I raise my glass toward him. “Bingo.”
“She came back to the room with us.”
I nod.
“Holy shit, I remember her.”
“Wish I did.” I bring the glass to my lips and toss it back. “Fuck me, man, I never stood a chance with this woman.”
Gray joins me on this side of the bar, grabbing himself a beer and resting his hips against the counter beside me. “That sucks, man, but you gotta let it go.”
I swivel my head to look at him.
“She’s got your head all fucked up. You’ve been out of it since Texas.” He takes a sip of his beer, then levels me with a pointed look. “You nearly cost us a deal this week.”
I take a deep breath, nodding because I’m well aware that I fucked up that meeting with the reps from Adidas yesterday. “I don’t know what it is, man. She’s just… all I can think about lately.”
“You’ve had a thing for her for a long time. I get it. And whatever happened when you saw her in Texas…” He shrugs. “I don’t know. But your little obsession with Sutton Hart is fucking with Apex and you can’t let that happen. This isn’t a game, Max.”
“I know. I know.” Shaking my head, I drag my hand through my hair.
“She’s your direct competitor right now, as wild as that sounds. She steals that kid out from under us and I’m moving forward with my petition for the board. You get that, right?”
“I do. Fuck, you know I do.”
“I love you, but I have to do what’s best for us, for Apex. We have a team of people who depend on us.”
“Iknow, bro. I get it.”
Gray watches me for a moment, then nods. “Then get your head in the fucking game, man.”
Chapter Seven
Sutton
Squeezing my clutch to keep my hands from trembling, I follow Mo up the long walkway that leads from the circular driveway to the looming front door of this Hollywood Hills mansion. Before we reach the final step, I turn around, a last-ditch act of desperation, but the Lyft that brought us here has nearly reached the gate at the bottom of the hill.
I’m trapped.
“Sutton,” Mo whispers, slipping her hand into mine and easing the clenched fingers of my right hand away from the poor beaded clutch. “Easy on the goods, girl. That’s a McQueen.”
I suck in a breath and try to relax my fingers. “I’m sorry, I just…” I swallow hard.
“You really don’t have to be afraid, Sutty. This is completely legit.”
I give her a tightlipped smile and pray it looks convincing.
The problem isn’t that I’m afraid…
It’s that I’mnot.
Andthatactually scares the shit out of me.
I spent some time doing a little research of my own last night, surprised and, originally, a little alarmed by how intrigued I became the more I looked into this event. From the private club putting it on and the detailed accounts of what goes on behind closed doors, the more I read, the deeper I fell into the rabbit hole.
Both literallyandfiguratively.
The Rabbit Hole is a chain of upscale and highly exclusive underground kink clubs, each of them attached to a sisterestablishment called White Rabbit. To passerby, White Rabbit sells expensive, luxury lingerie, but for those in the know, a secret passageway somewhere within the store leads to a membership-only space.
