21. Renée
21
RENéE
I ended the voicemail asking C.T. to call me on my personal line. I didn’t want what I had to say to go through my assistant or the switchboard at HQ. No one needed to know anything about this or what I had to discuss with C.T.
No. Not C.T. Cooper. Cooper Thorne.
The name fit him perfectly. The articles I read on him did not. I’d spent all afternoon and most of the next day reading whatever I could find online about the minor league ballplayer who had gotten blacklisted from the game because of his temper. He’d assaulted an umpire and was fined.
The umpire, however, had chosen not to press charges, which told me that there were extenuating circumstances. Not that I was excusing violence of any kind. I wasn’t. I hated it. Violence was so abhorrent to me that I genuinely didn’t understand people who were driven to that level of desperation.
C.T.—Cooper—didn’t seem to me to have that capacity. Not when he’d been so tender, even when he’d tied me to the bed. Where I had expected things to get darker, they had still been within a comfortable realm for me sexually. He’d even made it a point to have me make up a silly safe word to use.
Of course, I hadn’t because I loved everything he had done to me.
What I wanted before I made any kind of decision about Cooper was to hear his side of the story. If he made excuses or brushed it aside, I would know that the man I had met on Bali was not who he presented to me. That man was a myth, a character, he’d portrayed for me. I needed to know this for my own peace of mind.
Unless and until I knew otherwise, I was stuck in this horrible cycle of missing him, then chastising myself for knowing exactly what I’d signed up for. Cooper hadn’t done anything but what he’d contracted to do. He also knew the score going in and hadn’t tried to contact me in the aftermath. Not once.
Maybe that’s what upset me the most.
He knew me and he didn’t care.
And that hurt.
Not that I wanted him to like me only because of my fame and fortune.
I scrubbed my hands down my face. Ugh, I was so confused. I hadn’t been able to concentrate on anything business related.
If I didn’t talk to Cooper soon and clear the air, I was going to be useless. And I had lecture dates coming up.
Lots of them.
I was getting ready to go on a tour with The Palmer Method seminars and I needed to focus my energies to making each of the dates a success. My clients deserved me at my best. Not some half-assed presentation that made them feel as if I called the material in. That wasn’t right. Not on any level.
So, I had to hash it out with Cooper in order to move on. Even if that wasn’t how the app worked. Even if that wasn’t what either of us had signed up for.
As I sat watching the water, I started to write down exactly what it was that I’d gotten out of the weekend. Maybe if I analyzed it as I did with other topics using my self-named method, I might find some insight to my disordered thinking.
Top of the list: amazing sex.
Yes, it was the most freeing and honest experience of my life. I held nothing back for the first time ever. Was it because I believed my identity was anonymous? Hmm, hard question. Did it matter? I knew going in that I had a fifty-fifty chance at best that I’d be recognized. When he mentioned nothing for the entire time, I thought I was safe. Being safe made me open up in ways I never had before. So, yes. I was honest in my lovemaking. Nothing to feel ashamed about for being honest. No matter if he hadn’t felt the same.
I blew out a breath and went to item two and wrote: being myself.
Maybe that needed to be at the top of the list. The fact I got to be me—not the name brand—but the me inside my skin was major. It tied to the amazing sex. If I hadn’t been free to be me, then the sex might not have been so over the top.
Being an industry leader, I have a hard time with my public persona. I’m too conscious about how I’m perceived by the masses to ever do anything to jeopardize that image. Not that the pics that were shown of me and Cooper were anything to be ashamed about. Looking at them from a purely outside view they showed two people shopping hand in hand, enjoying the day. Pretty wholesome and beautiful. Nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed over.
The fact that we both knew why we were on Bali was where the guilt came in.
But should it?
Yes, I’d pretty much paid for sex. I mean, what else did I call it since my money paid for the entire trip—including his portion of the flight and accommodations? However, would it be any different if our roles were reversed? Just because it’s more acceptable for the man to pay, does it make it more correct?
I’d like to think no. It doesn’t matter. We broke no laws. We didn’t do anything too crazy—other than the beach sex. But hell, people have been having sex on the beach for a long damn time. I mean, there was even a drink named after the activity.
Telling my people to let it alone and let it spin was the correct decision. I had nothing to apologize for. If the public expected me to be a virgin, they were way off base on what the human condition entailed.
I attempted to wrestle my focus back into place and stared at the paper that had very little writing on it.
Item three: tranquility.
Even during our sex in the rawest form, I had a center of tranquility about me. I don’t know if it was because of the setting or the person I shared the experience with, but I felt right and centered for the first time in a long while.
Now, if I only had those three things that I’d gained out of the weekend, they were well worth the trip and the blow up of me on social media and tabloids.
My phone rang and I looked down at the screen. Cooper’s name shown on the top. My stomach pitched and rolled, and I knew a fright as big as my first time going out on that stage to lead my seminar.
I picked up the phone and said hello as my heart beat like thunder.