He smirks and shakes his head before heading to his room.
“You didn’t answer… Daddy,” I call after him, holding back my laugh.
“I promise to think of what you’re doing in bed, home alone without me, Baby Girl,” he calls back.
Our chuckles mix together in the air, echoing all the way from the kitchen and down the hallway to his bedroom before the door closes softly.
I stay in the kitchen to finish my water as I process the evening’s events.
It’s in the past. Where things from the past should stay.
I doubt he would still say that if he knew about my past. Some things should be shouted and screamed about, not left in the past to be forgotten. Unpaid for. Not that there’s any price that could ever be great enough for some sins. Some things only a time machine can fix.
I look at Reed’s closed door as I head to bed, my steps slowing as I fight the strange urge to knock on it and see if he’s still awake. I know I didn’t imagine the flash of hurt in his eyes when I asked about Bea. She may be a bitch now, but maybe she wasn’t always. Maybe once she was someone incredibly special to Reed. I mean, he was going to marry her. He must have loved her.
She must have meant a lot to him.
My stomach twists as I contemplate his words.She was what I thought I needed at the time. Maybe he thought so much of her that it still hurts to see her. Especially with someone like Graham Hutchings, who I know is shadier than an artist’s pencil collection. He hasn’t gotten to where he is through hard work alone, if the rumors are anything to go by.
It makes sense why Reed has only had brief flings since. And why Maria said the women she saw leaving his apartment were always blonde. Bea is striking in her beauty; dark, sharp, intense features. Hypnotic almost. The polar opposite of what Reed goes for. That’s what some people do, isn’t it? When they’re trying to get over someone. They throw themselves into forgetting. Hiding their grief behind nameless hookups. Looking for a complete physical contrast of what they lost if it’s still too painful to be reminded of that person.
A sickening ball rolls around the pit of my stomach as I wash my face, put my pajamas on and then climb into bed. I’ve figured it out. It’s obvious. The pain in his eyes when we were dancing. His reluctance to talk about it.
She hurt him.
He loved her.
Maybe he still does.
Chapter five
Reed
“Iknowyoukeepsaying that, but I’m doing it. Please, let me. I’ll send the money over from my account as soon as I get to work… I’m running late, got to go.”
Harley’s phone conversation carries down the hallway as I finish my weight set in the penthouse’s gym.
“Oh, god, for fuc—Argh!” she curses, sounding annoyed.
“Everything okay?” I yell as I grab a towel and wipe my face, rushing out to see what the clattering sound was.
“Yes, it’s just…” Harley leans down to grab her phone, which has fallen on the floor.
“Here.” I stride over to her and take her purse and shoes out of her hands.
“Thanks.” She blows a wisp of hair out of her eyes and then clicks her tongue. “My alarm didn’t go off. I’m never late.”
“It’s only eight, Harley.”
I know for a fact she doesn’t start work until eight-thirty. I’ve been to visit Griffin first thing in the morning enough times to see her log on to her computer and then take Griffin in a coffee.
Her eyes drop over my chest as she looks at me properly for the first time.
“Do you always exercise shirtless?”
“When I soak my shirt through with sweat before I’ve finished, yes.”
“Hm.” Her brow wrinkles. “Oh, um, eight-thirty, yes…” She rushes down the hallway, turning to extract her high heels from my grasp and gripping on to my shoulder as she stands on each leg to slip them on her feet. “I do start then, but I always get Griffin a coffee on my way in, and the line can get ridiculous.”