“Since I was eighteen.”
“How old are you now?”
“How old are you?” he asked, turning my question around on me. Was it rude to ask a man his age? Because I’d heard it was for a woman, although I didn’t mind.
“I just turned twenty-nine. On the fifteenth.”
“Of this month?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Wasn’t the fifteenth the first day you came here? The day I mistook you for—”
“A whore?” I blurted, unable to stop the words from leaving my mouth. “Yeah, it was.”
“Sorry about that.” His shoulders tensed with the apology.
“It’s fine. I got over it.”
I tried to play off the memory as no big deal, but it’d been a huge deal at the time. I’d contemplated not taking the job because I didn’t want to work with Jackson. But I’d been desperate. Still was, which was why I was thankful he decided to keep me around.
“I thought Lance had asked you to come so I could—”
I tapped his shoulder, needing him to stop. “I know the whole story. Lance filled me in before I left that day.”
“He did?”
“He explained the mishap and assured me it’d never happen again.”
Jackson turned on his side and raised himself up, resting on his arm. His movement forced me back a step.
“What did he say exactly?” His gaze briefly roved over me.
“He told me you had too much energy, and because you can only train for so long, you needed another outlet, sex with hookers being the optimal choice.”
“They weren’t hookers. They were fans.”
“Did you pay them?”
“No,” he answered, seemingly offended. Our conversation spiked a wave of jealousy to burst to life inside me. Picturing him with other women didn’t sit well with me, and despite my irrational reaction, the ugly beast built and built the longer we discussed the topic. “Why do you care?” A smirk twisted the corner of his mouth, and I wanted to smack it off him.
“I don’t,” I lied.
“Good.” He assessed me for a moment. “That day was the last time anyone visited me.”
“Visited you?” I balked. “That’s a polite way of saying it. But that’s not true. A brunette showed up a few days later. The one that ran out of here clutching her shirt.”
He positioned himself back on his stomach, relaxing his arms over the edges of the table for me to work on. I went to work unknotting his muscles.
“I told her to leave. I never fucked her.”
“Had you ever had sex with her before?”Why am I torturing myself?
“A few times. But I wasn’t feeling it that day.”
“Oh.”
“No one’s been here since,” he added, his declaration short and to the point.
