22
Ilay face down on the bed and listened to him moving around beyond the door. I felt as though I could cry or scream or both, but I knew none of that was going to help me. I needed to talk to him. That was the only thing I could practically do that was going to help even a little bit, but I just couldn’t face the thought of having to tell him the truth about the way I’d been feeling.
It had all started after we’d had sex again. Well, for the first time, as far as my memory was concerned, but still it had been incredible, and I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it for a second since. The way he felt against me, inside me, the way he kissed me like he owned me and wanted me to know it. Everything about him, about being with him in that way, it was burned onto my memory and finally filled in the gaps of why I had done this in the first place. If it had been anything like that, then there was no way I was going to say no. He was just—holy hell, he was just so damn good. I could remember every touch, every caress, every look, and I had been tormenting myself with those memories ever since.
I craved a second round with him so much I physically ached for it a lot of the time. I would look at him and just need it, fighting my urge to grab him and drag him to the bedroom to show me all the rest of those tricks that he had up his sleeve. I wanted to learn every contour of his body, every moment of his kiss, every single one of his heartbeats, and I couldn’t let myself. I just couldn’t.
I’d heard what he had told me that night we were coming back from meeting with his father and his new wife. He didn’t believe in love that stuck around. I should have known that from the start, as soon as he’d asked me to sign a contract that had secured my place in his life as an asset and not a romantic prospect. He wasn’t that kind of guy, probably never would be, and I had been fooling myself into believing he was.
I still hadn’t signed the contract. He didn’t know it, but I just couldn’t quite bring myself to do it yet. I swore to myself I would, but not signing that thing was the last little semblance of control I had over this mess of a situation. And so, I’d held back. For now. If he could play big business, then so could I. Kristo wasn’t the only one hiding things from people.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about all those times when he’d hinted there was something else to him. When he had taken Jolene out, the way he had kidded around with her and chatted to her and treated her like a real person, the way he was with his family, how much they clearly adored him. The fact that he handed me my favorite beer out of the fridge without asking when I came back from a hard day at work. Sometimes, it felt as though he was papering over the person he really was, trying not to let me see the warmth that lived within.
Could I ignore who he told me he was for much longer? I knew with a sinking feeling in my chest that the answer was just no. He had been open with me, that he was a guy who liked to stay in control. Fuck, I had asked him not to bother with my car, yet when I got back that day, I had seen it sitting better than new in the garage. How much had he paid for that? I didn’t even want to think. And he had done that even though I’d told him not to, even though I’d told him I just wanted to borrow one of his cars. He wasn’t the kind of guy who was going to make this easy for me, and I had to accept that.
I buried my face in the pillow. I was falling for him. I didn’t care that he was stubborn. In fact, some part of me liked that he was as firm in who he was as I was. It was a little bit terrifying, for sure, to know that what I wanted was someone who was as strongly-defined as a person as I had always been. What were the chances that some guy I married while I was hammered in Vegas was going to turn out to be the kind of man I felt as though I’d been searching for all this time?
But it didn’t matter. I couldn’t put myself through this. I needed the money, sure, but was it worth selling out myself and my happiness just for some cash? Money would come and go, but if I let myself get sucked much further into this, I wouldn’t be able to bounce back from it.
The hard part was knowing that he treated me like any husband would. He fixed up my car, he introduced me to his family, and he shared his day with me. Fuck, he’d even picked up ice cream for us and chosen a movie for us to watch, if I hadn’t begged off sick in the bitchiest way I could. He treated me like his wife, except he didn’t love me.
And that one, huge gap in our relationship was eating me alive, tearing me apart. It stung just to imagine, to know that he could walk away from me just like that and not think twice about it. He had me around because I was useful to him. Sure, maybe he thought I was nice or just gullible enough to fall for his seductions, but he still didn’t love me. He didn’t think love could last the way I wanted it to. And I couldn’t handle that.
I needed to tell him how I felt. Get out of the contract. I had no idea how I was supposed to do that, but I would find a way. I couldn’t go on like this, no chance, no way, no how. I pushed myself up off the bed with a huge sigh and went for a shower, hoping the hot water would scrub some of the panic out of my brain.
When I climbed out and wrapped myself in an enormous towel so fluffy I hoped it would be able to absorb the weight of some of my problems, I heard the front door slam. I stepped outside my room and glanced around. Kristo was missing. I felt my stomach clench. I must really have pissed him off. That had been my intention, but now he was gone, and I just wanted him back. I felt like a teenager, changing at random, never able to settle on one mood or emotion. What the fuck was going on with me?
I headed over to the kitchen and went into the freezer. He said he had ice cream for us, and sure enough, when I opened it up, I found it stacked high with a bunch of fancy flavors, sea salt and caramel, double chocolate, green tea. He seemed to know exactly what I needed or maybe he was just good at reading people, a skill picked up from years working as a ruthless businessman. He just understood how precisely to keep people on their toes, to make sure everyone around him kept coming back to him no matter what. Perhaps I was just another one of his conquests, a business acquisition that just happened to leak over into his private life more than others before me had.
If I was going to have to tell him everything, then the least I deserved was something to take the edge off. I grabbed myself a bowl and spooned out a selection of the flavors in front of me and shuffled back through to the bed. Curling up under the covers, I stared off into space and tried to figure out exactly how I was going to tell Kristo about the mess of emotions that had been running through my brain these last few days. As soon as he came back, I would do it. That was, if he came back at all.