Total pages in book: 176
Estimated words: 167940 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 840(@200wpm)___ 672(@250wpm)___ 560(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 167940 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 840(@200wpm)___ 672(@250wpm)___ 560(@300wpm)
“It’s not like that,” I answer flatly, my next words rising in force and volume. “If you would just give me a minute, a moment of your fucking attention to explain!”
“A minute of my attention? There has been nothing but you for weeks! You have consumed my every thought—you saw to that! You could’ve had any minute,” she says, flinging out her arm, her voice brittle and brimming with pain. “Any minute out of so many to tell me the truth. To explain. Instead, you decided for me. You chose ignorance, but instead, someone else sought to enlighten me to the fact that the man I love screws women for money.” Her voice cracks, her expression fucking wretched. “Tell me it’s not true.”
I wish I could. I would lie to her in a heartbeat to unsee the way she’s looking at me. To hear that most glorious of admissions under different circumstances.
She loves me. I’d felt it in my heart, but I’d yet to hear the words. And now this. Now fucking this.
“Who told you?”
“That’s the question you ask?” Her sadness crushes me.
I pivot away from her, pacing across the room because if I don’t, I think my need to hold her might only serve to hurt her. Not that I would ever . . . but I need to explain, and she needs to hear me, but I can’t trust myself to touch her.
I roll my neck and stretch my shoulders, everything feeling too tight. I could crawl out of my own fucking skin as I slip the jacket from my back, hurling it across the room to a chair.
“You’re not leaving.” My words are low and filled with fury. Not at her but that she would leave, my shoes scuff against the floor in my haste. In my panic. But she doesn’t acknowledge me. Not even as I prop my hands on my hips to stop myself from touching her. To stop myself from crowding her in. “Not until we talk.”
“The time to talk has passed.” She swipes up a hairbrush, tossing it to the open case, picking up a small box next. “There’s nothing left to say.”
“The fuck there isn’t,” I snarl, snatching the box out of her hand. “You don’t understand—”
“How could I?” She snatches the box back. “How could I understand how you could do this—hide this? I’ve spent most of the morning wondering what this means. Hours of constant thinking until my head ached, and I still can’t make any sense of it—not one fucking bit!”
“So listen to me!” I pluck the box once more from her hand and throw it across the room.
“Go on then. Tell me it’s not true. Tell me you haven’t fucked women for money.”
“I can’t.”
She lifts trembling fingers to her lips to stifle a tiny sob. Her pain is like a punch to my solar plexus.
“Nothing you can say will make this better. Will make this go away. You screwed women for money. You, who could already buy half of Manhattan. I know you don’t have a self-esteem issue. Is it an addiction? How many times—”
“No. No,” I add stronger, my hands cupping her face, my heart screaming out for her to see the only thing I’m addicted to is her. Is making her happy. Loving her and Lulu. “It wasn’t like that. And I haven’t . . . not once. Not since you.”
“Yes, I hear it’s making the Manhattan elite very unhappy,” she says with a watery laugh. “The women, at least. Was it just for kicks? Do you get off on it?”
“In the beginning. A long time ago.” But that’s not why, my mind screams as I swipe my thumbs under her eyes, wiping away her tears.
“Poor impulse control?” Her eyes flick between mine as though trying to discern the truth, her next words so very cold. “But that’s not you, is it? You’re all about control.”
“Fee . . .”
“I mean, just look at me, still living here. Because you manipulated me. Because you planned for me to be here. Tell me that’s not true.”
“I wanted you here, yes.”
She jerks away, snatching up a shirt as she begins to fold it carelessly. “And you made sure it happened because Carson Hayes always gets what he wants. Doesn’t he?” Her head swings around, her expression arctic. “What kind of a man professes to love a woman yet treats her like this?”
“If you just listen to me, I’ll tell you,” I roar. But she doesn’t waver, doesn’t shake, continuing calmly on with her folding.
“Would you? Would you really?” Her tone is almost conversational, but I hear the tremor in it. See how her hands shake. “How could you possibly explain your manipulation? How you’ve shown me just enough care and attention to keep me here? Just enough truth to make me think I was getting to know you. The man I met five years ago.”