Without a word, I shove past him into the room, on full alert for any sign of a companion. The suite is as I remembered, and I don’t spot anything, not even a scrap of lace.
His dark eyes flicker with surprise as he turns around, his hands pushing the doors closed. “Ava.”
I spin around to face him. “Don’t you Ava me, you son of a bitch!”
“What’s this about?”
“You fucking bastard. You told the school about me living with Bennie, didn’t you?”
Shutters come down over his eyes, making him appear impossibly aloof. He radiates the self-possessed calm and arrogance that can only come from an unshakable conviction that he is entitled to everything he wishes for.
If I needed proof of how different—how incompatible—we are, I only need to see this side of him.
“Do you have any idea how the principal at my school treated me? She acted like I was a harlot! A slut! Then I got a message from the school in Chiang Mai where I interviewed telling me they’re rescinding their offer now that they know I’m an amoral whore.”
The muscles in his face tense, his alert gaze on mine.
“So great. Congratulations. You just destroyed my career and means of supporting myself. I hope you’re happy.”
“Ava, that wasn’t what I was trying to do,” he says tightly.
“Really?” I pull back exaggeratedly, then fling my arm out. “You sure could’ve fooled me.”
“If you want to be independent, I can arrange for that. I can give you money—no strings attached. A million or two should be enough to set you up…unless you want more.”
My breath heaves, blood roaring in my head. This is just like him, to think everything can be resolved with money and things it can buy.
Not just any money, bu
t his money. His gifts.
“I don’t want your damned money.”
“It’s a gift.”
“You mean payment for being your whore.” I pick up a vase with a single red rose from the low table by the window and hurl it at him. He ducks before it can connect with his face.
“What the fuck?” he yells.
“You’re saying ‘what the fuck’ after throwing money at me? You crushed my hea—” I catch myself. I am not letting him know I actually loved him back then. “You cost me my current job. You got me fired from a school where I haven’t even started. What do you want to destroy now? My pride? My spirit?” My fists shake at my sides. “I don’t think I was ever that good of a fuck, so what’s your problem? Ego couldn’t take that I left you, and now you want me to pay on my knees? Would that get you to leave me alone?”
“This isn’t about sex or hurt feelings or ego! It has nothing to do with those things.”
He crosses the living room until he’s standing only a hairsbreadth away from me and wraps his big, warm hands around my arms. I can smell the soap clinging on his clean, taut skin, and I hate myself for noticing.
“I would never work this hard just for sex, Ava. This is about how I feel about you.”
How I feel about you…
How cheap is that phrase? How empty?
A lot of people have said that even as they knew they were betraying me. Dad said it. Mom said it. Ex-boyfriends said it.
Don’t you know how I feel about you?
How can you not know how I feel about you?
Like it’s some kind of character flaw that I can’t figure out how little they cared for me.