I don’t offer a bargain.
I just stand there, stripped down, waiting for her choice.
Because that’s what love is.
Not a contract.
Not a clause.
A choice.
Every day.
Chapter 50 - Lucy
It has been just over a week since I came back to Chicago. Just over a week since I stepped off the plane and came face to face with Julian. And a day since Julian told me he is having his lawyer dissolve our contract and asked me to choose him.
Our entire relationship has been playing on a loop in my mind. Some moments, so beautiful, a smile makes its way onto my face, and some so brutal I flinch.
It's late, and even though I am exhausted, I can't sleep. So I pour myself a glass of wine and sit in the formal living room staring out at the twinkling city below me, hoping to wind down enough that sleep will come easier.
I am enjoying my first sip when a sound I have never heard before comes from the kitchen. It takes me a moment to process what it is, and that's because the internal line almost never rings.
It’s designed that way.
So, when the phone on the kitchen wall rings at eight forty-three in the evening, something cold slides down my spine before I even look up.
Julian moves across the room and into the kitchen with intent and answers on the fifth ring.
The penthouse is quiet, so I hear his voice across the space.
“Yes.”
His voice is neutral. The voice he uses when he’s assessing risk.
There’s a pause.
Then the smallest shift in his tone. “I see,” he says.
I don’t ask who it is, I already know.
Security doesn’t call about deliveries.
Security calls when someone is pushing where they shouldn’t.
I can hear the tension in his voice when he says, “Send him up.”
My pulse spikes.
Him.
My hands are shaking, so I put the glass of wine down and sit up, rubbing my palms on the tops of my legs.
Julian appears, and for a second, I expect an excuse.
But there is a new kind of fear in his eyes when he says, “Go to the bedroom.”
I stare at him.Is he serious?
