“I don’t mean that way,” he said, probably going over in his head what he’d said and realized how it sounded. He crossed the sill. “She’s truly my Chi. I never expected to like her so much and care about her.”
“You can’t care that much if you’re sleeping with someone else behind her back, especially a club girl.Fia, in particular.” Whose head Meggie wanted.
“Would it be better if I’d slept with her?”
“Her?” Meggie considered the bowl of fruit. She only saw mangos and bananas, so she’d have to empty the bowl and throughitat his head. “Rebel?”
“She isn’t ready for that. I didn’t know what to do.”
The words pulled her away from her contemplation and she turned toward him again. “Breaking up with her is the thing to do.”
He flinched. “Please don’t make me do that. Please? I won’t tell Reb what I did. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her?”
Did Kaia haveanysurvival instincts?
“I won’t sleep with Fia again. I’ll find another girl until Rebel’s ready.”
Nope, none at all.
The heat of anger swept through Meggie and she swore she’d burst into flames.
“I can only jerk off so many times,” he said.
Meggie frowned.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” he muttered.
“You think?”
Rocking on his heels, he clenched his jaw, a little lost and very despondent.
Gritting her teeth, Meggie pointed to the stool next to her. “Sit down.”
“Are you going to stab me?” He looked over her shoulder to the block of knives not far away.
She jabbed her finger at the chair again. “Sit.”
He contemplated her for a second, then walked over and sat in the stool next to her.
“This was an awful idea from the beginning,” she said. “I regret going along with it. My daughter’s emotional state is quite fragile right now.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt her.”
“I’m already complicit in the original scheme. This is even more detrimental and earth-shattering. If I cover foryou, I’m betrayingher.”
“I’m sorry.”
Meggie folded her arms so she wouldn’t slap him.
“I don’t want to break up with Rebel. I might lose her. She’s so strong-willed and she hasn’t gotten over her suspicions about how,why, we met. But I’ve never had a girl like her—”
“My daughter isn’t a possession.”
“But she is a prize. A dream. I don’t have a lot going for me and that doesn’t matter to her. My poetry. My art. And the money I earn from you. Yeah, I like Fia. For sex. She’s good in bed. Other than that, I don’t know much about her. What we share is more akin to the girls who paid all my expenses and bought everything I had.”
“Do you feel as if I bought you for Rebel?”
He flushed. “Not really, but if it wasn’t for her, I doubt you would’ve given me the job.”
