Chapter 13
Anna
I kissed him back.
That’s the part I can’t get around. He closed the distance, yes. He said I was driving him mad, yes. But when his mouth found mine against the wall with the Miami night pressing in around us and the bass from the gala still pulsing through the brick, I kissed him back.
My hands found his shoulders and I pulled him into me. His mouth opened against mine and everything after that was heat. Tongue met tongue, and an involuntary sound broke from deep in my chest.
His hands moved from my waist to my hips and pulled me closer.
My back met the brick and he pressed into me, all of him, solid and warm and trembling in a way that didn't match how sure his hands were.
I could feel his heartbeat through his chest, rapid, heavy, tangled up with mine until I couldn't separate them.
His teeth caught my lower lip and I gasped. My fingers tightened on his shoulders and I pulled him deeper.
It went from desperate to reckless, all heat and teeth and his breath ragged against mine, and I felt it everywhere.
In my fingertips, in my spine, in the base of my throat where my pulse had climbed so high I could taste it.
The city, the music, the noise of everything I carried with me went distant and small, and all that was left was his mouth on mine and my hands pulling him closer. Just this.
Then common sense showed up. Late, as usual, but it showed up.
Every reason I shouldn’t be doing this arrived at once. He was my boss. I was his assistant. I’d been in Miami for three months and I was broke and broken and carrying baggage that could fill a cargo plane.
The last time I let a powerful man get close to me, he took apart my entire life and smiled while he did it.
I wasn’t built for this. I wasn’t ready for this.
I pulled away. His hand followed, fingers grazing my hip, reaching, and I stepped back before he could hold on.
"Don’t." I held up my hand between us. "Just don’t."
He stood there with his arm still out, his fingers in the space where my body had been a second ago. His breathing was ragged. His tie was crooked from where I'd grabbed it and twisted it, and there was a smear of my lipstick on his mouth.
His hand lowered. Slow. His eyes gleaming with confusion, then acceptance.
Whatever he was about to say would make this real and I needed it to not be real. I needed it to be something I could fold up and put away and never look at again, the way I’d put away a lot of things, because that was how I survived.
Something moved in the shadows past the valet lights. A shape. A person. I blinked and it was gone. My skin prickled. Paranoia, or someone really there—I couldn’t tell.
The car ride home was three feet of leather seat and silence so heavy it had its own gravitational pull.
The Miami night slid past the windows in streaks of neon and palm trees and I stared at the glass and saw his reflection more than I saw the city.
His gloved hands resting on his thighs. His posture rigid.
His breathing controlled in that way I recognized now.
There was a smudge of my lipstick on the corner of his mouth. He either hadn’t noticed or hadn’t wiped it away and I didn’t know which possibility was worse. Both made my heart ache, asking for permission to do things I wasn’t ready for.
The driver asked me for directions and pulled up to Miley’s building. The car stopped.
"Goodnight," I said.
"Goodnight." The word sounded wrong in his accent. Too formal. Like he was reading it off a card instead of saying it to the woman he’d just kissed against a wall.
I got out. Miley was waiting at the door. Jace’s gaze held mine, and this time, it was unreadable.
The door closed and the car pulled away. I stood on the sidewalk and watched the taillights disappear. I could still feel his mouth on mine, and I knew I was in serious trouble.
Miley took one look at my face and grabbed my arm, and she pulled me inside before I’d finished crossing the threshold.
"Tell me everything." She had me on the couch before I’d kicked off my shoes. "All of it. Right now."
"Let me change first."
"Change later." She followed me to the bedroom anyway and was sitting on the bed with her legs crossed before I’d opened the closet door. "Talk."
I took off the blue dress, then hung it carefully on the back of the door because it cost more than anything I’d ever worn, and I stood there for a second with my hand on the fabric before I made myself walk away.
I put on pajamas. Miley was already vibrating with excitement.
"Okay, fine. We kissed." I said it with my back to her, pulling a t-shirt over my head.
The sound that came from behind me was muffled by a pillow. When I turned around she was clutching it to her face, eyes huge over the edge.
"ANNA!" She fell back on the mattress and stared at the ceiling. "This is the greatest night of my life and it didn’t even happen to me."
"I can’t fall for him, Miley."
She sat up so fast I thought she’d pull something. "The word love just came out of your mouth."
"I said fall. Not love."
"Same neighborhood. Adjacent zip codes." She pointed at me. "Also, Jace Hunter is extremely hot and I fully support whatever is happening. If I had handsome men throwing necklaces and dresses at me, I wouldn’t be sitting here in my pajamas questioning it. I would be leaning in."
"It’s not that simple."
"It is that simple. You like him. He likes you. This is not complicated, Anna. This is like a movie."
"It’s not a movie. He’s a billionaire CEO with a germ phobia and I’m his assistant who can’t afford new shoes. The gap between us is not a gap, Miley. It’s a canyon. Men like him exist in magazines and on screens. They don’t date women like me."
"Women like you? You mean beautiful, smart, talented women who happen to be temporarily broke? That’s not a category that disqualifies you from being kissed or being loved.
Also, plenty of rich guys date normal people.
Singers, actors, all the time. Look at Tobias Hart.
The man dates regular women and he’s one of the most famous people on the planet.
And by all accounts he’s genuinely a good person. "
I sat on the bed, fingers closing around the edge of the mattress beside me.
Miley was still going. "I mean, his last girlfriend was a teacher or something, and he was totally normal about it, no drama, no…"
"He’s not a good person."
Miley stopped.
"Tobias Hart." My voice was stronger, bottled with something I’d never been allowed to say.
"He’s not a good person. It’s all fake. Every interview, every red carpet smile, every charity appearance. All of it. Lies."
"How would you know that?"
"Because he’s my ex!"
Miley’s mouth opened. Nothing came out. I’d never seen that happen. I didn’t think it was physically possible for Miley Torres to run out of words. She sat there on my bed staring at me and the quiet lasted long enough for me to hear the neighbor’s TV through the wall.
"Tobias Hart," I continued. "Fourteen months. In secret, because he wanted it that way. Because keeping me hidden meant keeping me controlled and I didn’t see that until it was too late."
"In secret," Miley repeated, like she was testing the words to see if they'd make more sense coming out of her own mouth. They didn't. I watched them land and break apart on her face.
"He said it was to protect me. The paparazzi, his fans, all of it. He made it sound like a favor." I pulled my knees up and pressed my arms around them. "And I believed him because I was in love with him and he was very, very good at making his choices sound like gifts."
Miley hadn't moved. Her eyes were locked on me.
"It started small. He didn't like me going out without telling him where. Then he didn't like certain friends. Then he didn't like me working late because he said the people at the gallery were a bad influence." I stared at the candle on the nightstand. The flame held steady. My hands didn't.
"He never yelled. That's what made it so hard to see. He'd just get quiet. Disappointed. And I'd feel like I'd done something wrong, so I'd fix it. I'd cancel plans. I'd stop returning calls. I'd shrink a little more each time and tell myself it was compromise."
"Anna." Miley's voice was barely above a whisper.
"By the time I realized what was happening, I didn't have anyone left to tell. He'd cut every line without me noticing."
Miley's hand found mine. She didn't squeeze. She just held it there, steady, and waited.
"Then he hit someone with his car."
The room went very still.
"A woman named Diane. A kindergarten teacher.
She was crossing the street on a Tuesday night and Tobias was drunk behind the wheel.
" My voice sounded far away, like it was coming from the other side of a window.
"She survived. Barely. His family's lawyers made it disappear.
Money, NDAs, pressure. All of it gone before sunrise. "
"Oh my God."
"I found out by accident. A file on his desk I wasn't supposed to see." I swallowed hard. "I told him I was going to the police."
Miley's grip on my hand tightened.
"And then he destroyed me."
I told her the rest. Not all of it in full sentences.
Some of it came out in pieces, fragments that didn't connect cleanly because that's how it lived in my head.
The phone calls to every gallery, every client, every contact I'd spent years building.
Blacklisted overnight. My name pulled from exhibitions I'd been invited to.
My portfolio scrubbed from websites. Messages filling my phone from people who suddenly couldn't work with me.
Sorry, it's just not a good fit anymore.
The same sentence, over and over, from people who'd hung my photographs on their walls a month earlier.
The friends who chose his side because his side came with money and access and mine came with nothing.