CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Linc
E verly is knocked out for over twelve hours, only waking when the meds wore off.
She slept like an angel beside me as I slept barely an hour all night.
The horror of yesterday’s event keeps playing over and over in my head and I’ve got only myself to blame.
I’m the link here that caused all this. Everly would never have been in the line of fire with Linley, had I not started this relationship.
“You’re thinking too hard,” her soft, sleepy voice says, bringing my eyes from looking out the window back to her.
“Morning.” Leaning in, I carefully kiss her split lips. They feel chapped but I’ll never tire of feeling them pressed against mine.
“What were you lost in thought about?” Her eyes are wide awake and seeking answers. Answers I’m not sure I can fully tell her about. Answers that could make her hate me.
“Yesterday.” I shrug and turn so that she has my full attention. “There are things I need to tell you that may be hard to hear but I want us to not have any secrets.”
I have a feeling when Linley learns her story isn’t adding up, she’ll spill about our arrangement and all the ones I had before her, NDA be damned.
Everly doesn’t need to be blindsided by that and needs to hear it from me, and not a crazy-ass bitch.
The last thing I want is for Everly to lose her trust in me.
“That would be nice,” she snorts as if it’s crazy to think otherwise.
She moves to sit straighter in the bed to give me her full attention. She winces as she moves and I hate myself even more because the choices of my past are the cause of this.
“This sounds serious, Linc.” Her eyebrows crease inward in thought. “Was there something you didn’t tell the detectives when they were here yesterday?”
I nod and she worries her teeth into her bottom lip.
Here goes nothing.
Or everything.
“Blaire Hutchins was my first client when I opened my firm. She took a chance with me when I left from underneath Dad’s law practice.
I thought it was the best thing to ever happen since Dad told me that I’d be crawling back within six months.
She was doing well with her company and making a name for herself on the west coast. She owns a modeling agency and has some of the biggest names in the business now, all over the world.
Representing her business was huge for my firm, and I was able to bring in a lot of high profile, big money clients as she introduced me to people here in LA. ”
“So, all your dates that you’ve been photographed with are all models from her agency?”
“Yes.” I sigh a long breath, steeling myself for the next confession.
“Blaire had suggested it would be a good idea, once my name was splashed across the nation after I won some really big cases, to have an arm piece out with me to give more of a shine to the public. It was a win-win for us both because her girls got their pictures taken and I was linked to beautiful famous women. Being splashed on the cover of media sites pushes more advertisement, which in turn meant more clients.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“Blaire came up with an arrangement for me to make sure to try out a variety of her models that were having a hard time getting some of the big contracts. After I started to become a really big name in the news defending high profile cases, she’d send me some of the newer up and coming models and they’d get a photo with me out at a function after a huge win.
Then they’d get signed by a top label shortly after. ”
“Okay, but being photographed shouldn’t make a person flip her lid and want to kill someone.” Something passes over Everly, like a light goes off. Her eyes widen and then narrow, telling me I’m not going to like her next words. “Wait, Linley said you paid for them.”
Shit, this is a total fuck up. I stand from the bed and pull the chair over to the side of her bed so that we are facing each other. But it’s also giving me a chance to gather my thoughts and how I want to answer her questions.
“Blaire and I had an arrangement, yes.” I lead with that again, hoping it will soften the blow.
“You either did you or you didn’t, Linc. I’m not here to play your evasive lawyer games,” she scolds me. “Did you pay to have a woman for an evening out?”
“Money was exchanged as per the terms of the contracts.”
Everly huffs knowing my attorney side is coming out on the defensive.
“What about sex? Was that part of the arrangement?” She snaps. “Did you have sex with them too?”
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
“Look where I am, Linc, and tell me that I don’t deserve every little detail.”
I knew she’d blame me for this.
My heart constricts, thinking of her hating me.
“Well? Don’t stop talking now,” she snaps.
Her feisty side is making an appearance.
The tone and hostility sparks my argumentative side.
I haven’t been questioned like this since I was eighteen and wrecked dad’s car after I stole it one afternoon.
My anger that I usually swallow down and keep hidden is seeping out of the carefully constructed walls I’ve built over the years, and it’s getting the best of me.
“Yes. Is that what you wanted to hear? We fucked,” I bite out before I can stop myself.
“I paid to have sex with some of her models.” I’ve never felt shame like this in my life and I don’t know how to deal with it.
The reasonable part of me knows what she is starting to imply and that shame is pressing down on my chest hard, making my breathing come out heavy.
I’ve always rationalized it by thinking that I’m not the first man to have an arrangement for publicity.
“What I want to hear from you is the whole truth and not the summed-up version that you pick and choose to tell me. I asked you that first time we ran into the psycho and you made it seem very different. You have to see that, right? You may think sex was just a transaction between two parties but, for some women, it has a deeper meaning. Obviously Linley thinks so too.”
“It meant nothing. We went to a function, had our picture taken, networked with businessmen, fucked and money was transferred, then we went our separate ways.”
My breathing is labored at the end of my rant. She wanted all the nitty gritty details so here they are all out in the open.
“What about Blaire?”
Her question throws me for a loop and at first, I don’t understand.
“What about her?”
“Did the two of you have a contract? Or was it all for free, like a two for one special?” How does she know about Blaire and I? “Linley made sure to tell me all the nasty rumors swirling around. Did you pay to have sex with her like all the other prostitutes, or was she free?”
“They aren’t prostitutes,” I begin to defend but she cuts me off. What she’s implying is making it sound dirty.
“You can skin a rabbit a dozen ways but in the end, it still yields the same result. You paid for their time, and it ended in sex. That’s prostitution, Linc.
I may be high on pain meds but I still know the difference.
As someone who has more degrees than me, I’d expect you to know the difference.
Or are you in such great denial that you refuse to see it? ”
“You don’t know shit!” I lose my cool for the first time ever with her.
The things coming out of my mouth are not coming across how I want, and I’m starting to spiral in a dangerous direction I might not ever be able to come back from.
I’ve never been in a courtroom where I’ve lost my cool but here in front of the woman I love more than anything else, I’m starting to see that I’m losing her. I’m losing the biggest case of my life.
For the first time in my life, I’m on the receiving end of being interrogated.
I’ve never answered to anyone except for my parents and now everything I’ve ever done is being questioned.
I hate it. This is why I became an attorney; to have heated arguments and really get to the bone of the matter.
Never did I think I’d be on the other end, especially by someone I love and care about.
“Of course not, because you’ve kept it all to yourself and even now, you’re still keeping things from me,” she yells.
“I didn’t put myself in this hospital bed so I think I have the right to know what your past is so that I can measure if this is all worth it.
” She waves her uninjured arm around the room to prove her point.
She winces and it makes me feel even more like shit because she’s right.
My actions and past are the reason she’s laid up here.
Just tell her.
I’m quiet for two seconds, thinking out my next words when she speaks before I can get my words out. Her face turns angry and it’s the first time I’ve ever witnessed this side of her.
“Get out. You can keep your little secrets, I’m obviously not worth enough to tell the whole truth to, so leave.”
“Wait Everly, I’ll tell you but not like this. Let’s get you home and better, and then we’ll have this talk,” I plead.
“That’s just another stall tactic, Linc. I guess I’m just more invested in this than you are.” She pulls the covers up towards her chest, shutting me out. Building a wall to separate us. Her expressions are closed off and I can’t read what her thoughts are anymore.
My hands rake through my hair, desperately wanting to pin her down until she listens. “Yes, we slept together and no I didn’t pay for it,” I blurt out what she wanted to know, frantic for her to not kick me out like this. Not when we have so much to discuss to clear the air.
“When was the last time you had sex with her?”