The Dirty Series 1(32)

Several long moments.

“All right. All right. I’ll be there to visit soon, but he can’t come with me. I’m sorry. Yes. Chocolate. I love you, too.”

I wait, standing perfectly still, for at least a minute, then knock.

A few second pass before I hear his voice. “Come in.”

He remains seated as I approach his desk, his blue eyes locked on my face.

This is the moment.

I spent most of today planning out what I’m going to do, what I’m going to say. Instead of hovering in front of the desk, waiting for his instructions, I step around to the side, a few feet from his chair.

His eyes don’t betray even a hint of confusion.

I lower myself to my knees on the floor and look up at him, my breaths fast and unsteady. It’s like looking into the sun, but I force myself.

“Mr. Hunter,” I begin, my voice clear and strong, “I’ve made my decision, and—”

“Stop.” He holds up a hand, cutting me off.

“But I—”

“This arrangement is over, Ms. Schaffer.”

My cheeks go hot as the pit of my stomach freezes.

He can’t mean it.

He doesn’t mean it.

I can see it on his face, the way his muscles tense around his mouth, like he’s trying to keep his stony expression in place.

I’m open-mouthed, silent.

“It’s a risk for you professionally…and it’s not something I can continue.”

“But—”

“It’s over.”

My knees are shaky, weak, as I rise to my feet. “But why?”

He pushes himself to standing, his fingers spread wide on the desk in front of him. “I can’t continue it. Neither can you. It’s over.”

I bite my lip, my chin quivering in spite of the herculean effort I’m putting in to keep the tears from spilling down my face. My shoulders tighten, burning. I needed the release he was going to give me, but I craved his closeness, his touch, even more.

He says something too quietly to hear.

“What?”

“Go. Go back to work. Just go.”





Chapter Twenty-Three





Jax



It doesn’t take fifteen minutes for me to realize that I’ve just fucked up royally.

What clues me in is the raw, throbbing pain that settles in my chest when Cate walks out the door, her back perfectly straight, her chin up, her breathing even. The only thing that gives away her devastation is a single tear that clings to the edge of her eyelashes. A younger version of myself would have found something cynical to say about it, something biting, something caustic—women, and all their emotions—but I feel gutted, and I shouldn’t.

It was just supposed to be sex. Orgasms. Never this. Never this hook-line-and-sinker feeling that blooms outward from my gut. She wasn’t supposed to have such power over me.

But she does. She does.

The look in her eyes when she walked in told me that she saw the pictures from last night. I don’t know how she could have missed them. It was New York City news on one of the internet’s biggest gossip sites, and those fuckers run ads on every social media feed in the nation. She had to have known, had to have seen it. It was online before Peter parked the car outside of my building.

She knew, and she came anyway.

She bent her earth-shattering legs and got down on her knees, ready to beg for another chance at our deal.

That’s when I knew.

I couldn’t go through with it.

The phone call with my mother had been hard enough. She had worked herself up into an uncontrollable agitation, and the nursing home staff’s last resort is to get me on the phone.

I fucking hate it.

I hate hearing her voice, so confused, filled with so much pain. I hate having to explain to her that my piece of shit father can’t come pick her up, won’t be visiting, can’t come to the phone. I’ve long since given up trying to explain that he’s in prison, for god’s sake, for stealing other people’s money like a common thief. My mother doesn’t remember.

Alzheimer’s has ravaged her brain, chewed it up and spit it out.

It’s goddamn terrible to say it, but things are better when she’s not aware enough to know that she’s not at home, that my father isn’t with her, that I grew up and left home a decade ago.

For me, anyway. I’m not sure that things will ever be better for her.

So when I looked at Cate kneeling on the floor, all I could think was that this is wrong.

No woman who just wanted sex, just wanted my money, would do what she was doing. Not with that look in her eyes. Not after the pictures she had to have seen. Cate is nothing like Vivian. If she was, she would have thrown herself at me the moment she found out who I was.

There’s something wild and sexual between us, and neither of us can deny it…but underneath it all there’s a current of something deeper than that, and it pisses me off that I can’t explain it. Can’t control it.