Chapter 9
Sam
Sensing her eyes on me, I hold the cup containing the ‘joy’ teabag under the boiling water tap.
“What are you doing?” she asks. “Is that boiling water?”
“Boiling, chilled, still, or sparkling,” I reply without turning around.
“Fancy,” she says, and for some reason it makes me smile.
I pause a moment because no matter how many times I’ve looked at her today, taken in her bruises and the cast on her arm, I know I’ll still have to fight to hide the unmitigated anger I feel when I face her again.
“Yeah. Fucking expensive, too,” I state while sliding her tea in front of her.
Stepping back, I lean against the granite countertop and take her in from where she sits on a stool on the other side of the island bench. She’s staring down into her mug, her long blonde hair hanging loosely over her shoulders. An image flashes in front of me of her spread out on my bed, hair fanned out around her, completely naked, looking like she’d been delivered to me directly from heaven. Except she’s no fucking angel, and the bruises covering one side of her face and body are evidence of the other life she lives. The life of a wife.
My molars get another workout—the nine million seven hundred and eighty-three thousandth since Mila came into my life less than a week ago.
Never in all of my thirty-seven years have I reacted this way to a woman, and I’ve no idea what it is about her that has me all twisted up.
I own a half share in a sex club. There are women. Women I fuck. Women I watch fuck. That’s sex—just sex. There’s no emotional connection with them—on my part at least—whatsoever. There are only two women I’ve been emotionally involved with. Amy while I was at Melbourne Uni. We split amicably when she took a job in New York. Then there was Anna, who I briefly dated eleven years ago. Despite thinking there was a connection, when Anna’s irrational jealousy quickly made itself apparent, I stopped seeing, and feeling, all the good things about her and ended it. She stalked me for a while, until in the end, I had some people I know ‘encourage’ her to stay the fuck away from me. Last I heard, she’d had some kind of mental breakdown and gone back to her parents in Germany.
I’ve never been in love, never felt compelled to pick up the phone and call someone just to say, ‘hey’. Other than my family, I’ve never missed anyone. Not their presence, their smile, or their smell. Not until Mila.
“I can feel your eyes on me. What are you thinking?” she looks up and asks.
I feel dizzy, and that makes me feel like a fucking idiot as her grey-blue eyes meet mine. What the fuck is going on here? Her head tilts to the side.
“Sam?” My name sounds like a question.
“I don’t often get angry,” I tell her. “When I can’t find the remote, Melbourne traffic, rude people… they all piss me off, but I wouldn’t say they make me angry. But every time I catch sight of your bruises, I can barely breathe with the anger seething inside of me.”
“Sam…” This time my name’s almost a whisper. She says it with reverence and tears in her eyes.
“What the fuck’s happening here, Mila? Because I’m fucking lost right now.”
“I don’t know. This isn’t how it was supposed to be. None of this has turned out the way I planned.”
I shake my head because she has no fucking idea, and my biggest fear, as the alarm sounds to let me know the gates are opening, is that I’m about to lose her when I’ve only just found her.
I’m out of time. There was so much I wanted to say before Frankie got here, but we fucked instead, so now… now I have to let him explain, because that’s what I promised, and I’ll deal with the fall out as it unfolds.
We stare at each other. She silently wipes a tear from under her bruised eye. I silently watch, fighting with everything in me not to go to her and kiss those tears away.
Again, what the actual fuck is going on with me?
The PIN pad at the front door bleeps as Frankie enters the code, and I listen to his footfalls as he climbs the stairs up to the kitchen. Our gazes meet the instant he hits the room, but Mila stares back down into her tea.
Despite looking his usual debonair self in a black Armani suit and white shirt unbuttoned at the collar, I know by the stubble on his chin, the set of his jaw, the frantic look in his eyes, and the state of his hair he’s undoubtedly dragged his fingers through a thousand times on the drive here that he’s a mess. He’s been a mess since Mila left on Sunday—probably before then—but I only discovered the state he was in once she left us, and he confessed everything to me.
Frankie pauses in the entryway. We silently converse with a shrug from him, and a head shake from me. He’s carrying a bouquet of roses, with paper and a bow wrapped around them.
My miserable as fuck business partner, who despite his good looks, has most of the girls in our employ running in the opposite direction due to the frown permanently worn on his face and the tight set of that perfect fucking jaw , is carrying a large bouquet of roses, which he obviously had to stop somewhere to buy. I can barely contain my smile at the thought of how awkward that exchange must’ve gone. What I wouldn’t give to have been a fly on the wall of that florist.
Without a word, it takes him just four long strides before he reaches Mila. After placing the flowers down on the bench and moving his hands to either side of her face, he tilts it up towards his.
He saw the photo she sent us this morning, but I know first-hand the shock that seeing her bruises in person elicits.
Like me, he keeps his face neutral, but I don’t miss the tick in his jaw.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he says through gritted teeth, and I wonder for a moment if he’s going to cry. I wouldn’t blame him. I wanted to when I first saw her. Now? Now I just want to make some calls and put a contract out on the people who did this to her.
I watch Frankie’s throat move as he swallows down the emotion I know from experience is ratcheting through him, and I wonder how he’s going to handle it.
My Scandinavian genes mean that I’m mostly calm and level-headed. Frankie, on the other hand, is a combination of Irish and Middle Eastern. When he blows, the whole fucking state usually knows about it.
Today, though, he’s different. Today, he has other issues to address before he loses his shit because of Mila’s bruises, and I watch as he reigns in his infamous temper that’s been known to bring grown men, and sometimes women, who misbehave at our club to tears.
With his hands still holding either side of her face, he leans in and kisses the top of Mila’s head, leaving his mouth resting there for a long moment.
When he pulls away, I realise Mila doesn’t look the least bit moved by his rare show of emotion. She looks thoroughly fucking pissed off.
“You done with all the cloak and dagger bullshit? Is your grand entrance performance over? Now, you gonna elaborate on exactly what’s going on? Why I’m here and not at your apartment? Why you ignored my calls?”
Her shoulders are back, and she’s sitting upright on the stool. I can’t help the smirk on my face at the ice-cold glare she’s directing Frankie’s way over her mug of ‘joy’ tea.
Her brows raise and she gives a small shrug in a ‘well?’ gesture, and I wait.
“I-I got you some flowers,” he says quietly, sliding them towards her.
“Thanks. Roses? They must’ve cost a fortune at this time of year.”
“You’re worth it,” he says with a shrug.
In the almost twenty years I’ve known him, I’ve never seen the man so humbled, and as cringy as it is to watch, it’s no less than he fucking deserves.
“Worth a two-hundred-dollar bouquet but not a return call,” Mila states.
I have to press my lips together to stop my grin. This girl has balls of steel and is not backing down, and I am fucking here for it.
“Red, white, and black? They supposed to represent us three? We know the black must be you. Black like your heart. Is the white Sam, because I’m assuming the whorey harlot red is meant for me?”
Frankie goes to the cupboard where I keep my bourbon and pulls out a bottle. Taking a glass from the drawer beneath, he fills it halfway and knocks the lot back in two gulps, then pours himself another.
“I’m good, but you help yourself, mate,” I tell him sarcastically.
“Fuck off,” he replies while wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. Drawing and letting out a long breath, he leans back against the counter next to me.
“Yeah, the red is you, but there’s nothing whorey or harlot-y about it. The red’s for your passion, your will, your strength.”
Mila stares at him, says nothing, gives away less.
Frankie takes another swig of his drink.
“Before I start… First, first I want to apologise. I was lied to. Mislead. I didn’t do my due diligence and it has come back to bite me on the arse massively. Second, I want to make it absolutely clear that Sam had no knowledge of any of what I’m about to tell you until I confessed on Sunday after you left.”
“Am I gonna need something stronger than tea for this?” Mila asks him. “Some of your magic pills, maybe?”
Frankie nods. “Probably.”
“Great. Just when I thought my week couldn’t get any worse. What’ve you got, Sammie?” Her eyes slide to me, and she smiles sweetly, emphasising to Frankie it’s him she’s pissed off with, not me. I return her smile tenfold.
“Wait… Did you two fuck? You did! I can fucking smell it on both of you. You fucked without me?” He turns my way accusingly.
“Mate, by the time you get done telling her?—”
“Shut the fuck up,” he snaps.
“Right. While you two have your domestic, I’m gonna go to the bathroom. Sam, would you pour me something sweet and strong while I’m gone? Thank you.”
We both watch as she slides off the stool and heads towards the hallway where the guest bathroom is.
“I don’t fucking believe you.” Frankie shakes his head.
“What don’t you believe?” I step away from him. “You asked me not to tell her what’s gone on. You didn’t ask me not to?—”
“Fuck her?” he interrupts.
I move around to the other side of the island and sit on the stool next to Mila’s. I have a feeling she might need me close once Frankie reveals his sordid little secret. Or she might just be done with both of us because of it.
“It wasn’t… That’s not what…” I struggle to find the right words to describe exactly what it was that happened between Mila and me earlier. It wasn’t fucking—it was more than that—but I’m not about to explain that to this dickhead.
“What? What was or wasn’t it?”
“How about you mind your own fucking business and get on with telling her what it is you’ve got to tell her.”
“So, is that how this is gonna go? She fucks me off out of it, and you and her skip off into the sunset?”
My head is starting to ache, the contentment from my earlier orgasm rapidly evaporating as I listen to Frankie’s temper tantrum. Raking my fingers through my hair, I press my fingertips into my scalp and attempt to squeeze away the tension.
“Frank, can we just get this done so we both know where we stand before we start blueing about it?”
He rubs his palm over his jaw. “I thought you were making her a drink,” he says, the subject changing like his mood.
“You make it. It’s the least you can do.”
“Fuck off,” he repeats his favourite phrase.