He was right. Of course he was. But even as my heart pained at the reality of his words, my mouth was answering him back.
“I came here for her as soon as I could. I came here to help her. I knew she was in a mess… she doesn’t have any time for much else…”
“Really? No time to see how you are doing in this whole new world? No time to seek out some chat and laughter with her sister on a day she isn’t pleading you to pull her out of shit creek?”
I wished I hadn’t woken up. I preferred him dishing out pain and punishment on a physical level than digging in to the hard truths of my world with Phoebe.
“She will,” I maintained. “Once she’s up on her feet, she will.”
He leaned further across my side of the bed. “Money is what matters to people. Money is what makes the world go round. Love comes down the queue of priorities, below money, greed and selfishness. It always will.”
I shook my head. “I don’t believe that. If that’s really the case, then what’s the point of existing at all?”
His smile was jaded below the arrogance. I caught a whiff of that deep rooted pain in him all over again. “Money, greed and selfishness. They are the point of existing at all.”
I forced a smile of my own. “I’m sorry you feel that way. Maybe one day you’ll find a love that makes you think again.”
I saw it then. A flash of something. A flash of condemnation of the past. Hurt. Hurt and pessimism and a whole host more negativity besides.
He’d lost someone.
Someone. Somehow.
His hurt resonated with my own pain in his words about Phoebe.
That knowledge that someone is way more important to you than you are to them. Betrayal. Disappointment. Even if you don’t want to accept it. Even if you want to believe that somehow it will all come good for both of you.
Even if you want to chase a happily ever after you can cling hold of for the rest of your whole entire life. I was still chasing mine. Still hoping for mine.
His was long gone, I was sure of that.
“Maybe one day you’ll find that money makes you think again. Preferably before you hand the lot of it over to your poor excuse of a sister.”
“Just so long as I can hand it over to my poor excuse of a sister,” I whispered. “I’m so worried about her…”
And that’s when our conversation was over. Just like that. He raised himself back to sitting and unbuttoned his shirt.
“Sleep now,” he said. “Or you’ll regret it when it’s wake up time.”
At least we could agree on something.
It took everything I had not to touch his body with mine when he climbed naked under the bed covers, but I managed it.
Hell knows how, since my skin was screaming for his with every breath in me.
Maybe just because my soul was too busy screaming for Phoebe to care.Chapter SeventeenBrandonShe went back to sleep far more easily than I’d ever seen anyone fall asleep in my presence, even when exhausted. I watched her as the sun rose, rolling to face her in order to stop a shaft of light from the window disturbing her slumber.
Once again, my common sense choices were evading me. I could’ve easily closed the curtains and plunged us both back into darkness. If I really wanted to indulge the fascination with the girl beside me, I could have woken her with the press of my body to hers and demanded another practice round of pain.
I could’ve done all manner of things in the quietness. Typically, the only thing it would appear I couldn’t do that morning was find the peace of slumber myself.
She shifted under the covers as I moved away from her to light a cigarette by the window. She shuffled closer to my empty side of the bed, burrowing into my abandoned pillow unconsciously, as though her delicate little frame was searching for my heat somehow.
I hated how my frame called for hers right back.
I settled for the fine rush of tobacco and a crisp morning breeze on my face from the open window. It was cold outside, my skin prickling all over as I smoked two in a row. Thinking. Staring at the skyline as the day came to life outside. Hating Henry Drake with a newfound flare of passion at his imbecilic interfering in my Paige Emmerson masterpiece.
I knew what should be coming without question. Oil barons, politicians, royalty… they were all much of a muchness where their filthy dark web cash transfers were concerned. I should be darkly excited by the promise of a fresh ocean of cash for the exploit of one little slut. I should be on a mission to ensure she was as broken in by me as possible before the tide of abuse had her regretting she’d ever fired off an application to my online profile in the first place.