Chapter Ten #3
I tuck myself away, grab a tissue from the table off to the side, and wipe away any evidence of what we’d just done. Anybody who comes in will be able to smell the sex in the air. But I don’t care right now. Not when she’s on the verge of a full-blown panic attack.
“Winter,” I begin again, turning to face her.
Her face is still cupped in her hands, hiding from the reality of the situation. “I’m a horrible person. If Hell really does exist, I’m going there. Oh my God—”
I pull her hands away from her face. “Look at me,” I demand, giving her no other option. “I need you to look at me, Winter.”
She swallows, lets out a shallow breath, and then slowly lifts her gaze to meet mine. Guilt is weighing on her face as her nostrils twitch and her eyes rapidly blink to fend off the tears building behind them.
When I know she won’t look away or shut down, I say, “I’m going to tell you something, and I need you to listen and repeat it to nobody. Do you understand?”
Confused, she nods slowly.
“Good girl,” I praise, running the pad of my thumb against her bottom lip and feeling a shaky breath brush against the pad. “Emaly and I are not together.”
Her eyes widen. “W-what?”
“We’re married,” I confirm, only making her confusion grow. “But we’re not together…like that. It’s complicated, and not fully my story to tell. But I am free to do what and who I please. And that information needs to stay between us for obvious reasons.”
Her silence is deafening, and I can tell she needs time to process. Understandable, given my reputation. Given everything she’s ever read about me, the truth probably isn’t easy to accept.
“So you’re not a horrible person,” I reassure her firmly. A small smile tilts my lips. “And if you do go to Hell, it won’t be because you let a married man make you come.”
A new wave of heat covers her face, and I can’t help but chuckle to myself over the embarrassment resting there.
An impatient fist bangs on the door, startling her. Whether she means to or not, she hides behind me to mask herself from anybody seeing who’s in here with me.
And the primal part of me wants nothing more than to protect her.
“I need to go out there before they barge in,” I tell her, wanting to do anything but.
“I’ll make sure the coast is clear for you to sneak out.
Wait at least thirty seconds after you stop hearing us before you leave the room.
Go to the diner across the street and wait for me. ”
Winter stands taller. “I’m not—”
“Emaly isn’t going to be able to drive you home because she’s on her way to the airport,” I explain. “Unless you want to call someone else, let me get this over with and then come to you.”
I can tell she wants to argue. To tell me no.
But her curiosity wins her over. “Fine. But only because I have questions.”
I smirk. “I have no doubt, sweetheart.”
Her jaw grinds. “It’s Winter.”
My grin widens, and I shake my head. “I know what you look like when you come. You’re not just Winter to me.”
*
I don’t expect her to be there when I show up an hour and a half later. I figured she would have gone right home or maybe waited for twenty minutes before leaving a note with the waitstaff that said “fuck off” on it.
But there she is.
Sitting by herself in a corner booth, staring out the window with a faraway expression on her face. She looks contemplative and lost, her brows pinched together and her thumbnail in her mouth.
“You’ll ruin the polish,” I say, sliding into the booth across from her. It looks like she’s already chipped at the purple on the nail she’s withdrawing from her mouth as she takes me in. Her eyes slowly go from me down to her hand, as if she hadn’t realized what she was doing.
When they lift back up, they take in my green T-shirt with the shelter’s logo on the breast pocket, then rise to the backward baseball cap covering my short hair, and the sunglasses I have yet to slide off.
“Does that getup usually work for you?” she questions with a frown. “Wearing sunglasses inside doesn’t make you look inconspicuous. It just makes you look douchey.”
I snort at her bluntness, glad that her orgasm hasn’t melted her brain the way it did mine. I take off the glasses and toss them onto the table with an amused smile. “Better?”
Her throat bobs as she glances at me, but averts her gaze quickly to the glass of water she’s hardly touched.
She can’t look me in the eye.
“Why purple?” I ask, gesturing toward her nails. It’s a pastel shade that reminds me of Easter. “You like bright colors.”
Her eyes go down to her fingernails. “My world needs a little color in it,” she replies, her brows furrowing again in thought before she loosens a sigh and turns back to the window.
She doesn’t explain any further, but I don’t need her to. My world may as well play out in black and white. Watching it in Technicolor is a privilege that not everybody has. No amount of money in the world could afford me to forget about my past and the things I’ve done to get where I am.
So, I get it.
“Maybe I need a better favorite color,” I say with a limp shrug. “But black is all too fitting.”
I can tell she wants to ask me why when her eyes peer up through her lashes at me, but she refrains from speaking her curiosity. I go easy on her and say what she needs to hear instead.
“What we did isn’t the end of the world,” I tell her nonchalantly. “I didn’t even see you naked. I didn’t even get to touch a tit.”
Her whole face blossoms with heat. “Keep your voice down,” she hisses, glaring at me.
“It may not be a big deal to you, but it is for me. I was hired to help you have a better online presence after your affairs came to light. What we did crossed a huge line. I’m supposed to make sure your name isn’t being associated with all of that negative press, not—”
“Let me pin you against a wall and make you come?” I finish for her.
Her eyes dart somewhere behind me, probably checking to make sure none of the employees are listening. “Stop saying it so loudly. I cannot believe I let you do…that.”
I tilt my head to study her. “Give you an orgasm? Most women would thank me for that experience.”
Her nostrils flare in pure frustration. “I am not most women. You’re married, for crying out loud!”
“Ah.” I nod slowly. “Yes. That.”
“That.” She scoffs, rubbing her temples. I hear her mutter a countdown from five under her breath. Then she lowers her hand to her lap. “It’s a big deal, Tommy.”
“I told you I don’t want to be called—”
“Does it look like I care what you prefer being called?” she cuts me off coolly. Her shoulders are rigid as she turns to the window, closes her eyes, and calms herself. “I don’t like being called pet names, but you still do it. So you can suck it up, buttercup.”
I hide my wavering smile the best I can by the time her attention is back on me. “I told you that my marriage is not what it seems.”
She shakes her head. “You could just be saying that to get what you want.”
One of my eyebrows arches. “And what is it you think I want?”
Her cheeks grow darker as she squirms. “It seems pretty obvious to me. You want…” Her tongue drags across her bottom lip as she gestures between us. “You want to have—”
“Sex?” I finish for her. “It isn’t a bad word.”
Before she can reply, a middle-aged waitress comes over with a less than amused look on her face. “Do you want anything?” she asks me, holding a notepad. “You’ve been keeping this one waiting long enough. I thought for sure she’d been stood up.”
From the corner of my eye, I see Winter flinch.
The waitress’s eyes narrow on me, and something resembling familiarity fills them as she takes me in. “Do I know you from somewhere?”
I’m not recognized as often in Connecticut as I was in Pennsylvania, but thanks to the tabloids blasting my photos everywhere for the past two months, it’s become a common occurrence.
Especially among the population of Fairbanks that enjoys online fodder and pop culture gossip.
This woman definitely indulges in TMZ articles in between customers.
“I doubt it,” Winter answers for me. “He just got out of prison yesterday. That’s why he was late. He’s a bit out of sorts in the real world.”
I snort at the explanation that she makes, and the waitress’s eyes widen. Her examination of me becomes more judgmental, going to my arms, then my face, before turning to Winter.
“You’re far too pretty to be wound up in whatever mess he’s gotten himself into,” she chides to the blonde across from me. “I’d leave while you still can.”
Winter forces a smile. “I will certainly do my best.”
I chime in with, “I’ll take a Coke and a menu…” My eyes scan her nametag. “Linda. And I’d appreciate it if you could take it easy on the advice. I’m trying to get laid here.”
Winter makes a choked noise, and Linda narrows her eyes before walking off to, hopefully, get me a soda and a menu.
“Seriously?” Winter quips.
I drape an arm over the back of the booth. “I could have said worse. And prison? Really? That’s going to be a hell of a headline. I look forward to seeing what your boss thinks of that contribution to my reputation when it comes out as front-page news.”
She rolls her eyes. “Nobody recognizes you.”
All I do is hum. Unlike her, I know when I’m seen. People aren’t as subtle as they think. Within the next thirty minutes, Linda is going to be pointing her phone in our direction and emailing TMZ for an exclusive.
We fall quiet, and she shifts again.
I lean forward and drop my voice. “Do you regret doing it? Or do you regret that it made you feel good?”
Her body freezes at the question, her eyes remaining on the table in front of her as she sucks in a long breath.
I soak in the silence before filling it. “Guilt can be a bitch when you let it eat you alive. I’ve learned a long time ago that isn’t the way to live.”
When she picks her eyes up, I can’t read what’s behind the glaze in them. “The difference is that you clearly don’t care who it can hurt.”