For a pop of color, I added a red leather jacket and a silk scarf that brought the red, black and gray together in a floral design on a white background. I looked like I belonged in this crazy city as I slipped inside the hired car to head towards the party. I had already done a shoot at this particular nightclub, one of the most notable shots included me, wearing this exact same outfit, standing at one end of the bar, as the various successful, handsome men lined up down the bar craned their heads for another look.
This, they told me, would be the shot that would wind up on billboards and the sides of buses.
I had arrived, I guess.
I mingled with the crowd, smiling, mumbling my way through small talk that droned all around me like adult-speak in old cartoon specials for kids. It didn’t matter what anyone said. It was unimportant. Just like flies humming around a picnic.
That was until…
“Fancy meeting you here, Sunshine.”
I spun around to face Caz Bixby, who wore a designer suit like nobody’s business. He looked elegant and beautiful and not manwhore-y at all. “Caz! What are you doing here?”
“I love New York,” he said as he reached for a hug, which I allowed. “And of course everyone knows what you’re doing here. Kudos on the modeling gig, by the way.”
I shrugged. “I guess I’m not going to be fetching coffee anymore.”
“Good,” he decided. “You were always too good for that anyway. Come on. Let me buy you a drink.”
“I don’t think so,” I hedged, but he just pulled me closer.
“Come on. You can’t properly Sex and the City without some form of alcohol. Are Cosmos out? Cosmos are out, aren’t they?”
I laughed as I let him lead me to the bar. “I could never drink those anyway. They give me heartburn.”
“Fine,” he said before he ordered a Sex on the Beach from the bartender. He turned to me with a grin. “We’ll save Sex in Manhattan for later.”
“You’re ridiculous,” I told him with a smile. “What are you doing here? Really?”
“Working,” he replied. “Same as you. I’ve actually been wooing Tempestuous to dress that client I was telling you about, but they’re not as… open-minded as you. Mind putting in a good word for your ol’ buddy, Caz?”
I giggled as I took the fruity drink he handed me. “Always an angle.”
“Always,” he confirmed with a shameless grin. He let me take one sip from my drink before he took it back and placed it on the bar. “Come on. Let’s dance.”
“You just bought me a drink,” I protested but he pulled me by the hand towards the dance floor.
“And now I want to dance.” He spun me into his arms. “You have to up for anything if you want to roll with me, Sunshine.”
My eyebrow arched. “And who says I’m going to be rolling with you?”
“Me,” he answered with that confident smirk. “I’m rarely ever wrong.”
“I’m still in a relationship,” I reminded.
“For now,” he shrugged. “According to Miles O’Rourke you’re about to go down just like the Titanic. We’ve seen this happen with him before.”
“Maybe this is different,” I suggested, though I hated myself for sounding so pathetic.
“A leopard doesn’t change its spots, Sunshine. You know that. Deep in your heart you know that. Otherwise,” he said as his hand slipped down the arch of my back and over the gentle curve of my ass, “you wouldn’t be here with me.”
I put my hands on his chest to push him away, but he self-corrected.
“I’ll be good,” he promised, but then promptly broke it when he kept talking. “But one day, one day very soon, you’re going to come to me and I’ll help you do the one thing you’ll want to do most.” He bent closer, his mouth a breath from mine. “Make Eli Blake eat his fucking heart out.”
I thought for a moment he might kiss me, but he spun me out of his arms and disappeared into the crowd. Frazzled, I headed back to the bar to finish my drink. When I was done, I ordered another one. And then another one.
I was feeling no pain by the time I climbed into the hired car to head back to my hotel. I fell into bed without bothering to take off my clothes.
The next morning I got started with another early wakeup call, but I didn’t necessarily “wake up” until I browsed social media. My heart stopped when I realized someone had snapped a shot of my intimate dance with Caz the night before, just in time for the almost-kiss. Miles announced triumphantly that he had called it, and urged everyone use the comment section for the betting pool in how long Eli and I had left in our doomed relationship.
I tossed my phone aside with a scowl. Again it was all part of the plan, but it made me look like the one stepping out on Eli.
He was setting himself up to be the brokenhearted victim. In a second I knew that was on purpose. If he got his heart ripped about by a Big Girl, no one would question his decision to date thinner girls ever again. No wonder he had agreed to a splashy breakup on my part.
I wasn’t sure if I was mad or brokenhearted. I started my day with a mimosa to figure it out.
Thanks to another photo shoot, this time on the subway, I was out again till all hours. I didn’t want to risk another party, so I went straight back to my hotel room. I stopped at the bar, to wind down with a cocktail, and answered the rumblings of my tummy with some bar food.
I headed up to the hotel by eight o’clock. It was the earliest I had come back to the room all week, and I was ready to soak in the tub before hitting the sheets for some long overdue shuteye.
I nearly screamed my bloody fool head off when I walked into the room and saw Eli sprawled on the bed. All I saw at first was a naked man on my bed. It took me a minute to take in the details, like the rose petals on the bed, or the smile on his face.
“What are you doing here?”
He slid from the mattress to approach me. “Surprising my favorite girl.” He bent for a kiss when he reached me. And damned if I didn’t melt against him. “Why be all alone here in the city that never sleeps when you could be fucking someone all night?” He deepened the kiss and I had to hang onto him so I wouldn’t lose my footing. He broke the kiss long enough to ask, “Or have you been?”
My stomach dropped. He knew about Caz. Of course he knew about Caz. The whole goddamned world knew about Caz. “Eli, that’s not what it looks like.”
“It never is,” he murmured as he continued to kiss me. He lifted me onto the bed, where I lay before him as he stood over me. “But it works. What’s a failing relationship without one last ditch attempt to revive the romance?” He slipped the shoe from one foot. “What shall we do to save what we have, Carly?” He slipped off the other shoe. “Maybe I should fulfill one of your fantasies. What is it you want most?”
“Eli,” I started, inadvertently answering the question more truthfully than I dared.
He crashed down on top of me. “You want me to dominate you, Carly? To tie you down, make you submit to me?” He captured both my hands in one of his and held them over my head. “Do whips and chains excite you?” He dove into my neck and brushed his tongue over that sensitive spot that made me gasp. “Maybe you’d like to dominate me. You want me on my knees, baby? A slave begging to worship your luscious body?”
His other hand captured my breast, squeezing gently before he latched on the painfully hard peak with his mouth. I cried out. I couldn’t help myself.
“How about role play?” he asked as he kissed his way back up my neck. “Maybe I’m the school teacher and you’re the tempting student who tests me daily to see how far I will go, until I have to pull you over my lap, lift up that sexy little plaid skirt and give you the spanking you deserve.” He flipped us over as he lay on his back beneath me, his hands caressing the curve of my ass. “How about a threesome? Would you want a woman, someone soft and curvy like you? Or another man, someone hard and dominant like me?”
I shuddered against him. “Eli.”
He lifted up, u
ntil we were sitting together with me across his lap. “Maybe a little voyeurism. Get a pair of binoculars, find some adventurous pair fucking the night away in a window across the way? Or maybe a little exhibitionism. We fuck against the window and let someone else get off watching us.” He kissed me again. “What if I told you that was all on the table, and then some? What would you want if you could have anything, Carly?”
My eyes met his. Nowhere in his pitch did he offer January 13th, which was all I really wanted. I wanted January 13th, January 14th, January 15th and beyond. I wanted all of it. I wanted forever.
Eli Blake didn’t do forever. He was like a shooting star. He promised wish fulfillment, but he was gone in a second.
In my case, a year.
“I’ve already had it,” was all I could honestly say without showing all of my hand. It was up to me to protect myself now. No, a leopard didn’t change its spots. My only job now was not risking my heart being clawed into four equal pieces.
He searched my eyes for one long, wordless moment. “So what are we doing here?” he asked.
My voice cracked. “Fulfilling the contract.”
“If you’ve fucked someone else, there is no contract,” he pointed out. He waited for me to refute the accusation. I said nothing. “Did you fuck him, Carly?”
“Eli…,” I started.
“Did you fuck him?!” he thundered.
A tear chased down my face. This was my chance. I could break free. It was all over. All I had to do was tell one teeny tiny lie.
Well, another teeny tiny lie.
Instead I found I couldn’t say anything at all. Eli read what he wanted into it. He set me aside, grabbed his clothes and disappeared into the bathroom. Ten minutes later he slammed out the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The rest of my week had passed uneventfully. No Caz. No Eli. Just the same mindless chatter and endless work that I had become accustomed to as a high profile model, with a six-figure check in my bank account to pay me for the trouble.
I have to say, signing Frank as my agent was a stroke of genius. He was a helluva negotiator, and he was all about maximizing that 10%. He got me the work and he made them pay.
It was a lot better than running coffee and writing copy.
Though my social presence took a hit when Eli’s fans heard I might be stepping out on him, others were practically beating a path to my door. I had offers to do walk-on bit parts, be in music videos, as well as host from the red-carpet at big awards show, offering a commentary on fashion.
My life was both taking off and imploding all at the same time.
I guess I should have been prepared for the shit to hit the fan that first week in October, but I was shocked to walk into my house and hear another woman’s voice.
I rounded the corner of the hallway just in time to hear her laugh. It was Julie, and she was sitting on the piano bench next to Eli. He gave her that devastating smirk as he watched her laugh. His eyes fell to her mouth, and my heart stopped. If he kissed her, I would either yank her bald, kill him or walk right into the ocean.
Or all of the above.
Instead I cleared my throat. “Hello.”
They turned around to see me. Only Julie had the good sense to look embarrassed. “You’re back!” she said as she hopped up and came around to hug me.
“Right on schedule,” I commented as I slid a cool glance to Eli.
“Right,” she said before glancing at her watch. “I guess we got carried away.” I had nothing to say to that. I simply glared at Eli, who glared right back.
“I… should go,” Julie decided as she watched the air crackle between us.
I barely let the door slam behind her before I tore into him. “Back in the saddle again, I see.”
He shrugged. “You know me. I was born to ride.”
“Were you hoping I’d walk in and catch you?”
“Would it matter if you did?”
“Fuck you,” I spat.
“You did that,” he replied as he straddled the bench to face me. “Which reminds me. You lost our bet. You said you would never fuck me for a million dollars. You fucked me lots of times for a whole lot less. And you fucked me over for free.”
“I didn’t fuck you over, Eli.”
“That’s not how Miles O’Rourke tells it.”
“That was all part of the plan,” I gritted between clenched teeth.
He stood from his piano. “Indeed it was. It all was,” he informed me as he approached. “Fucking you to show you I could, ensuring that I’d get at least half of my money back when I did. Getting all your services 50% off. It was too good a deal to pass up.”
He stopped in front of me. “You are such an asshole.”
“You knew that going in,” he reminded. “But I’ve got good news for you, Miss Reynolds. Your services are no longer required.”
My eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”
“It means you’re off the hook. You broke the contract. You’re free to go. I had Clem and the gang move out all your stuff yesterday. There’s no reason at all for you to stay.” Those crystal clear blue eyes challenged me to give him a reason.
“I didn’t fuck Caz,” I told him.
He smiled. “I didn’t fuck Julie. Does that make liars out of both of us?”
I gasped as I backed up a step. “So that’s it? You just ended it?”
“It was ending anyway. What’s the difference if it’s now or in January? This was always how it was supposed to end up, right?”
Once again he baited me. “Those were your rules, Eli.”
“Right,” he nodded. “My web.” He touched my hair. “You were the glitter.”
“Eli,” I started again, but he moved away.
“Now if you’ll excuse me. I need to head to the studio. I’ve just had my heart trampled by the woman I love. I need to lose myself in my work. Lock up when you leave. And leave your key with Julie,” he added. “Along with your check.” He stalked out of the room and slammed out the front door.
Though I thought I had been prepared for it, my heart exploded into a million little pieces with the sound.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
I ended up at Clem’s that night. Non-disclosure or no, I poured out the whole torrid tale as I literally cried on her shoulder. She patted me and wiped my tears until the last one was spent. “I’m sorry, Carly,” she finally said as I collapsed, exhausted, onto her bed. “I had hoped…,” she started but then shook her head. “I guess it doesn’t matter what I had hoped.”
“Welcome to my world,” I mumbled.
“What are you going to do now?” she asked.
I took a deep breath. “I guess the same thing I was always going to do, just a few months sooner than I planned. Get an apartment. Work at the club. Maybe pick up some modeling gigs here and there. Live.”
She nodded. She crawled next to me on the bed, holding me in her arms. “You can stay here as long as you need to.”
“Thanks,” I said as I squeezed her tight. “But I think I’m done depending on other people for a while.”
She nodded again. She understood.
That week we went house-hunting each morning before the club opened. I finally found an apartment in West Hollywood near the club. It was a cool, old art deco building with funky blue walls and dramatic crown molding in stark white, and black and white checkered tiling on the floor. My apartment was a few floors up in a building with no elevator, which had made it a bit tougher to rent given its price tag, but I kind of liked the built-in exercise. There was no pool, just a fountain in the tiny garden out back.
By the weekend we had moved my stuff from storage into the apartment. I hadn’t bothered with my old second-hand furniture, though it probably would have fit the retro décor. I decided to do my place right, the way I always wanted to do, especially now that I had the money to do it.
I still sat on a pretty decent nest egg, even after I sent a check for $500,000 to Eli. It wasn’t as pai
nful as I thought it would be. In fact, I was glad to be rid of it. It had always been blood money.
Many of the people who had jumped at the chance to follow me after I hooked up with Eli dropped me like a stone after our “breakup.” Miles didn’t know which team to choose between us, though he leaned a little more towards me. Even with the rumors of my “cheating,” he seemed to think that Eli deserved it, especially given he had always been the philander before, and there was already proof of his cheating in this relationship. On Valentine’s Day no less.
No one forgot.
It was like getting a divorce. Suddenly everyone had to pick sides. I couldn’t go to the grocery store without headlines and covers crowing how Eli Blake was managing his broken heart, or how Carly Reynolds was getting her life back as a new single woman. Everyone hinted there was more to the story, enough to entice people to pick up a magazine and sniff out the article.
I might have done this a time or two. But I don’t think anyone saw me, so it doesn’t count.
Of course, much of what I did do made social media and gossip columns. Once our breakup was “official” we trended for two whole days. It made me a celebrity in my own right, so I had to dodge the PING paparazzi as I tried to live my new life as club entrepreneur and model.
The ad for Tempestuous dropped in early November, and as promised, the photo of me at the bar made billboards and buses all over Los Angeles. It was so successful that Tempestuous signed me on for another year. They wanted exclusivity, which Frank advised against. He was fielding offers left and right. I could practically see the dollar signs in his eyes. Instead, I stayed true to Tempestuous.
I figured I might as well stay faithful to something.
They invited me to Atlanta over the Thanksgiving weekend, for a host of holiday events that would start our Christmas season. I decided to take them up on it. I needed a break from Los Angeles. Since I had never really had a home to go to, I opted to run away. Again.
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