Chapter 32
Reese
“So, tell me everything,” Ever demanded over the phone.
“I want to know it all. Wait!” she cried out and held up a hand as I opened my mouth.
“Tell me about the mile-high club. You joined right? I mean, you were on a private plane. You wouldn’t even both have to fit in a bathroom because that would be tight and sort of nasty. Did it have a bed?”
Curling up in the lounge chair on Clay’s balcony, I let Ever finish. She spoke like she texted, a steady stream of consciousness, one thought after the other.
Unlike the first time I confessed something about Clay to her, this time a smile lit my face.
“It does, and we did.” The man had me screaming his name within seconds after hitting cruising altitude.
I’d only flown a handful of times, the last being to see Kellan’s major league debut, but I didn’t know if I could go back to commercial after this.
“There’s that smile. I like it.” Ever kicked back on her sofa, settling into the big cushions. “Everyone is still slightly in shock the parentals said yes. I heard your dad sort of fucked up a little.”
“I’m still mad at him.” The man had almost broken me. “He really needs to relate information better, or at the very least not look like the grim reaper delivering news. By the time I found Mom waiting for me, she asked why I looked so sad.”
“Yeah, heard that too. Just FYI, your dad was told he’s still relegated to the couch.” She chuckled. “So, what’s the plan while you’re there, and how long are you ditching me for?”
“I don’t know.” Clay and I hadn’t really talked about plans, which I wasn’t sure was good or bad. I enjoyed living in the moment because it meant we were together. At some point I was sure this would end, so why rush it?
What if it didn’t have to end?
The thought was nice, but not practical and not likely to actually happen.
We were too different to make this any more than the time-limited relationship it was.
My heart may not accept that right now, but it would have to.
“We didn’t talk much ab—” I paused as Ever scoffed.
“—about it. Then he got a call as soon as we landed. He’s been in his office from the moment we walked in.
” I hadn’t even gotten a tour of the space yet.
To say I felt a little awkward was putting it mildly.
“He’s got to be busy now that he’s back. Beck said Clay was really conscious of not taking Conti-Montgomery calls when he was helping at the winery. The only ones he stopped for were for his stepdad, and from what bro says, that was more for peacekeeping than anything else.”
“I’m not surprised. I don’t think they get along.
” Clay was remarkably tight-lipped about his family.
He hadn’t given over any other information since the day he told me about his father and how he died, but that was only half his story.
I wanted to know more. To know it all. “There’s something big going on at the company; that’s why he had to come back here now. ”
Though his time was up in the Falls, I’d thought about asking him to stay. Yeah, like he could simply up and move to Virginia.
“I wonder what it is? Another deal? Something big and scandalous? Oh, maybe someone’s been screwing their executive assistant, and that person’s wife found out, and now this guy is trying to kill his wife so she doesn’t ruin him, but he winds up killing the assistant instead.”
My mouth dropped open. “Did you listen to this week’s podcast without me? That sounds like the case on the trailer.” All us girls were true crime junkies and usually coordinated listening to our favorite one. Until now apparently.
“Um, what? No, of course not.” I hadn’t known Ever all my life not to know when she was lying. “Anywho, show me around and continue on.”
Standing, I eased my way closer to the glass railing lining the balcony and flipped the camera around so Ever could see what I was seeing. The view from sixty-odd floors in the sky was surreal. As long as I looked out.
Looking down was a whole different story.
I stopped about five feet from the rail.
“You know, Ever, there’s a reason I never stood on those rocks with the rest of you fools when we went hiking.
” Because those suckers were on the edge of the mountain, with a long damn way down, and I had no desire to plummet.
“This is as close as you’re getting right now. ”
She sighed as I pointed the phone toward Central Park, laid out like an enormous green blanket in front of us. “Fine. I’ll make do.” I walked the wraparound balcony, continuing the tour. “It’s amazing. I’m so jealous, you bitch.”
Laughing, I paced the space again, letting her take it all in.
“Okay. Now take me inside. I want to see how rich people live.”
My cousin’s low whistle came through loud and clear as I walked through the floor-to-ceiling glass doors separating the living room from the outside. Though room was a bit of a misnomer. More like floor, because the main living space took up the entire first level of the place.
Yeah, it was a two-story apartment. Who even builds something like that?
“Damn, girl, the view in here’s even better,” Ever quipped as Clay walked into frame. “Hey Clay, you treating my girl good?”
“Hello, Everleigh,” Clay responded and then turned his wicked smile my way. “I think I’ve treated her very well. Wouldn’t you say so, Reese?”
“Ewwww,” Ever groaned. “Now I’m even more jealous. I hate you both.”
I looked Clay’s way and rolled my eyes.
“Okay, gotta go. I’m picking Abby up to go get a princess dress. Marshall, that bastard, bought her a new doll yesterday. Clay,” she yelled, prompting me to point the camera his way again, “your plans better make us money. This kid is going to bankrupt us all.”
“You don’t always have to buy her something to compete.”
Ever and I both stared at him, like he was speaking a foreign language.
“My mistake.” He crossed to the sofa and sat. “Goodbye, Everleigh.”
“Later, kiddies,” she called before disconnecting.
He patted his knee, beckoning me over. “Your cousin is, well…” Pausing, he tilted is head as if searching for the right word, before settling on, “I don’t know exactly.”
“We get that a lot about Ever.” I chuckled and walked over, climbing onto his lap and wrapping my arms around his neck. “How’d your calls go?”
“Later.”
His mouth came down on mine, taking my breath away and my heart along with it. Something in him called to a part of me I’d kept wrapped up tight for years. I thought I had done a better job of protecting my heart, but I hadn’t. It was completely and utterly his.
I was sure I’d regret it at some point, but I didn’t see a way out of it. What’s done was done, and nothing except a happily ever after would save it.
That was the one thing I would not get.
The kiss gentled as he nibbled at the corners of my mouth. I could stay like this forever I feared, but I had questions. Things about Clay I longed to know. “So,” I started as he moved his lips to my neck, “since I have your undivided attention, can I ask you some questions?”
He licked up to my ear before growling, “I’m busy.”
“Later.” I pushed at his chest and scooted off his lap. Maybe, if I wasn’t on top of him, I’d get an answer or two. Though judging by the way he had to readjust his pants I wasn’t sure blood was flowing to anywhere but his cock. I bit my lip just thinking about getting my mouth on him again.
“That look on your face isn’t helping, Little Trouble. Say the word and you can have exactly what you want.” Tucking a piece of hair behind my ear, he tried to distract me, but I was made of sterner stuff.
“Answers first.” Settling against the arm of the couch, I curled my feet under me. “How long have you lived in this apartment?”
“Four years.”
His answer shocked me a bit. It was gorgeous, the parts I’d seen perfectly designed and decorated, but a little cold.
Not exactly lived in. I had picture frames on practically every available surface, little knickknacks Kellan had brought me when he went to new big league cities his rookie year, and enough decorations to open my own home decor store.
Clay, on the other hand, had a couple of pictures and some likely ridiculously expensive art on the walls and in cabinets.
And no mess! He probably had a housekeeper picking things up as soon as he put them down.
“Do you have a housekeeper?” Might as well find out.
“Mrs. Harvey comes in daily to clean and cook.” At the roll of my eyes, he added, “You have a Logan to cook for you.”
“Not all the time.” I occasionally cooked, I just wasn’t as good, so why make myself suffer?
“How much did it cost?” I’d seen those Billionaire Row apartment tour videos on social media, and I was pretty damn sure I was currently sitting in one.
“You don’t want to know.”
Except I did. I needed reminders of why this wouldn’t work and his money was only one of the things that would do it for me. He could buy and sell Henley Falls ten times over for what the monthly fees in this place probably were.
Glutton for punishment that I was, I insisted, “Tell me.” The fact that he physically closed my mouth, which had dropped open at the number, was proof we were from different worlds.
“I can’t even imagine.” I couldn’t even fathom having that much money, let alone having enough to drop on an apartment.
It made me question everything all over again.
What could this man possibly see in me? Other than sex.
That, I sort of understood. We were incendiary together.
Nothing I’d ever experienced before even came close, and I doubt I’d ever have it with anyone else.
I don’t want anyone else. Backgrounds and differences couldn’t come between something so elemental and physical, at least not on a short-term basis.
Is that all we were? Short term?