Beautiful Bitch

by Christina Lauren

  And then I realized this position was intentional. I suspected he was thinking about that exact night, too. His eyes shone with such hunger, such adoration, that I couldn’t help but feel a sense of power, like there wasn’t anything this man wouldn’t do if I just asked.

  I reached for the buttons of his shirt, wanting him naked and over me, behind me—everywhere. I wanted to taste him, scratch marks into his skin, and connect them with my fingers, my lips and my teeth. I wanted to stretch him out on the table and fuck him until any thought of either of us ever leaving this room was a distant memory.

  Somewhere in the apartment, a phone rang. We froze, neither of us saying anything, both waiting, hoping it had been a fluke and that nothing but silence would follow. But the shrill ringtone—one I’d become all too familiar with—filled the air again. Work. The emergency ringtone. And not the regular emergency one—the emergency-emergency one. Bennett swore, resting his forehead against my chest. My heart pounded beneath my ribs and my breaths felt too quick, too loud.

  “Fuck, I’m sorry,” he said when it continued to ring. “I have to—”

  “I know.” I stood, using the back of the chair to support my shaky legs.

  Bennett scrubbed his hands over his face before he stood and crossed the room, finding his phone where he’d slung his jacket over the back of the couch. “Yeah,” he said, and then listened.

  I bent for my sweater and slipped it over my shoulders, found my skirt and pulled it up my hips. I carried the dishes into the kitchen while he talked. I was trying to give him some sense of privacy but grew concerned as his voice continued to rise.

  “What do you mean they can’t find it?” he shouted. I leaned against the doorway and watched as he paced back and forth in front of the wide wall of windows. “This is happening tomorrow and someone’s misplaced the fucking master file? Can’t someone else handle this?” A pause ensued in which I swear I actually watched Bennett’s blood pressure rise. “Are you kidding?” Another pause. Bennett closed his eyes tight and took a deep breath. “Fine. I’ll be there in twenty.”

  When he ended the call, it took a moment for him to look at me.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “It’s not.”

  He was right. It wasn’t okay. It sucked. “Can’t someone else handle it?”

  “Who? I can’t trust something this important to those incompetent assholes. The Timbk2 account launches tomorrow and the marketing team can’t find the file with the financial specs—” He stopped and shook his head, reached for his jacket. “God, we need someone in New York who knows what the fuck they’re doing. I’m so sorry, Chlo.”

  Bennett knew how much we needed tonight, but he also had a job to do. I knew this better than anyone.

  “Go,” I said, closing the distance between us. “I’ll be right here when you’re done.” I handed him his keys and stood up on my toes to kiss him.

  “In my bed?”

  I nodded.

  “Wear my shirt.”

  “Only your shirt.”

  “I love you.”

  I grinned. “I know. Now go save the world.”

  FOUR

  You have got to be fucking kidding me.

  I turned the key in the ignition and revved the engine hard enough for the RPMs to hit red. I wanted to peel out and tear down the street, leaving the sign of my frustration as black tire marks on the road.

  I was tired. Fuck was I tired, and I hated to have to clean up other people’s messes at work. I’d been working twelve-, fifteen-, hell, even eighteen-hour days for months, and the one night I was able to put aside time with Chloe at home, I was called in.

  I paused as the word seemed to bounce around inside of my skull: home.

  Whether we were at my place or hers, out with friends, or in that tiny little shithole Chinese restaurant she liked so much, it felt like home to me. The strangest part was that the house that had cost me a fortune had never felt like home until she spent time there. Was her home also with me?

  We hadn’t even had time to pick where we would live in New York. We had identified the new location for RMG, made a map of where each of our offices would be, drawn up blueprints of the renovations and hired a designer . . . but Chloe and I didn’t have an apartment to go to.

  Which was the greatest sign that old habits die hard, because in reality my relationship with her had completely altered my relationship to my job. Only a year ago I’d been committed to one thing: my career. Now, the thing that mattered most to me was Chloe, and every time my career got in the way of being with her it burned me up inside. I don’t even know specifically when that had happened, but I suspect the change had been effected long before I would have ever admitted it. Maybe it was the night Joel came to my parents’ house for dinner. Or maybe it was the next day, when I fell on my knees in front of her and apologized the only way I knew how. Most likely it was even earlier than all of that, on the first night I kissed her roughly in the conference room, in my darkest, weakest moment. Thank God I’d been such an idiot.

  I glanced down at the clock on my dashboard and the date, backlit in red, hit me like a fist to the chest: May 5. Exactly one year ago, I’d watched Chloe walk off the plane from San Diego, her shoulders set in hurt and anger at how I’d essentially thrown her under the bus after she’d covered for me with a client. The next day she’d resigned; she’d left me. I blinked, trying to clear the memory from my mind. She came back, I reminded myself. We’d worked it out in the past eleven months, and despite all of my frustration with my work schedule, I’d never been happier. She was the only woman I’d ever want.

  I thought back to my previous breakup, with Sylvie almost two years ago now. Our relationship started the way one climbs on an escalator: with a single step and then moving without effort along a single path. We started out friendly and easily slipped into physical intimacy. The situation worked perfectly for me because she provided companionship and sex, and she’d never asked for more than I offered. When we broke up, she admitted she knew I wouldn’t give her more, and for a while the sex and quasi-intimacy had been enough. Until, for her, they weren’t anymore.

  After a long embrace and one final kiss, I’d let her go. I’d gone straight to my favorite restaurant for a quiet dinner alone, and then headed to bed early, where I slept the entire night without waking once. No drama. No heartbreak. It ended and I closed the door on that part of my life, completely ready to move on. Three months later, I was back in Chicago.

  It was comical to compare that to the reaction I’d had to losing Chloe. I’d essentially turned into a filthy hobo, not eating, not showering, and surviving entirely on scotch and self-pity. I remembered clutching to the tiny details Sara would share with me about Chloe—how she was doing, how she looked—and trying to determine from these tidbits whether she missed me and could possibly be as miserable as I was.

  The day Chloe returned to RMG was, coincidentally, Sara’s last day at the firm. Although we had made up, Chloe had insisted that she sleep at her place and I sleep at mine so that we would actually get some rest. After a chaotic morning, I walked into the break room to find Chloe snacking on a small pack of almonds, reading some marketing reports. Sara was heating up leftovers in the tiny microwave, having refused our entreaties to give her a big sendoff lunch. I came in to pour myself a cup of coffee, and the three of us stood together in loaded silence for what felt like fifteen minutes.

  I’d finally broken it.

  “Sara,” I said, and my voice felt too loud in the silent room. Her eyes turned to me, wide and clear. “Thank you for coming to me that first day Chloe was gone. Thank you for giving me whatever updates you could. For that, and other reasons, I’m sorry to see you go.”

  She shrugged, smoothing her bangs to the side and giving me a small smile. “I’m just glad to see you two together again. Things have been way too quiet around here. And by quiet I mean boring. And by boring I mean nobody screaming or calling each other a hateful shrew.” Sh
e coughed and took an almost comically loud slurp from her drink.

  Chloe groaned. “No chance of that anymore, I assure you.” She popped an almond into her mouth. “He may not be my boss anymore, but he’s still most definitely a screamer.”

  Laughing, I stole a peek at her ass as she stood and bent down to pull a bottle of water out of the bottom shelf of the fridge.

  “Still,” I said, turning back to Sara. “I appreciate that you kept me up to date. I would have probably lost my mind otherwise.”

  Sara’s eyes softened and, as she fidgeted, I could tell she was a little uncomfortable in the face of my rare display of emotion. “Like I said, I’m glad it worked out. These things are worth fighting for.” She lifted her chin and gave Chloe one last smile before leaving the room.

  That giddiness I’d felt after Chloe’s return made it easy to ignore the whispers that followed us through the halls of Ryan Media Group. I had my office and she had hers now, and we were each determined to prove to ourselves as much as anyone else that we could do this.

  We’d lasted almost an hour apart.

  “I missed you,” she said, slipping into my office and closing the door behind her. “Do you think they’ll give me my old office back?”

  “No. Much as I like the idea, at this point it would be blatantly inappropriate.”

  “I was only half serious.” She rolled her eyes and then paused, looking around. I could almost see each memory coming back to her: when she’d spread her legs across the desk from me, when she’d let me make her come with my fingers to distract her from her worries, and, I imagine, each time we’d sat together in this office, not saying everything we could have said so much sooner.

  “I love you,” I said. “I’ve loved you for a long time.”

  She blinked up and then moved close, stretching to kiss me. And then she pulled me into the bathroom and begged me to make love to her against the wall, at noon on a Monday.

  As I pulled into the parking deck at the offices and turned into my spot, I remembered Sara’s words. Shutting off the car, I stared at the concrete wall in front of me. These things are worth fighting for. Sara had taken her own advice home to Chicago’s most deplorable womanizer. She’d looked out for me when she knew I was broken and lost without Chloe. In contrast, I’d let Sara continue on with a man I knew was unfaithful, all because I felt it wasn’t my place to interfere. Where would I be if Sara had done the same?

  Contemplating what that said about me, I climbed from the car and into the main lobby. The night security guard waved, then went back to his newspaper as I headed to the elevators. The building was so empty I could hear every creak and click of the machine around me. Wheels whirred along cables and the car gave a quiet thud as it settled on the eighteenth floor.

  I knew no one else was here. The team was scrambling to find the newest version of the file, and in their panic were probably scouring their local document files on their laptops. I doubted anyone had thought to come in and check the work server.

  In the end I’d had to leave Chloe for what amounted to twenty-three minutes of work, which effectively guaranteed my mood tomorrow would be thunderous. I hated having to do someone else’s job. The contract had been mislabeled and—exactly as I had suspected—put into the wrong folder on the server. In fact, a hard copy was sitting faceup on my desk, where someone actually competent might have noticed it and spared me this trip to the office. I forwarded the file to one of my executives in Marketing and made several copies of the document itself, highlighting the parties on the first page and pointedly placing one on the desk of every person involved in the account, before finally leaving the office. It was, in a way, kind of dickish of me to be so precise. But then, this was what they earned when they pulled me away from Chloe.

  I knew these small inconveniences got me too worked up, but it was this type of detail that defined a team. Which was exactly why I needed someone on top of their game for New York. I groaned as I dropped back into my car and started the engine, knowing this was just one more thing I needed to accomplish in the next month.

  In my current mood, I was in no state to return to Chloe. I’d only be surly and irritable . . . and not really in the fun way.

  God, I just wanted to be with her. Why did it have to be so fucking difficult? I had so few hours with Chloe as it was, and I didn’t want to waste them because I was stressed about work and apartment hunting and finding someone who could just do their fucking job without being babysat. We’d complained about not seeing enough of each other, of working too hard, why didn’t we just . . . fix it? Go away? I knew Chloe thought the timing was all wrong, but when would it ever be right? Nobody was going to just hand it to us and since when had I ever been the type of person who waited for something to come along anyway?

  Fuck that. Fix it.

  “Get your shit together, Ben.” My voice rang out in the quiet interior of my car, and after a brief glace to the clock to make sure I wasn’t calling too late, I reached for my phone, scrolling to the correct number before hitting dial. I pulled out of the parking spot and turned onto Michigan Avenue.

  After about six rings, Max’s voice boomed from the car speakers. “Oi, Ben!”

  I smiled, accelerating away from work and headed toward one of the most familiar places on earth to me. “Max, how are you?”

  “Good, mate. Very bloody good. What’s this rumor I hear of you lot moving out to the big city?”

  I nodded, answering, “We’ll be there in a little over a month. Getting set up at Fifth and Fiftieth.”

  “Close by. Perfect. We’ll have to get together when you get to town . . .” He trailed off.

  “Definitely, definitely.” I hesitated, knowing Max was probably wondering why I was calling him at eleven thirty at night on a Tuesday. “Look, Max, I have a bit of a favor to ask.”

  “Let’s have it.”

  “I’d like to take my girlfriend away for a bit, and—”

  “Girlfriend?” His laughter filled my car.

  I laughed, too. I was fairly certain I’d never introduced anyone to Max that way. “Chloe, yes. We both work for RMG and have been slammed lately with the Papadakis campaign. It’s rolling quite nicely now, and we maybe have some wiggle room before we move . . .” I hesitated, feeling the words bubble up inside me. “Would I be insane to hire someone to pack up our life here, find us a place in New York, and just . . . leave for a few weeks? Just get the hell out of town?”

  “That doesn’t sound mental, Ben. It sounds like the best way to keep yourself sorted.”

  “I think so, too. And I know it’s impulsive, but I was thinking of taking Chloe to France. I was wondering if you still had the house in Marseille, and if so, whether we could rent it for a few weeks.”

  Max was laughing quietly. “Fuck yeah, it’s still mine. But forget renting it—just have at it. I’ll send you the directions straightaway. I’ll have Inès go by and clean up for you. The place has been empty since I was there over the winter holidays.” He paused. “When were you thinking of heading out?”

  The vise that seemed to grip my chest loosened immeasurably as the plan began to solidify in my head. “This weekend?”

  “Shit yeah, I’ll get on it. Send me your flight details when you have them. I’ll call her in the morning and make sure she’s there to give you the keys.”

  “This is fantastic. Thank you, Max. I owe you.”

  I could practically hear his sly grin when he said, “I’ll remember that.”

  Feeling relaxed for the first time in ages, I turned up the music and let myself imagine getting on a plane with Chloe, nothing ahead of us but sunshine, long mornings spent naked in bed, and some of the best food and wine the world had ever conjured up.

  But I had one more stop to make. I knew it was late to go to my parents’, but I had no choice. My mind was spinning with plans, and I couldn’t head to bed until every last detail had been sorted out.

  On the twenty-minute drive to their house, I c
alled and left a message for my travel agent. Then I left a message on my brother Henry’s work voice mail that I was leaving for three weeks. I didn’t even let myself imagine his reaction. We had a new office, we had everything at work sorted, and we could leave the business of packing up to someone else. I left a message for each of my senior managers letting them know the plan and what I expected each of them to handle in my absence. And then I rolled down all of the windows and let the cool night air whip around me, taking all of my stress with it.

  Pulling up in front of my parents’ house, I laughed thinking back on the first time Chloe and I had come here together as a couple.

  It was three days after her presentation to the scholarship board. Two of those days we’d scarcely left my home or my bed. But after the constant calls and texts from my family asking us to come over, for me to let them share some time with Chloe, we agreed to a dinner at my parents’ house. Everyone had missed her.

  We talked on the drive, laughing and teasing, my free hand entwined with one of hers. Absently, she ran the index finger of her other hand in small circles over the top of my wrist, as if reassuring herself that it was real, that I was real, that we were. We hadn’t faced the world outside yet, other than that night out with her girlfriends following her presentation. The transition would no doubt be at least a little awkward. But I would never have expected Chloe to be anxious about any of it. She’d always faced every challenge with her own brand of bullheaded fearlessness.

  It was only when we stood on the porch and I reached to open their front door that I realized her hand inside mine was shaking.