47. Cassidy
I’m soaking in the tub, cucumbers on my eyes, and a face mask that smells like chocolate smeared all over my face. If I was more relaxed, I’d be dead. Soft music plays in the background. I don’t know what it is, I just asked Alexa to put on some soothing music for the bath.
I sigh when I hear Ethan’s voice. He’s been on a phone call for the past few minutes, but he took it outside so as not to disturb me.
Pity. I was enjoying bath time with him, even though he takes up most of the tub.
I reach for my wineglass, sipping at the cool ruby liquid for a while before setting it back down again.
If this is a dream, I don’t want to wake up.
Ever.
These past two weeks have been the best of my entire fucking life. I mean, I would have been perfectly content just hanging out in Ethan’s penthouse, admiring the view, getting fucked on the dining room table, whatever he wanted. But he’s been treating me like a goddamn princess, and I’m afraid I’ll never be the same person again after this.
I can order whatever I want to eat whenever I want. Pretty sure I’ve put on at least five pounds since I got here. I feel guilty about it, but Ethan seems to get off almost as much watching me enjoy a gooey, cheesy pizza as he does watching me come over his cock.
And, oh God, his cock.
I understand why Myles hired him. Why he would want him back.
Ethan has unlimited stamina. This unquenchable passion that gets me so horny, I’m having sex almost as often as I’m eating.
I’d probably be ten pounds heavier if that wasn’t the case.
Our sex life is aerobic as fuck.
And again, if those were the only highlights of my stay so far, I’d be over the moon.
But we’ve gone out to dinner almost every night. Five-star restaurants. Private chefs. Nine-course tasting menus that leave me feeling like I’ve stepped into some alternate reality where tastebuds I didn’t even know existed suddenly appeared on my tongue.
Princess? I feel like a fucking queen. In fact, I’m probably having ten times more fun that the queen ever could have, seeing as Ethan’s a fucking stud and just keeps mounting me all the time.
He made me come in a Michelin star restaurant.
Fucked me in a wine cellar during a private tour.
And don’t even get me started on his Aston Martin. His leather seats are ruined.
But the weirdest thing of all? I just love waking up, knowing he’s off somewhere in his penthouse, ready to greet me with a huge smile and, usually, a quickie wherever I find him.
Things are so good that I keep wondering what the hell I did to deserve all of this. I must have been a fucking saint in my previous life.
“Cassidy.”
I turn to smile at Ethan as he walks back into the bathroom. “Yes, Sir?” I tease, twisting to rest my arms on the side of the tub.
He towers over me, and I take a moment to work my way up to his face, what with all the muscles I have to inspect along the way.
“What’s wrong?” Water sloshes as I hurriedly straighten.
There’s a grim look on his face, and I don’t like it one bit.
Not one fucking bit.
He glances away, runs a hand through his hair, and crouches down beside the sunken tub.
“That was Myles.”
My jaw sets like stone.
“No,” I whisper, then clear my throat. “No, I don’t want to hear it.”
I turn away from him, ducking my head so I can wash the mask off my face. He waits until I’m done splashing in the water and then tucks a strand of wayward hair behind my ear.
“I told you this could happen,” he murmurs.
I bat away his hand. “You told me he could help. That’s what you told me.”
Of course. That’s why everything was going so well. It was a cruel trick, played on me by a sadistic universe. Lulling me into a sense of security, only to pull the rug out from under my feet.
“Sometimes people leave, Cassidy. They leave, and it’s not in our control, and it fucking hurts.”
His words wash over me like ice, making me shiver as I stand to get out of the tub. I wish I could stick my fingers in my ears and sing a stupid song until he goes away, but he’s right.
And I fucking hate it.
“Should never have bothered with that jerk,” I say, my eyes averted as I hurriedly rub myself down with a towel. “Thinks he’s such a big deal, but he can’t even find one person?”
“Two.”
I frown as Ethan grabs my arms and turns me to face him. He’s still only in a towel, and mine gets scrunched up between us as he drags me close.
“He tried to find Becks too, Cassidy. Sometimes we just have to accept that people are only in our lives for a season.”
“A season?” I glare up at him. “She was my mother, Ethan, not just a fiancé.”
His eyebrows leap up. “Just?”
My jaw tightens. “You know what I mean.”
He releases me, stepping back, a dark shadow in his eyes. “I fucking hope not, because it seems you’re suggesting Becks meant less to me than your mother.”
My throat feels too dry, my lips stretched too tight. I lick them, but it doesn’t help. “I wouldn’t know, Ethan! You still haven’t told me what happened!”
I realize I’m shouting, but I can’t stop.
“You’ve never asked.” His voice is a low, threatening growl. “Are you asking, Cassidy?”
I gulp down a knot of unease. “Yes.”
His jaw clenches as he looks away, both his hands fisting at his side. “I left on business to meet an old client, one of my dad’s. Angelo had been helping back then so I could spend more time with Becks, but I didn’t want him handling this one. He can rub some people the wrong way.”
“I knew I’d only be gone for a few days, but it was the first time we’d been out of each other’s sight since we’d met. I had this irrational urge that something would happen. That the spell would break. So I?—”
He stops. Clears his throat. Still doesn’t look at me. My heart thunders away in my chest, but I don’t have the nerve to tell him to stop. This is what I wanted, isn’t it? Ever since I saw that box in the basement, I wanted to know everything about Becks.
“I asked her to marry me before I left Glenmont. She said yes. Everything was fine. At least, that’s what I thought.” He cuts off again, his Adam’s apple moving as he swallows. “But when I came back a few days later, she was gone.”
“That’s it?”
He slowly turns to look at me. “Yeah, Cassidy. That’s it. What more do you want?” He advances on me, and it’s all I can do to stand my ground.
“Do you want to know if she packed her bags? Because she did. She had enough time. She took everything, left only junk behind. Or do you want to know if she left a note? Because she did that too. A short fuck you of a note that made no fucking sense!”
The last is a bellow that reverberates in the bathroom like an underground charge going off.
“How can you be in love with someone one day, and then decide you’ve had enough a day later? How, Cassidy?”
He’s looming over me again, breathing hard, his entire body shivering.
I should be terrified. But I’m just pissed off. Because it sounds exactly like what happened with my mother and now I know his pain is just as deep, just as fierce as mine.
But, somehow, he’s put it aside and moved on with his life.
How truly blessed he is.
“I know my mom didn’t run away,” I say. “She wouldn’t do that to me. I know she wouldn’t. But no one listens. No one fucking cares.”
Tears are welling up in my eyes, but I blink them back furiously.
Ethan watches me, shaking his head. “Becks wouldn’t do that to me, either. But here we are.” He spreads his arms. “So what the fuck do we do now, Cassidy?”
My heart beats hard and fast inside my chest. I look away, huddling against my towel.
“I want to speak to him.”
Ethan frowns. “Myles?”
I nod, pushing out my chin. “I want to hear it from him.”
“You think I’m lying?”
I try to choose my words carefully, but my brain feels like mush. “I want to make sure that Myles’s turned over every rock, and looked behind every tree, and done everything in whatever power he has to find her.”
Ethan’s eyes lose focus for a moment, then sharpen, pinning me where I stand. “Fine. We’ll go see Myles. But at some stage, you’ll have to accept the truth.”
My lip quivers until I bite down on it. “Maybe. But I’m not there yet.”
He shakes his head and heads for the door.
“When will you take me?” I call after him.
“Tomorrow,” comes his gruff reply.
“Why not now?”
He doesn’t answer. I sink down on the stool near the bath, holding back more tears.
How can he expect me to accept the truth, when that means that my mother abandoned me? That she tossed me aside like a piece of trash because she’d taken a lover? It would mean everything about our relationship was a lie.
That might be easy for Ethan to accept about his fiancé, but I’m sorry, it’s not the same for my mom.
We’re family.
At least…we were.
I try Ethan’s cell again, cursing under my breath when the call goes straight to voicemail.
Where the hell is he? He was supposed to be home over an hour ago.
I lean my elbows on the kitchen counter, resting my forehead on the cool marble. I feel like an idiot, standing here in this ridiculous dress, waiting for Ethan just so I can go interrogate some perv about my missing mother.
Okay, the dress doesn’t deserve any shade. It’s actually fucking stunning. The burgundy fabric compliments both my pale skin and dark hair. It’s sleeveless, which is usually a big no no for me, but it draws so much emphasis to the rest of my figure that I don’t even care.
Ethan took me shopping.
He also fucked me in almost every dressing room I went into.
That was a fun day.
I try his phone again, laughing bitterly at myself at how pathetic I am. Do I really want to speed this up? Myles’s only going to tell me what he told Ethan.
Mom’s gone, and she’s not coming back.
I drum my fingers on the marble and then hesitate.
No, I don’t just want to interrogate Myles about Rebecca’s disappearance.
I have to make sure Ethan is telling me the truth.
It’s not that I don’t trust him. I mean…of course I do. I’m living in his house, letting him fuck me whenever he wants.
But our relationship wasn’t exactly built on pillars of truth, was it? I lied about who I was, and so did he. If I hadn’t agreed to involve Myles in my mother’s case, I might never have found out about Ethan moonlighting as a porn star.
Unless I’d actually gone to dinner with Angelo. Now that I replay our conversation the day of the open house, it’s obvious that’s what he was referring to with all his talk about Ethan’s friends and what they got up to.
My palms are sweating.
Ask him what happened the night she disappeared. Maybe he’s a better liar now than he was back then.
It didn’t sound like Ethan was lying yesterday when we fought in the bathroom yesterday. But the way he spoke about Becks’s disappearance, it sounded hauntingly familiar.
She gave no sign she’d been about to leave.
She packed all her things, leaving only junk behind.
And she wrote a note that explained nothing.
Exactly like my mother.
Had he just plucked those details from the story I told him about Rebecca and repurposed it for Becks? Because what are the fucking chances?
My chest is so tight, it feels like my heart is beating against a brick wall.
I keep trying to calm down, but even thinking about Angelo is triggering me. His smug fucking face, like he was picturing how upset I’d be when Ethan lied to me. The smirk when he twanged his business card and told me to call him if I wanted the truth.
That’s exactly what I should do.
He said the only three people really knew what happened with Becks. Him, Ethan and Becks.
Maybe it’s time to get a different point of view.
But when I dig inside my purse, I can’t find the business card he gave me. I’m convinced I put it in here when I left Glenmont Manor the day of the open house. Right along with my dead cellphone.
Where the hell is Angelo’s card?
I snap my purse closed and stare at nothing.
Did Ethan find it and get rid of it?
Invisible fingers tip-tap up my spine.
I’m just being paranoid again. After the fight we had yesterday, I’ve been having all sorts of dark thoughts about Ethan. It couldn’t always be rainbows and pixie dust. We were bound to have a disagreement.
I just wasn’t expecting it to be such a doozie.
I call Ethan’s cell again and have to stop myself throwing my phone on the floor when it goes to voicemail. He’s been quiet the whole day. Only a single text an hour ago to let me know he was on his way back from wherever he’d been.
Strangely, he didn’t offer to take me with him.
I could wait for him to come back.
I should.
But the idea of hanging around here until he comes home sets my teeth on edge.
I know who can put me in touch with Angelo.
And it’s a two-for-one special, because by going to the Devil’s Den, I can find out for myself just how much—or how little—effort Myles used to find my mother.