by S Doyle
“What do you know?”
What could she possibly know? She thought we were going to hang out for a few hours. That I was going to fuck her and kiss her, then send her on her way. She had no idea I was going to end this.
End us.
“We need to break up,” she said, taking a step back, using her shirt sleeves to wipe the tears from her eyes.
The words were like an explosion in my brain. Not because I was surprised she was the first one to say it. It was because she knew, like she always did, exactly where my head was.
Did she know where my heart was, too?
“Yeah,” I said, letting go the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.
“You don’t believe in us enough. Not yet,” she declared. Her chin lifted as if she dared me to defy her.
I bowed my head and closed my eyes. How did I tell her I didn’t believe in me?. Because of that, I couldn’t be part of an us. If I ever had a chance, it might be with her. But her father was never going to give us that.
“Ash, I can’t see how this ends,” I told her.
“I can. But I can’t make you see it if you don’t. You’ll hurt. Like you did when I was in Switzerland, but this will be worse, because it has to be final. No texts, no calls, no communication. It’s the only way.”
I nodded. It was the only way. The only way to stop us from falling into the habit of us.
Not speaking to Ash. Not knowing if she was okay.
I shook my head then. “No, I can’t do it.”
She smiled sadly and patted my chest with her hand. “You’ll be okay. We both will. I promise. Now, let’s go.”
I felt dazed. Almost concussed. Like I couldn’t think and really needed to right now. I needed to be the one in charge. A person who could be strong for her, but, instead, she was taking me by the hand and leading me out of the airport to the parking garage.
“Where are we going?”
“You got us a room, didn’t you?” she asked.
I had. I thought there was going to be more crying. More…objection. I figured we would need some privacy to hash it all out. I didn’t expect she would make this so easy for me.
Of course she did. Because she would do anything for me.
“Then we’re going to go have break-up sex. I’ve been reading up on it and it’s supposed to be really intense. Anyway, it’s how I want to say goodbye.”
The word didn’t translate. Goodbye? There was going to be a goodbye at the end of this day, and I wasn’t going to talk to her again.
Her new rules.
When I hadn’t even gotten a chance to follow any of her old ones. I’d never sent one damn present to her secret PO box. I could have done at least that. One fucking box of chocolates.
“Okay,” I agreed. “This is how we’ll say it. Then we both can be done.”
Her bottom lip wobbled, but she nodded her head tightly.
Marc
“Fuck!” I shouted, even as I pulled out of her tight, little pussy. “Ash, you have to stop crying. I can’t fuck you like this.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she sniffed, her forearm now covering her eyes. “I can’t help it. Please, please. Come back inside me.”
She reached down between us and I felt her hand wrapping around my cock, then she was sliding the condom off.
“Ash, what are you doing?”
Her hand was now on my bare cock, and it felt good as she stroked and squeezed me. Just how I liked it, because I was the one who taught her how to do it.
“Come back inside me without it,” she whispered, even as she pulled me toward her, her leg wrapped around my ass.
“That’s not going to happen. Are you insane?”
“It’s the wrong time of the month. You don’t have to come inside me. I just want you to know what it feels like. What we feel like. So you’ll remember that we’re different.”
Without thinking, I pushed my hips against hers and slammed my naked cock inside her. She was right, I wanted to feel this just once. I wanted to know what her slick, hot pussy felt like stretched around my dick.
One thrust, two. One more, then I would pull out.
“Do you feel it?” she said, panting with each hard snap of my hips. “Do you see how it’s different? When you’re with someone else, you’ll remember this. You’ll remember what it feels like with me. You’ll remember me.”
I stopped thrusting and held myself still inside her. She was hot and so damn tight. Fucking her bare was unlike anything I could imagine.
“You think I’ll forget you?” I barked. “You think I’ll forget this?”
I slammed into her hard, and watched her whole body absorb me.
“You’ll remember,” she said, arching her back, her neck. A flush started at the bottom of her neck and ran up her face.
She cried out, and I didn’t have to ask if she was faking it this time. I could feel her squeezing me hard from the inside, and I had just enough strength to pull out and come all over her pussy lips, her belly.
Break-up sex, I thought as I rolled to my back.
That sounded right. Because I felt broken.
A few hours later
Ashleigh
“Just drop me off at Arrivals. Don’t park,” I said tightly.
“This is how you want to do this?” he asked me.
I nodded. This was the only way to do it. A hard stop. “We don’t need to say anything else. We said it all back in the motel room.”
“You said it was the wrong time of the month, and I didn’t come inside you, but you need to tell me if something happens. Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it together. But you can’t hide it from me.”
I nodded, and tried to force my eyes straight ahead. If I looked at him, I might start crying again, and I knew he hated it.
“I’ll text once. When I have my period. But that’s it. No matter what happens, you can’t break. Because if you break, I’ll break, and we’ll be back here before we’re ready. This sucks, and I don’t want to have to do it again.”
I glanced at him, and he nodded.
He approached the airport and followed the signs for Arrivals.
“This is stupid,” he muttered. “I should just drive you home.”
“Even if he’s not home, I need him to see the Uber transaction.”
I knew Marc didn’t understand. I knew he thought I was making my father’s surveillance seem more dramatic than it was. If anything, I was underplaying it. Arthur had been even more diligent since my return from Florida.
Almost as if he was anticipating a rebellion on my part.
There were cameras in the house where there hadn’t been before. I was also pretty sure my tutor was being paid to report on my actions and behaviors. A new bodyguard, just in a different package.
My every step was monitored. The only freedom I had was when I was spending time with George, but that wasn’t often since he was shuttling Arthur to Manhattan more than ever.
Today wouldn’t be any different.
But I checked. He would be able to see the flight had arrived on time, but he would have no way of being able to determine if my luggage had been delayed on a separate flight.
The timing would work out. I’d purposefully not picked up my suitcase before meeting Marc, so it would find its way to the airline’s lost and found.
He was navigating through the cars now. Finding an open spot near the curb.
I reached over and grabbed his forearm, digging my nails in deep. I wanted my words to match the pain I was inflicting.
“No matter what you hear about me, don’t believe it. Don’t believe any of it. I’ll always love you. You have to know that. You have to see that is my only truth.”
He let his head fall back on his shoulders. “Ash, I’m sorry I couldn’t be more for you. Braver…something.”
I turned to him then as he stopped the car. It didn’t matter if I cried now. Because we were at the end of the ride.
“You will be,”
I told him, finally able to look into his eyes. “I’m betting everything I have, that someday you will be.”
10
Landen Enterprises, LLC
Four months later
Marc
“Oh, wow. There she is,” Trevor muttered to me, but I was focused on the numbers on my laptop.
We were sitting in the conference room, working on a client’s profile. I’d finished my last summer class and was working full-time at Landen Enterprises until my final semester started next week.
One more semester. Graduation by December. I didn’t yet know what I was going to do after that. I doubted I would stay here. Working here was too hard. Seeing Landen occasionally was too hard.
All of it was too hard.
Life was too fucking hard.
Nothing had prepared me for the silence. Ash had been a part of my life since I was twelve years old. Always there, always talking. Always pushing me, prodding me, poking me. Pissing me off.
When it ended—and true to her word, everything had ended, all communication—I didn’t know how to deal with it.
She’d texted she’d gotten her period on time, and that was it.
My final communication from Ash was about her fucking period.
About ten thousand times I picked up the phone with the intent to end this shit. To talk to her. To tell her maybe we couldn’t date. Maybe we couldn’t fuck.
But we sure as hell meant something to each other. We were part of each other’s lives. That shouldn’t have to end, just because we weren’t going to have some happy fucking ever after.
Except every time I did, every time I squeezed the phone in my hand like a drunk trying to stay sober while his hand was wrapped around a beer, I remembered her asking me not to break. Not to break, because then we would end up where we’d been.
It was only because I knew she was right, I did as she asked.
So I put my head down and I worked. I studied. I spent all my energy on making sure I was on top. I wasn’t going to just graduate, I was going to do it summa cum laude. On the weekends, I worked for Landen. Grew my account to a significant sum, and eventually was assigned to a client with Trevor as my manager.
I didn’t think about her. Or, at least I told myself every day not to think about her. Which wasn’t exactly the same thing.
Erica started showing up on Saturdays. She made her intentions known. She wanted me. Just for a fuck. There were times I told myself to just do it. Take her out to dinner, then to her place and fuck her.
To say that I’d done it. That I’d moved on from Ash.
I hadn’t. I told myself it was because Erica wasn’t my type. The truth was, I knew how it would feel. It would feel different than it had with Ash, and I didn’t need yet another thing in my head reminding me that Ash was, and would be, the only woman in my life.
Because that wasn’t fair. It wasn’t my father who had a beef against her. It wasn’t my father who had decreed she would never be good enough for me. That bullshit was on her side. Not mine.
“Fuck, she still looks like a virgin,” Trevor said.
The word got my attention and I lifted my head to see who he was talking about. And there she was. A summer dress, her blond hair down around her shoulders. She was smiling.
How the FUCK was she smiling?
She breezed through the cubes on her way to her father’s office. He happened to be in today, which wasn’t the norm. They must have had plans for lunch or some shit.
It was like being gutted. She looked so light. So effortless. As if nothing was causing her pain or weighing her down. As if not having me in her life made her better and not worse.
When, for me, it had been months spent in hell.
“Although, I suppose she isn’t anymore. Now that she’s engaged.”
I blinked. Then blinked again as she turned into her father’s office, never once looking around at the people milling about the cubes. Never once seeing me sitting in the damn conference room.
“What did you say?”
“Yeah, Landen told me. All proud and shit. Happened last week. She’s engaged. Evan Sanderson, whose family money makes Landen’s money look like pocket change. So, I bet he’s happy.”
She was engaged. To be married. To the man she’d suspected her father was selling her to.
Except it was the twenty-first century and shit like that didn’t happen. He couldn’t force her to marry anyone. If she was being forced to marry, why the hell was she strutting around the office smiling like she didn’t have a care in the world? Having lunch with the man who would do something like that to her?
Landen came out of the office, Ash behind him. She linked her arm with his, and, again, didn’t bother looking around the office, trying to see if she could spot me among the other employees.
I don’t know why I did it. It was instinct, or compulsion or something, but I stood up. Just that. I stood, and I could feel Trevor’s eyes on me, wondering what the hell I was going to do.
“Do not make a scene,” I heard him say under his breath. “Sit down.”
Only I didn’t. I stood there and knew when they turned to leave through the receptionist area, she would see me. She couldn’t not see me. She didn’t stop walking, didn’t stop talking to her father. Instead, she tilted her head, gave me a shy smile, a little wave, then kept walking. Out of the office, without any more acknowledgement than that.
When it was over, I fell back into my chair, because my knees wouldn’t hold me.
“Man, you look like you just got shot,” Trevor said. “I thought you said there was nothing there.”
I didn’t say anything. I just looked at him and said the first thing that came to mind.
“I need to get drunk.”
To his credit, Trevor didn’t ask any questions. We wrapped up the work for the day. Found the closest bar to the office. Not the one where occasionally people showed up for happy hour and easy chitchat. Instead, we found the type of bar that was solely for the purpose of getting drunk.
I drank whiskey until I couldn’t feel, couldn’t think, couldn’t see.
Eventually, Trevor poured me into a cab, and, somehow, I managed to give the driver my apartment address in Brooklyn. A walk-up I shared with two other guys. I fell on the couch, watched the ceiling above me spin and spin.
And knew, knew this had been all my fault.
The week before
Ashleigh
“I would be very honored if you would be my wife,” Evan said smoothly.
He didn’t get down on one knee. He wouldn’t do anything so obvious and undignified. Instead, we were sitting in my father’s living room, alone since my father had just retired for the evening.
Evan hadn’t wasted any time. He’d pulled a box from the pocket of the navy blazer he’d been wearing and opened it in time with his words.
I smiled. The ring was beautiful, tasteful. Not too big, but I was sure it was of the finest quality.
“Can we be blunt?” I asked him. “I mean, if we’re going to be married, there’s no point in not being honest with each other.”
Evan smiled. “So, you’re agreeing to marriage?”
“Do I have a choice?”
He tilted his head. “No.”
I smiled. “See? We can be blunt.”
Evan stood then, and walked over to the fireplace even though there was no fire. He played with the Tiffany ring box in his hand as he considered me.
“Your father said you were docile. Compliant. That it was your nature. I’ve been coming around now for years, and I’m starting to wonder if that’s true.”
“I won’t be difficult,” I said, knowing how this all had to play out. I’d realized when it came to Arthur, I’d been acting for years. This was merely another part I had to play. “I just have a few questions.”
“All right. Ask your questions.”
“I told you once I wasn’t interested, and you said you felt the same. Has that changed?”
“N
o. Don’t get me wrong, Ashleigh, you’re quite lovely. You’re just not my type. You are, however, exactly what an aspiring young politician needs by his side. I wanted us to be friends. It would have made all this so much easier, but you were always resistant.”
Because I’d known what the end game was going to be all along.
“How do you plan to force me to agree to marriage?”
He shrugged. “Your father would be in a significant amount of trouble if you didn’t.”
I shook my head. “Not enough of an incentive.”
He started counting on his fingers. “You have no money, no access to money, no resources at all. If you ran, I would pursue you. Not to brag, but you understand I’m a billionaire. When you have access to that kind of money, there is nothing that can’t be accomplished. No place you can go where I can’t find you. Your other option is to live a comfortable life as a very wealthy woman.”
“As your wife.”
“Yes.”
“Why me?”
“Your father says you’re a very intelligent girl. You have to realize you’ve been my intended choice for some time now. Naturally, I needed to wait until you were a certain age. I’d actually planned to wait until after college, but your father says you’re not interested in attending.”
“That’s a lie,” I told him. “And that’s not an accusation. Just a fact. If we did marry, would you consider allowing me to attend?”
He seemed to consider that. “I don’t see any harm in it. I believe in furthering a person’s education.”
I smiled. “Excellent. You said I’d been your choice for some time, I guess I don’t understand why. I’m an asthmatic. I’m not particularly beautiful. Certainly not like the women who would relish the idea of marrying someone of your stature. There are plenty of young women who would make you look good as a politician.”
“As you said, we can be blunt. You’re a virgin. Which means you’re like veal. Innocent. A precious, protected commodity.”
“Yes, I am,” I lied, even though my heart started to thud in my chest. Why would that be such a thing of value to him?
