“You’re right,” he agreed. “So what are you going to do about it?”
That took her aback.
“What?”
“What are you going to do about it?” Corey repeated.
“They aren’t bullying me,” she pointed out.
Corey held her gaze in a manner that she did not look away.
Not that she would.
Another thing about the girl he liked.
Then he stated, “Do not ever, Chloe, ever let anyone harm someone you love.”
A feeling welled up in his chest, instantly threatening to overwhelm him.
Used to this sensation, having experienced it for years, with little effort, Corey shoved it back down and kept speaking.
“It doesn’t matter what you have to do, if you think it’s bad, but it stops that harm, you do it. If you think it’s naughty, and it stops that harm, you do it. Even if you think it’s wrong, though it will stop that harm, you do it. No hesitation, no messing about. Just do it.”
Chloe stared at him.
“The same with you,” he carried on. “Do not let anyone walk all over you, Chloe Marilyn Pierce. Don’t you ever allow that to happen.”
She gave it a moment, and then she asked, “So you think I should…do something?”
“I think you’ve already waited too long.”
Corey watched as Chloe considered this.
And he was unsurprised when, after she spent hardly any time in this contemplation, slowly, she smiled.
* * *
Chloe
Nine years later…
“Are you mad?” Pierre asked me.
I stared at him, for the first time wondering why I’d spent a single minute with him.
Was he cute?
Yes.
Did he have a good body?
Yes.
Did he give me my very first, not-given-to-myself orgasm?
Yes.
Was he an asshole?
Apparently…yes.
My voice was ice-cold, and I was pretty pleased with myself at the sound of it, when I noted in return, “You told me you’d never sell it.”
“I’m an artist!” he cried.
The drama.
Boring.
In that moment, I made a pact with myself that I vowed to keep.
Only I would bring the drama to a relationship.
I modulated my voice and did not cut the tie between our gazes.
“You said it meant everything to you. You said you’d cease being you without it in your possession. You said you’d be ninety, and you would die in a room where, on the wall, that portrait you painted of me hung.”
“I do need to feed myself, Chloe,” he sniped.
No one, not a soul, disregarded money the way he did (unless not doing it served his purpose, like now), who did not have it in the first place.
Didn’t grow up having it.
I was that person too.
But Mom did a lot of charity work, so did Dad, they made certain we understood that we were very lucky and many, in fact most others, were not.
Pierre and I had never discussed money (because, how gauche), and he didn’t live in a fabulous apartment in a posh part of the city, though it wasn’t rundown or seedy or anything like that.
Still…
I knew Pierre was like me.
So this whole thing was a big sham.
All of it.
Including his promises to me.
As I looked at his dark, loose, long locks, the perfection of his nose, the breadth of his shoulders, his gangly frame, for the first time I saw through him.
He was a sham.
A fake.
A pretender.
Maybe even worse.
A wannabe.
And I had to admit to more than a little concern that my affections for him shifted so quickly.
But they did.
I could walk away…
No.
I was going to walk away.
And what worried me was…
I didn’t care.
I decided to think about this later and moved to begin packing, at the same time my mind swung to considering my next step.
Hotel for a few days while I found a flat to rent (and did the work it took to convince my parents I needed to rent a flat in Paris, and they needed to allow me the use of my trust fund to do that, or better, not allow me and instead, simply give the money to their darling daughter in order that she get the most out of her discovering-herself time in Europe).
One thing I knew, I wasn’t leaving France.
Not on my life.
When I dragged out a piece of my luggage (there were three), Pierre was there.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Packing,” I said in a bored tone, one that I didn’t affect.
I was, indeed, bored.
Done.
Over this.
On to the next adventure.
“Packing? Just like that?”
I turned from unzipping and opening my suitcase to him.
“You need to get that painting back,” I told him. “And you need to destroy the other one. You also need to give me all the pictures you took of me and erase any digital copies you have.”
His mouth dropped open.
He then used it to say, “That is not happening.”
“You don’t have my permission to use my image, Pierre. It’s illegal for you to sell those paintings or use those images for monetary purposes without my permission.”
I was no Hollywood starlet rushing into the latest hip club, ripe for any paparazzo’s lens, needing it at the same time feeling it wholly an invasion of my privacy.