“Faye.”
I sucked in a breath and whirled around. I had prepared myself for this. All afternoon. I had coached myself on being cool, calm, collected, not letting the little things get under my skin. But his voice. It had already done it. My skin flushed.
He stood there in the gold-framed doorway of Bochelli’s, looking like something out of a movie. My gaze was riveted to the way the gray suit, hugged his frame. It was a different one from the one he had worn this morning to class. His hair was smooth, combed over with silky dampness that made him look fresh out of the shower. His chin was smooth, as if he had just shaved. He looked like he’d stepped out of the 1960s. The maître-d took his blazer and Rhett let him, all the while his eyes stayed fixed on me. They didn’t reveal anything as they so commonly used to do. I never thought much about it before, but often, he had been open book, a clear piece of glass I could so easily see through. But not now.
I wondered if I was as impenetrable.
How did he see me? I glanced down at my dress. I had considered wearing the clothes from work, but the more I fretted over it, the more I began to feel like it wasn’t enough—not for Rhett, but for Bochelli’s—at least that’s what I told myself while I spent over an hour getting ready. The dark blue dress hugged my body. I knew how it looked on me. It was the dress I wore when I was trying to lock a man into my web. This was the dress that got me what I wanted. It was cut in all the right places dipping low in the front, but not too low. Sliced high up the hip, but not too high. High enough and low enough to make a man desperate for more. I could get men to do anything I wanted when I wore this dress. I had almost changed out of it at least ten times before finally leaving in a huff—with it on.
“You came.” He came to stand beside me, his green eyes still holding my gaze.
“I did.”
“You look lovely.” His voice, his face. All were impassive, focused, but giving nothing away.
I blushed. I hated the way the heat flooded my cheeks. I didn’t want him to know how he still affected me. I didn’t want him to see the little girl I used to be when he looked at me. I wanted him to see the woman I had become—and with that blush, I was already failing. I glanced away and gulped in a deep breath, happy to follow the maître-d to our table. The walk there was agonizing and slow. It seemed to take forever. I was aware of every movement, conscious of his gaze as he followed me. It seemed to be all over me at once, making goosebumps spring up on my arms. I swayed my hips and could have sworn I heard him suck in a breath, though I wasn’t sure.
And then we were sitting at the table. The golden tablecloth brushed against my bare thigh as I scooted my chair up. The smooth fabric like silky fingers against my sensitive skin. I sucked in a deep breath, searching for the calm I so desperately needed.
I can do this.
I glanced up to find him studying me. His eyes impassive, but curious. Focused. His hands were on the table, no nervous twitch this time. Those warm hands that had been both gentle and rough with me. I nearly folded right there. Crumpled into a thousand pieces. I wanted to reach for him. To touch him. Find out if he was real. If this was real, or if I was just lost in some sort of dream.
I didn’t though. I reigned myself back in at the last moment. An image of his face jumped to my head. The way he had looked at me that day when I last saw him. The pity, the hurt, the shame. The way he spoke the words, ‘I fucked her.’ As if he wanted to gut me, to ruin me for everyone else.
My nostrils flared and I narrowed my gaze. “Why am I here, Rhett?” The words came out cold and precise. Poison. I was jumping, dancing, twirling on the inside. I wanted him to feel that pain, that heartache.
“I suppose because you drove here.”
I opened my mouth to say something else, but he cut me off.
“Tell me about your life, about what you’ve been doing.” He seemed eager, desperate almost, to change the subject away from the fact that we were sitting here at a table together after six years. After he fucked me and put my heart through the meat grinder.
I sniffed and clutched my hands together in my lap. “I went to college.”
He nodded. “I can see that. You’re a professor now.”
“Just at the community college.”
“Just?” His dark blond eyebrows quirked.
“I don’t have my PhD.”
“Are you going to get it?”
I reached for the glass of water on my left. The cold that greeted my fingers was welcome with the heat bubbling inside me. Hadn’t I always thought about this moment? The moment when I could stand before Rhett and show him that I was more than that broken girl who had been fucked until she was nothing more than the dicks that had been inside her.
“I don’t know.” I straightened and pressed the glass to my lips, forcing myself not to gulp the cold liquid.
“I’m impressed.”
“I may go back. I needed a break from school though.” I set the glass down.
“What’s your degree in?”
“My undergrad is in Government, with an English minor. My master’s is in Political Science.” Confidence flooded my veins. I knew these things, I had studied hard, worked hard. I’d gotten my degree against all odds, against the hindrances of my past.
“That’s amazing.” A smile quirked his lips, sending my heart into a flurry in my chest. I couldn’t understand how he still had this effect on me after everything. “Do you like teaching?”
“Yes.” The first day I taught my own class popped into my head. I’d been so nervous I’d nearly vomited all over myself.
“What is it?”
I glanced back at him confusion. “What?”
“You were smiling.” He wasn’t smiling though, there was something else painted on his face, it seemed almost like wonder.
“Oh,” And there it came, that dreaded blush I couldn’t seem to control. I glanced down at my hands and placed them on the table. “I was just thinking about my first day to teach my own class. I was so nervous, I literally gagged out in the hallway before I went in. I didn’t think I could do it.”
“But you did.”
“Clearly.”
The waiter came then, taking our drink orders. I quickly ordered a large glass of champagne. Rhett ordered tea.
“It’s weird to hear you order something alcoholic.”
My gaze jumped to his. But he wasn’t looking at me. He was focused on my exposed forearm. The pink scar that ran in a jagged line up the tender flesh. I had never tried to cover it up. People asked and I let them. I told stories, gallant ones. Sometimes I told them it was a car wreck, where I’d been pinned in, the glass from the passenger side window slicing me open with angular precision. The wreck was my fault, I told them. I hadn’t been paying attention and ran the red light that scarred me forever.
I told other people I’d been attacked when I was walking home drunk one night from a bar. A strange man had cornered me with a knife. It had been so sharp. That knife. Slicing through my arm as I tried to break free of his iron hold. That man had laughed at my cries, at the blood that dripped onto the dirty pavement beneath us. I was lucky to be alive, I told them. It was my fault though. I never blamed the fictional man who scarred my arm forever. I shouldn’t have been walking late at night after drinking heavily. It was my fault.
Those lies had made me feel good. They made me feel in control and different. I didn’t have to be the girl who had tried to kill herself twice to escape the man who raped her. I could be anyone. A girl who wasn’t paying attention while she was driving. A foolish woman who drank too much and walked home too late. Those realities were so clear in my head I could taste them. I could hide the truth. The true horrors of what had happened to me.
But I couldn’t hide it from Rhett. He knew the truth. The startling, dirty, filthy truth. He had seen me in that bedroom with those superficial cuts littering my skin. He had found me on the bathroom floor when all I wanted was to die and for it all to be over. He knew.
/> I shoved my arm under the table, hiding the scar for the first time in years. “I’m not that girl anymore, Rhett.” I realized that my response answered what he’d said on multiple levels. I was a woman now—one that could drink alcohol. I wasn’t the same person who had tried to kill herself all those years ago.
“Don’t hide from me,” he whispered the words as he leaned forward, his brows drawn together, his eyes full of some sort of need I couldn’t understand.
“I’m not hiding from anyone.”
“Yes, from everyone, but I don’t want you to hide from me.”
I scoffed and glanced around. The people around us were caught up in their own conversations. No one was looking at us, but I felt like I was completely on display. Perched on stage with my body, my secrets, bare to the whole world.
I swallowed hard, glancing back at him. “Why aren’t you with Sarah anymore?” The heat in my words made me feel slightly better.
“Some people aren’t meant to be together.” His elbows were perched on the table, his hands nearly to the center, his thumb swiping back and forth on the back of the other one.
“She loved you.” The words tasted bad in my mouth. I hated them. I hated her love for him. I hated that he had chosen that love over mine. Sarah’s pure love. I couldn’t hold a candle to that. All I had were broken shards of a heart he hadn’t wanted.
“She did.” His gaze caught mine. “But I didn’t love her. Not like I should have.”
“When did it end?”
He glanced away. “A long time ago.”
Something inside me splintered at those words. I could accept that he’d chosen Sarah. I had accepted it. It took years, but I had. I understood why. Part of me despised Sarah for being everything I wasn’t. For being the woman I couldn’t be. But I loved her in my own fucked way of loving people. I understood his reasons. She was simple, perfect, loving. She went out of her way to bring happiness everywhere she went. But him not being with her—for years apparently, it only solidified one thought.
He didn’t come for me.
After all these years. He’d been single and he still hadn’t wanted me. That hurt worse, more than when I thought he had chosen Sarah. In my head I had justified everything through Sarah, through her perfection and goodness. If she hadn’t been around he would have chosen me, my love. I had been certain of it.
I was wrong.
“Who are you with now?” The monotone sound of my voice made me proud, the mask I so commonly wore, fixating itself over my shredded façade.
“No one.”
The shredded organ in my chest sped up. The stupid shitty heart of mine thundered with something I despised. Hope. It shouldn’t. It knew better. I knew better. Even moments after he hurt me even more, I was still fucking hopeful.
“Are you with anyone? I know you aren’t married from our conversation earlier…but—”
But I didn’t get to answer because the waiter came again to take our order. I hadn’t even opened the menu, but I blindly pointed to the first thing on the list. It didn’t matter what they brought me to eat. It would be tasteless to me with Rhett here, all of my senses latching onto him.
“So?” he asked once the waiter was gone.
“Hmm?” I made a point of reaching for my clutch and digging out my cell phone, acting uninterested.
“Are you with anyone?” He sounded agitated.
I clicked the home button on my phone. The screen lit up revealing multiple texts from Casey. I frowned down at his words. Am I going to have to change my phone number again?
“Faye.” The authority in Rhett’s voice had my head snapping up.
“Yes.” My heart thundered in my ears.
“You’re with someone?” Something sinister dwelled in his words, his nostrils flared. That anger, it did something to me. My insides seemed to smolder as fiery heat flooded my cunt. I clenched my thighs together, a gasp escaping my lips. He leaned closer. He was feet away, but he seemed to engulf the space all around me, the flames of him closing in, suffocating me in a way that I never wanted to breathe again. Everyone else in the room seemed to melt away in his flames until it was just the two of us there.
“I—”
“Are you?” His words were quiet, but they demanded, ringing in my ears. I clenched my thighs harder, fighting the desire that burned inside me.
“I’m not.”
“You’re single?” The words hung there in the space between us crackling like the flames that engulfed me.
“I am.”
He leaned back, taking the intensity of the flames with him. They receded, but the heat deep inside me didn’t. It bubbled, desperate, needy. I hadn’t felt like this in—I couldn’t remember ever feeling like this before.
The waiter brought our plates and my champagne, apologizing for the delay in my drink. I hadn’t noticed that he’d failed to bring it before, but I was grateful it was there now. I gulped it down in the most un-lady-like fashion. I didn’t even have the decency to feel shame. I wasn’t used to this. Feeling out of my element. Feeling so fucking turned on that I was going to drown in it.
A smile flickered on his lips. “Thirsty?”
I set down the empty glass and pursed my lips. The burn from the alcohol gave me newfound confidence. “Tell me about you, Rhett. What have you been doing all these years?”
He quirked an eyebrow. “Me?”
I nodded.
“Well,” He cut into the steak on his plate. “I still work at the firm. Still a lawyer. Nothing as exciting as you’ve done.”
“Does Roger still work there?” I wanted to punish him for lighting that fire in my belly. I wanted the burn to destroy him like it was destroying me.
His eyes darkened and he popped a piece of steak into his mouth chewing slowly before answering. “No. He moved away a few years ago. Cayden says he’s married now and they have a baby.”
“Cayden? You still work with him?”
He was silent for a moment, unmoving. Studying me like he had a hundred things he wanted to tell me. “I do. I live across the street from him now too.”
“You moved?” This shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. I couldn’t imagine Rhett anywhere else but inside that stale apartment he and Sarah had called their home. The image of the painting that hung over their bed jumped into my head. A little girl playing dress up in shoes much too big for her. It was ridiculous and weird, but it was the only thing I could imagine when it came to Rhett’s bedroom. That painting that characterized the room he shared with Sarah. The life that was solely theirs together.
“Yes. Not long after…” He cleared his throat and picked his fork up. “Yeah, I lived with him for about a year or so.”
“Really? I didn’t think you guys were that good of friends.”
“We weren’t.” He sighed. “Things changed.”
I tried to imagine Rhett in Cayden and Katie’s space, as their roommate. “Is he still with Katie?”
“Unfortunately.”
I frowned. “I thought they were happy?”
He shrugged, chewing his steak. “They have their moments. I lived with them for a over year and I just don’t see how he does it.”
I spun some pasta around my fork and chewed thoughtfully.
“Does what?”
“Deals with a woman like her…she’s selfish.” He shrugged again. “Her and I weren’t good roommates is all.”
“Why did you move in with them?”
He eyed me. “It’s a long story.”
I stared back with challenge in my eyes. “So tell it.”
Something flashed over his eyes, something vulnerable, before it was gone. “No.”
“Tell me,” I pressed.
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Let’s talk about you.”
But I wasn’t going to give in. I wasn’t the little girl who ran away from things, the girl who let people walk all over her.
“What about me? I placed my elbows on the table and tucked my hand
s under my chin. “You want to hear about all the men I’ve fucked since you had me pressed up against your truck.”
Rage, that’s what it was. It ripped across his face and slashed through the space between us. The urge to jerk back was there, but I didn’t. I stayed, my chin poised on the back of my hands. There was a tick in his upper cheek. I knew he was gnashing his teeth together behind those perfect full lips. Grinding them against one another in anger. I wanted him to use those teeth on me, those lips. I wanted him to show me just how fucking angry he could be.
What would he say now? What would he do? I waited in bated breath.
“Waiter!” He signaled his hand in the air, though he never took his eyes off me.
“Yessir?”
“Bring us to go boxes. We’re leaving.”
I blinked in surprise. What’s going on? A sinking feeling swamped my chest.
“Is everything okay, sir?”
Rhett finally looked away from me. “Yes, thank you.”
“Okay. I’ll be right back.”
The next few minutes seemed to last forever—the silence between us almost suffocating. Rhett didn’t look at me, but stared off into the restaurant giving me his profile. The waiter came back and put our dinners into the boxes, and he still didn’t look at me. I could feel his anger though, it hadn’t gone away. And I was desperate to see it again when he looked at me. My thighs had gone slippery, making me desperate, needy. I watched as he paid, slipping money out of his wallet with his long fingers. Fingers that had been inside me once upon time years ago.
I wanted that again. His rough fingers on me.
Before I knew it, Rhett was standing. I blinked in surprise. “Let’s go.” He still didn’t look at me.
Anger rushed through my veins and I jumped to my feet. But the alcohol chose that moment to kick in and I wobbled in my heels. Rhett steadied me immediately, his hand touching my elbow. It was just a simple touch, a gesture that anyone would do to keep someone from falling. But it electrified my insides. It took that raging fire and stoked it to something on the verge of explosive.
Filthy 6: A Dark Erotic Serial Page 4
