The Dirty Series 1(51)

It cuts me, because for a long time I’ve been living that way. But when I called Sarzó and told her to prepare for Catherine to transition out of the office, I was explicit: I told her that she would have two months to find a suitable replacement. Plenty of time for Cate to warm up to the idea, and for me to show her what I have in mind. It fucking stings that she thinks I’ve done this with no consideration for what she wants out of life.

“Please, Cate, give me a minute to explain.”

“I don’t want to hear your explanation. I don’t want to hear any of it.” Her cheeks go pink. “I’m fucking mortified that I got involved with you at all. I should have known—I was warned that you were selfish and arrogant and I didn’t listen. Now I’ve lost my job over it, and you have some trite explanation? Fuck you. Fuck you. We’re done, Jax. Done.”





Chapter Thirty-Six





Cate



Jax’s shoulders slump, but I’m so furious that I feel nothing when I see his defeated posture. A tiny voice in my head is trying to pull me back, trying to remind me that he’s had a hard day—that he’s losing his mother to a slow and agonizing disease, that his father is in prison, that he’s done so much for me that I can at least hear him out.

But I don’t want to.

Nothing he can say can possibly make up for what happened to me this morning, with all of my hard work dismissed as worthless. I’m back out on my ass, back at the bottom, and now I have to start over somewhere else and it will be years, years, before I can finally feel secure enough to move forward with all the other plans I have for my life. The anxiety is like a pair of hands around my neck. Years…

“I didn’t tell your boss to fire you.” He says the words, but he must know they’re going to have no effect. “And I meant to talk to you about this last night, but things…got in the way.”

“You couldn’t send me a message?”

“It’s not the kind of thing I thought you’d appreciate hearing about in a text.”

“You couldn’t call?”

He shakes his head, shoulders raising in a hint of a shrug. “It was late when I was finally free…”

This is all so goddamn irrelevant. The fact that Jax did this and said nothing to me is a secondary problem, though I can’t help but dig at him over it. The main issue is that he thought he had the right to make a change like that in my life, and he did not. He absolutely did not. It’s unforgivable.

I step over to him, looking him straight in the eye. “Let me make something crystal fucking clear to you, Mr. Hunter.” I watch the last two words twist the knife. “Nobody makes decisions for me. Nobody. Not even men like you.”

For an instant, I almost feel sorry, because Jax doesn’t give me a cocky smile. He doesn’t have a cutting reply ready. He doesn’t step forward and try to overwhelm me with kisses, doesn’t press his body to mine until all I can think of is the clean scent of his skin, of his clothes, until I’m so lost in him that all I can do is dig my nails into his back and surrender to the most intense pleasure I’ve ever experienced.

He just looks down at the floor.

“I’m sorry, Cate. It didn’t play out how I thought it would.”

“No, I imagine it didn’t.”

He twists away from me, a hand over his eyes, and a moment later straightens up, taking in a deep breath and letting it out. Well, isn’t he the fucking model of self-control.

“Is there anything else you’d like to discuss?”

“Discuss?” I get it. Now that I haven’t just folded, just gone along with his grand plans—never mind that he couldn’t take the time to consult me about my own life—he’s going to treat me like another business associate.

“Yes. Was there anything else?”

I take a deep breath and prepare to unleash another stream of anger on him—goddamn it, it’s my fucking right after what he’s done—when my phone buzzes.

The habit is so ingrained that I don’t even think about the situation I’m in, think about the gravity of what’s happening between the two of us. I pull it out and look at the screen even as I swipe to answer it.

It’s Dex.

Dex almost never calls me. When the family is together, we get along and enjoy each other’s company, but unless he’s around when Bee is video chatting with me, I don’t hear from him. He’s a busy guy.

“Hello?”

“Cate?” When I hear the strain in his voice, my heart drops into my stomach.

“It’s me. What’s going on, Dex?” I turn my shoulders away from Jax, whose face instantly filled with concern when he heard the question.