Cruel Desire

by K. A. Linde

  I crossed my arms and nodded. I didn’t know why I cared. But the thought of him starting a relationship with the person he’d cheated on me with made me want to set something on fire.

  “You’re the one I want, English.” He stepped forward again and brushed his hand against my arm. His eyes zeroed in on my sweatshirt. “What are you wearing?”

  I glanced down and froze. Fuck. I’d completely forgotten that I’d thrown on Court’s Harvard Lacrosse sweatshirt this morning. I’d snagged it at his house the other day when I was cold.

  “Uh, it’s a client’s,” I said defensively.

  “You’re wearing your client’s sweatshirt?” His eyes narrowed. “Is this the same client that I saw in the picture with you?”

  “Yes. And not that I have to justify anything to you, but that was, as always, fake paparazzi bullshit.”

  “And the sweatshirt?”

  “I was cold,” I ground out.

  He let his hand drop. “Are you together?”

  “I am not having this conversation with you, Josh. You don’t get to barge into my apartment, unannounced, and start making accusations.”

  “I thought we could make this work,” Josh said. His eyes were wide. He’d really deluded himself into thinking it would happen. “I thought that once I finally saw you, you’d realize that we were making a horrible mistake. You’re the one I want. You’ve always been it for me.”

  “You were it for me, too, Josh,” I whispered. “But then you broke my trust.”

  “And you think trust can never be mended?” he demanded.

  “I know it can’t,” I bit out.

  “I’m not like your father. This isn’t your parents’ marriage. We can fix this. We can go to counseling. We can make it work.” He was so earnest. So fucking earnest. “I love you, English.”

  My throat closed up. It’d be so easy to say yes. To just forgive and forget. To get back what I’d thought was forever. We’d move back to LA. We’d go to therapy. Life would move on. We’d get through it.

  But… I deserved better than that.

  I deserved so much better.

  “I can never trust you again,” I said softly. I hardly sounded like myself. I felt like I was breaking open all over again.

  “Please, just give me a chance to prove myself to you.”

  I looked him directly in his eyes. “When someone shows you who they really are, believe them.”

  “This isn’t really me,” he said, gently massaging his throat. “The person who did those things… that isn’t the real me.”

  “Oh, so someone else cheated on me? Your alter ego?”

  “It was a publicity stunt. I told you that from the beginning. I didn’t even want to do it. But my publicist said it was the way to save the movie.”

  I froze in place. My head tilted slightly. But my entire world tilted with it.

  “What did you just say?”

  “It’s like I told you in London. It was a publicity stunt.”

  “You said that, but you never told me that your publicist had told you to do it.” I put my hand to my heart. “Margery told you to fuck Celeste to help the movie?”

  He frowned. “I swore I told you that.”

  “No. You didn’t,” I bit out.

  “This movie will make or break my career. We needed something to push it over the edge. We brainstormed ideas, and she said the easiest thing would be to Mr. & Mrs. Smith the movie.”

  I was still reeling.

  Margery, my boss and the owner of Poise, had told my husband to sleep with another woman. Then, she had looked me in the eye when I went back to LA afterward. She’d treated me like family. All while stabbing me in the back.

  “English, say something,” Josh said.

  “What do you want me to say? Margery betrayed me. You betrayed me. I do this for a living. I am very, very good at my job. We could have come up with a solution,” I said, lethally calm. “Even if all of that wasn’t true, you still fucked someone else.”

  “But I don’t love her. I love you.”

  “No, you don’t. You love yourself.”

  Josh took a step back. He looked me over as if expecting me to break for him. As if he thought that he’d somehow tamed the wild thing within me. But I wasn’t tame. I’d just pretended to be housebroken. And the old me could come out to play at the drop of a hat. Don’t kick a beehive.

  “It’s really over,” Josh said. “You’re really done.”

  “I was done the second you told me you’d slept with her.”

  He nodded, grimaced at the pain in his neck. “Fuck. I don’t want it to be over.”

  “You should have thought about that before agreeing to sleep with your costar for money.”

  He opened his mouth, presumably to contradict me, but I held up my hand. Even as my heart broke all again, I silenced him. I didn’t need this.

  “Just go, Josh.”

  He looked like he might try to say something else. But at the end of the day, he was a coward. He nodded once at me and then left the apartment.

  All the strength left my body, and I collapsed right there on the kitchen tiles. How had everything gone so horribly wrong?

  I buried my head in my knees and tucked my arms tight around my legs. I rocked back and forth a few times. The last thing I wanted to do was cry. I refused to shed any more tears for Josh Hutch.

  Whatever we’d gone through recently, I had loved him. I hadn’t wanted a divorce. I’d thought we’d live happily ever after. And now, I was on the kitchen floor, trying not to cry.

  Whatever his bullshit excuse, I found it hard to believe that Margery would do this. And at the same time, considering what I did for a living, it all made perfect sense. Except the part where she would burn one of her best employees to help one of her clients. But even then, I didn’t know if she had a heart. If she’d care that it’d broken mine. She wanted her clients happy. She never cared who got hurt in the interim. Even if it was one of her own.

  She’d carefully cultivated it so that it wouldn’t seem like she’d done it, too. I hadn’t taken Josh’s comment about a publicity stunt at face value. Even working as a publicist the last five years, I’d been blind to the idea that someone would do this to me. When I had covered up enough scandals to know better.

  I dabbed at my eyes and took a deep breath. I couldn’t fall apart now. Not because of Josh. Not because of Margery. Not for anyone.

  What I needed was answers. And I damn well was going to get them.

  27

  English

  Winnie answered the video chat almost immediately. Her long black waves were up in a neat bun at the crown of her head. Her dark eyes wide and glamorous with eyelash extensions for days and perfect winged eyeliner. Her beautiful British accent cut through the line as she smiled broadly. “English, what a treat to see your pretty face. I was just thinking about you. Our cross-country connection grows stronger every day.”

  But I wasn’t smiling.

  “Did you know about Josh?” I asked unceremoniously.

  She furrowed her brow. “What about Josh?”

  “Did you know?”

  She was silent for a second. A heartbeat that felt like an eternity.

  I didn’t want Winnie to know. I didn’t want my closest friend in this business to have played me and then made me do work for her in the city. It would be too much. But Margery had done it. I couldn’t know if Winnie had.

  “I don’t know what you’re asking,” Winnie finally said. “Did I know about the affair? I knew when you told me. I did try to salvage the pictures, but once they went viral, there was little to be done.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. There was no guile in Winnie’s voice. Nothing on her face to indicate that she’d lied. We’d worked together long enough for me to be able to detect it. Plus, Winnie didn’t bullshit. I’d seen her lie her ass off, but when someone genuinely wanted the truth, she always gave it. Aloof and indifferent. She was a hard ass but loyal. I’d been banking
on that, but it also terrified me.

  “Margery told Josh to sleep with Celeste.”

  Winnie breathed in harshly. “She did?”

  “Yes, Josh just showed up at my apartment. He confessed it while we were arguing.”

  “Could he have been lying?”

  I shook my head. “No. Not in that moment. He’d told me in London it was a publicity stunt, but I didn’t believe him.”

  “Bollocks.”

  “Yeah. I had to know if you were involved. I didn’t want to think…”

  She held up a hand. “You don’t have to explain yourself. I would have done the same thing. Margery is a pain in the arse, but I’d never thought she’d hurt one of her own. This is an all-time low.”

  “It is. I’m about to a call her next.”

  “I wish you were here, so we could do this together.”

  “Me too. Wish me luck, Win.”

  “You don’t need it. I’m always here for you. Whatever you need.”

  I smiled warmly at her and then ended the video chat. Now, the fun part.

  I swallowed hard. Thank fuck Winnie hadn’t been involved. But that meant that Margery had gone behind everyone’s back on this. Usually, we made big decisions together. She worked with all of us in tandem. It made us all stronger.

  But this was unconscionable.

  I dialed Margery’s number. Her face appeared on the screen. She was seated at her desk. Her burgundy hair down and wavy with cunning eyes and pursed dark lips. She was a force in the industry. And she’d plucked me out of oblivion. She saw my worth. She’d given me a chance.

  And now, she’d burned that bridge.

  “Hello, English. Ready to come home to sunny LA? It’s a balmy eighty-three degrees, and only half of California is on fire today.”

  She was so apathetic. As if California forest fires didn’t matter as long as they stayed out of the city.

  “Margery,” I said curtly. “And no, I don’t think I’m coming back to LA.”

  “Ah, so you’ve made your decision to remain in New York? Are you sure you want to decide that before you endure your first winter? Have you ever lived through snow?”

  I ground my teeth. I didn’t want this small talk. I couldn’t handle the bullshit chitchat.

  “You told Josh to sleep with Celeste,” I blurted out.

  Margery leaned back in her dark office chair. “Did I?”

  “Don’t play games with me. Josh is in New York. He just told me that you convinced him to sleep with Celeste to help the movie.”

  “And you believe him?”

  “He told me from the start that it was a publicity stunt. I just hadn’t realized you were the one to plan the stunt.”

  Margery shrugged her shoulders. “Well, cat’s out of the bag. You understand how the business is run, don’t you?”

  “I know that you could have talked to me. We could have figured out something else. And instead, you threw me under the bus.”

  Margery laughed. She didn’t even look sorry. “I did no such thing. Put blame where blame is due.”

  “Oh, I am. Josh will pay handsomely for his mistake. But so will you.”

  “I didn’t force him to fuck her, English. It’s not my fault that he did it,” Margery said with her diplomatic smile.

  “You put the gun in his hand. You’re still responsible if he shoots someone.”

  “In this case, the gun is his dick, and the shot was inside of Celeste Gammon,” she said crudely. “He wanted the movie to boost his career. He said that he’d do anything. We went through suggestions. We both agreed that Celeste was the easiest route. That’s business, love. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

  I swallowed bile at her words. At this institution that I was a part of. This was what I was good at. I loved my job. But I couldn’t stomach this.

  “I was one of your own. You treated me like a daughter,” I gasped out.

  Margery smiled at me fondly. “I think of you like one.”

  And it was the tipping point.

  Because I would not let one more parental figure treat me like shit.

  “I quit.”

  Margery’s eyes widened. “English, think about what you’re doing.”

  “It’s just business, Margery,” I intoned back at her.

  “You’re making a huge mistake.”

  “No,” I said evenly. “You made a huge mistake when you unilaterally decided to end my marriage. And then had the audacity to say I was like a daughter to you.”

  “What will you do? Where will you go? You can’t work at another PR firm. You signed a non-compete.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “No judge in the country would hold that non-compete up in court.”

  “Then, I’ll see you in court,” Margery said, her eyes narrowing. “I made you, English. I own you. You’ll find doors aren’t quite so open to you without Poise behind you.”

  “No one owns me anymore, Margery,” I bit out and then hung up without letting her get in another word edgewise.

  My hands trembled as I stared down at my phone in shock. I’d done it. I’d quit.

  Oh fuck, I’d quit.

  What the fuck was I going to do now?

  The trembling went from my hands to my entire body. Anxiety spiked through me. Terror hit me. I had no plan. No idea what I was going to do.

  I needed to get out of this apartment. I needed… Court.

  It took me a minute before I remembered that he was at work. I’d been avoiding his work. Letting him have that space alone. Especially because there were cameras everywhere and I’d been worried someone would see us.

  But now, what did it matter?

  I grabbed my purse and hustled out of my apartment. I dived into the first cab and drove downtown to the Kensington Corporation building. I paid and then hastened inside. The elevator dropped me off on the top floor. Court didn’t have a secretary or anything since he was still acclimating to the work. So, there was no one to stop me from barging into his office.

  Court’s head popped up when he saw me. His brows furrowed. “English?”

  I pushed the door closed behind me. My body still shook uncontrollably. My anxiety had gone into full-on panic attack in the car. I felt out of control. I knew exactly why this was coming on, but I felt helpless to stop it. Nothing could fix this.

  Court didn’t wait for my response. He jumped out of his chair and came to my side. “Are you okay? What happened? You look like sick.”

  He moved me across the room and pushed me into the chair in front of his desk. Then, he bent down in front of me and took my hands.

  “English, breathe. Just breathe. In through your nose. Hold it for a count of four. And then out through your mouth. Try it with me. Match my breathing.”

  I focused in on him. The lifeline through the waves of panic.

  Breathe in, two, three, four.

  Hold, two, three, four.

  Breathe out, two, three, four.

  Repeat.

  And again.

  I didn’t know how long we sat there as he directed me through breathing exercises. But he never wavered, and he never moved. He just stared fixedly at me. He rubbed his thumbs over my knuckles. He spoke in the calmest voice I’d ever heard from him.

  And then slowly, my shoulders loosened. The panic began to ebb. My voice returned.

  Court reached forward and brushed a tear off of my cheek. “There we go. There you are.”

  “How did you know how to do that?” I whispered.

  “I started getting panic attacks after my dad died,” he told me. His eyes were still intent on mine. His thumb still rubbed soothing circles into my hand. “I tried to drown out the pain with alcohol, but it didn’t work. I started meditating. It doesn’t always work to stop them when I’m in a full-blown one. But it can usually hold it back if I know I’m on the verge.”

  “Wow,” I said. “I didn’t know that about you.”

  He laughed gently. “No one knows that.”

  I swallowed
. “Josh came by the apartment today.”

  “What?” Court asked, his voice dropping. “Why?”

  “He thought we’d get back together. I might have throat-punched him.”

  A laugh burst out of Court. “Damn, English. You’re savage.”

  “It was an accident, but it felt good.”

  “So… panicking about Josh?”

  I shook my head. “No. He told me that sleeping with Celeste was a publicity stunt. And that Margery—my boss, Margery—had been the one to suggest it.”

  “Fuck,” he hissed.

  “I called Margery to confront her, and then I quit Poise.”

  “Jesus. I mean, I think you did the right thing, but fuck. What a bitch. Why would she do that behind your back?”

  I shrugged helplessly.

  “Okay. Okay,” he said and then rose to his considerable height. “I’m pretty much done with my work for today. I’m going to take off early and get you home.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  He looked at me as if I’d grown a second head. “You showed up here in the midst of a panic attack and then told me you just had a confrontation with your soon-to-be ex-husband and quit your job. I think that calls me to take you home and take care of you.”

  “Court...”

  “I’m thinking sweatpants, a Harry Potter marathon, and takeout.”

  I laughed softly. “That… sounds nice.”

  “Good. Let me send in this last report, and then we’ll go.”

  “Court,” I whispered as he stepped back to his computer.

  He looked up at me expectantly.

  “Thank you.”

  He smiled at me. Not a smile I’d ever seen from him before. It wasn’t teasing or laughing or like he was ready to devour me. It was… something else. Something I couldn’t put my finger on. But it made butterflies flap away in my stomach. And I decided I liked it very much.

  28

  Court

  Color finally came back into English’s cheeks by the time I got her back to her apartment. I’d never seen her look so pale and terrified. It was unnerving. Part of me wanted to go find Josh Hutch and beat the shit out of him for hurting her. The other part thought about flying to LA and doing it to her damn boss. Not a single part of me wanted to stand still. Even though I knew that was what she wanted… what she needed.