Chapter 13 #2
She tilted her head, jaw dropped dramatically. “Well, I never. First a laugh, then a joke.”
I scowled, but it was weak. I was too fixated on the way that mock gasp had turned into a grin. The expression lit up her whole face. It lit up the whole room.
Winona spread a spoonful of caviar on a chip. “I’m guessing you don’t normally eat dinner.” She was oblivious to her effect on me. And right on the money again. “Lord knows there’s no way you cook.”
“I’ve cooked.”
“This decade?”
“Now who’s funny?”
She took a bite. “Were you born rich, Mitchell?”
I thought about my childhood, in the suburbs of Seattle, following my older brothers around. Being picked up and swung around by Mom. The whole mood changing when Dad got home.
“No,” I said. “Just a normal middle-class American childhood.” Sort of. “You?”
The question was meant to annoy her, but she shrugged, flicking her spoon around.
“Born without a dime. Shown how dirty dimes can be. Now I’ve got my own, but you wouldn’t know it looking at me.
Or my house.” She said that last part more quietly, like she’d wanted to start out snarky but accidentally walked into something more personal.
“Is your house the shame of the neighborhood?” I said it rudely, but it was always us. My father spent what money he earned on things people could see: his suits, his car. Never us. It was Mom who mowed the lawn and fixed the broken shingles.
Winona’s nostrils flared just slightly. Had I hit a nerve? Had she spent too much time caretaking someone and building her business? Was looking after her place a nagging item on her to-do list?
“I’ve got better things to do than put on a display,” Winona said, waving her spoon around at my house’s interior.
It would make things far worse if I told her I had nothing to do with buying or maintaining this place.
When you reached a certain point, it all just got taken care of.
And the people who took care of it got taken care of.
I only ever saw the bottom line, and personally, I didn’t even care about that.
She seemed to sense I was thinking about the obnoxious facts of my wealth, because when she plucked another cracker from the bowl, she said, “Did you always want to be a billionaire, Mr. Harrington?”
So she’d looked me up. Of course, she had. Or Cassandra told her.
I clicked my teeth. “You really get right to the point, don’t you?”
Winona opened up another jar. “Do you prefer small talk?” She didn’t wait for me to answer. “I’m just killing time until my clothes are dry. You going to eat?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Eat something, Mitchell.”
I huffed a moment, then reached for a jar, not bothering to read it before opening the lid and scooping a chip into it. I stuffed it in my mouth, not taking my eyes off Winona.
“No, I never planned on having money.” At least not this much. It was obscene how much had come. My money made money at this point for doing fucking nothing, no matter how much I handed away.
I took another bite of the chip and dip, still holding the jar in my hand. Baba Ghanoush. “Why did you jump in the pool, Winona?” The question was meant to steer her from money talk. But I also very much wanted to know. “Since we’re not doing small talk.”
“Why did you?”
Touché.
I looked out to the still surface of the water, where you’d never guess what had happened only a short time earlier. “This book is… messing with my head.”
She looked skeptical. Like she knew it wasn’t only that. But she let it go for the moment. “What’s it about?”
“I don’t like talking about it.”
“All the more reason to tell me.”
I gripped the jar in my hand a little too hard. “It’s about a man lost at sea.” I gritted out, feeling stupid.
“Is that a metaphor?”
Yes, and transparent as fuck, apparently. She’d poked a hole right into my biggest insecurity. That my writing was actually trash, and I was only pretending to be a novelist. That I was an indulgent, privileged asshole who everyone would see right through.
She set the spoon she’d been holding down. “I meant what I said out there. If you hate it, maybe you should write something different. Or not write at all. Do you hate it?”
The answer danced across my mind. Yes. No. I don’t know. “It’s okay.”
“What would you write if it wasn’t this? If no one cared?”
I thought about that for a moment. “Something… fun,” I decided. “A second-world fantasy. Or sci-fi. One of those big fat tomes I used to read as a teenager.”
There was a smile on her lips.
My heart felt tender, like a bruise.
“Are you going to send a copy to your father when you publish it?”
I set the jar down. It clinked hard on the counter. She hadn’t meant it like a taunt. I could see by her reaction. But I still couldn’t stop the retort. “I don’t know, Winona.” The words are tight. “Why won’t you tell me who the man in Newfoundland was?”
I knew I’d gone too far. Her expression shifted, a mask coming down. “You need help.”
“Thank you for your insight.”
Her face flamed. She set the jar down. “Spare me the bullshit, Harrington. You jump in a pool and float there, making me think you’re fucking dead.
Normal people don’t do that.” Winona stood up so quickly, her stool toppled.
She stalked past me to the cupboard under the sink.
“And this?” She crouched down, reaching under the basin and pulling out a mangled section of pipe.
A shard of plastic splintered into a point, a metal tie on it twisted to the side.
She shook the pipe at me, getting up in my face. “Why did you do this, Mitchell?”
I didn’t bother lying. “To get you back here.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit.” Winona shook the thing again, nearly slicing me in the process. “You’re full of shit, Harrington. You—” she cut herself off, dropping the pipe.
My stomach plummeted as she gripped her wrist, a line of dark blood blooming on her palm. I grasped her injured hand in mine, eyes boring down on the cut. I couldn’t see how deep it was. I guided her over to the sink, turning on the tap.
“Don’t!” she exclaimed. “It’s going to go everywhere.”
Water gushed out around our ankles. “Doesn’t matter.” I held her hand under the stream.
She hissed in pain, but reached over and snapped the tap off.
I inspected the cut as the blood returned. It didn’t look too deep. The anxiety spiking my heart rate ebbed just a tiny bit. “I don’t think you’ll need stitches.”
Still, I’d done this.
“I’m fine,” Winona said, though she trembled slightly as she stared at the line of red returning to her skin. “I don’t love blood.”
I ripped a towel from a drawer and pressed it onto her palm. Idiot. Fucking asshole.
“Don’t look,” I said, the words gravel. “Look at me.”
I dipped my chin to find her gaze. But she wouldn’t look at me. She was staring at her hand. “Winona,” I urged.
I brought the hand not holding the towel to her jaw, gently guiding her gaze back to me.
That was a mistake. The moment her eyes locked on mine, fire ignited my insides. Not now.
Not ever.
“You’re okay,” I husked, lowering my hand. Trying to regain some semblance of control. I only made it as far as her clavicle. The warm softness of her skin against my fingers was nearly unbearable. “I just need to hold this here until the bleeding stops,” I said.
Winona swallowed, her throat bobbing. I couldn’t help it; my hand inched upward, my thumb on the pale pulsing softness at the side of her throat. My fingers grazed that mole.
“For how long?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Two minutes. More or less.”
Her pupils flared. She looked quickly toward her hand.
“Winona.”
“Mmm.”
“What did I say about looking at me?”
I drew my hand up until my palm was on her throat, my fingers controlling her jaw.
I once again guided her face back toward me.
When her eyes met mine, every promise I made to myself succumbed to the magma coursing through my veins.
I forgot all rational thought. All the control I said I would hang onto.
Because fuck she was beautiful. Even more so like this.
So vulnerable. So sweet and innocent, with her lips parting for me, that pin-up hair so soft as I slid my hand up her scalp, gripping enough to tip her face back for me.
My stomach tightened, my cock throbbing to fullness.
Winona sucked in a breath, her eyes fluttering. She could feel me. And she wasn’t kneeing me in the balls. The opposite. Her free hand tangled itself in my shirt, and she pulled me closer, grinding herself against my thigh.
I nearly choked, shifting to accommodate her.
She made that half-gasp, half-moan again, shuddering as she dropped onto the hard length of my leg.
“That sound you make,” I rasped, raising my knee to give her more pressure. “It fucking kills me.”
“Mitchell—” she breathed, as if searching for an anchor; a foothold.
A reason.
I tipped my head down, inhaling the scent of my shampoo and soap all over her. The feeling of her hot breath on my lips was fucking torture. I knew, if I kissed her, it was all fucking over.
But in that moment, I didn’t give a fuck about anything else. I leaned down, our lips a hairsbreadth apart.
And an electronic chime sounded, obnoxiously loud.
“Fuck,” I breathed.
Winona pulled away from me, the melted look of her sharpening back into something solid.
Something horrified.
The dryer. Her clothes.
The only reason she was staying.
She backed away, all the color drained from her face.
“Hey, Winona,” I said. My voice was low. Calm. “I didn’t mean—”
But she just shook her head.
I nodded. “Let me get those.”
“No,” she said quickly. “I’m fine.” She strode past me, into the laundry room, then upstairs with her clothes, leaving me gripping the counter behind me.
I dropped my head. Way to fucking go, asshole.