferent and starched as the shirt beneath my jacket. "And how are Lucia and the girls?"
"You know Lucia," he chuckled, pulling out the chair beside mine. "Out to save the world, one charity luncheon at a time. The girls are in London on a school trip." He leaned back, the chair whining as he swiveled toward me. "You haven't answered my question."
My hands shook, so I stuffed them in my pockets. It wasn't lost on me that I had a similar pose when he and I met. I remedied it, leaving one safely out of view. The other shook with the telltale sign that I was struggling to keep my brave face on.
"I'm perfectly fine, Roman." I added a smile to drill the point home. "I'm glad you could make the meeting this morning. They were ready to hang me out
to dry a month ago, even via video."
He stared at me intently, not giving me a break from his silent interrogation until the secretary brought him a coffee. He took a stoic gulp, then let out a sigh like it was the best coffee he'd ever had. "I'd love to find a pound of this to take home."
I leapt at the subject change, reaching for the control panel that would alert the secretary. "I could have some packed up for you-"
"That's quite alright-"
"It's really no trouble," I insisted. "Moira, can you call down to the cafe-"
"Logan."
I looked up from the panel, noting the slight shake of his head. "Cancel that, Moira. Thanks." My nostrils flared, the unspoken scolding almost as unpleasant as airing my dirty laundry.
"There's the stubborn little snot I met at Greenwood High," Roman commented softly. If I didn't know better, I'd say he sounded almost wistful.
"Jesus," I groaned, raking my hand through my hair with annoyance. "First all this talk about feelings, now we’re waxing lyrical about the past? Maybe we should swap friendship bracelets and braid each other's hair."
"I know you use humor to deflect, but it doesn't change the fact that you are not fine." Roman waited for me to answer, to give in. When I didn't say a word, he dug deeper. "There is no weakness in talking about your life, especially when your life has a direct impact on your work."
"Sounds like someone on the board has been bending your ear," I spat defensively.
"Not your board. Your secretary, Amanda. And I have two eyes. Suit or no suit, you're wearing this whole torrid affair all over your face. You always had a problem controlling your anger. Over a decade later, and it's still crippling you."
"That's where you're incorrect," I said coldly. "Back then, when someone wronged me, I didn't rest until they paid in bruises and blood."
"There may be no outward marks, but I can see the bruises and blood, Logan. They're all over you."
"What would you have me do?" I roared, the eruption spewing forth lava and vitriol. Melting away my facade of calm. "I let my dick do the thinking and this is the result: an ex lover who won't rest until I'm ruined."
