“Love you too, Dad.”
“Don’t forget to call about my cream.”
“Roger that.”
The call ends with the prison system’s automated click. I stand in the hallway for a long moment, phone still pressed to my ear, listening to nothing.
Through the window at the end of the hall, I can see a sliver of the pool deck. Charlie is gesturing animatedly, explaining something to her dancers while they cluster around the pizza boxes. Her laugh carries faintly through the glass—bright and genuine and completely unaware of the conversation I just had.
Two worlds. Two versions of myself.
I’m trying to move forward, but I’m always a hostage tohim. To guilt. I’m serving a sentence for a crime I didn’t commit.
But what choice do I have? Dad stole everything to dote on me. Doesn’t that make me…complicit in a way? I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it anymore. I want to rewind the clock by an hour, catch the tail end of her goofy striptease, and re-experience the pure bliss of kneeling between her thighs and giving her something no man had given her before. I want to disappear into Charlie, if only reality would stop biting us in the ass.
And honestly, even if I could figure out a way to resolve my dad’s issues, I’m no match for Charlie.
When is she ever going to proudly claim an escort as the love of her life? No one would see us in a tabloid and think—couple goals. They’ll only see the scandal we are.
I pocket my phone and head toward the pool, toward the woman who makes me want to believe in happy endings…
Even when I know better.
chapter 18
Charlie
He left.
I keep replaying it in my head—the way Taio appeared in the doorway of the pool house while I was mid-sentence with Devon about the bridge section of “Hypnotic.” The way his face looked tight, closed off, nothing like the man who’d had me in his mouth three hours earlier. The way he said he needed to take a rain check for our date because of a “family emergency” without meeting my eyes.
“Take the jet,” I offered immediately. “Marcus can have it ready in an hour.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“It’s a nineteen-hour drive to New York. Or like, three hours if you fly. Just take the jet, Taio. It’s sitting there doing nothing.”
“I already booked a flight.” His voice was clipped. Professional. Like we were back to being client and hired help instead of whatever we’d become in that bedroom. “Red-eye leaves at eleven. I’ll be back in a day or two. Stay safe.”
A day or two.Like he was running to the grocery store instead of fleeing across the country.
I wanted to push. Wanted to ask what was really going on, why he suddenly couldn’t look at me, why he was choosing a cramped commercial flight over the comfort of a private plane. But the dancers were watching—pretending not to, but definitely watching—and something in Taio’s posture told me this wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have in public.
So I just nodded and said “okay, let me know if you need anything.” I watched him walk back into the guesthouse to pack his bag. I got so distracted with the dancers and our new Herculean task, I didn’t even register when he left.
And now it’s two in the morning and I’m lying in my bed, staring at the ceiling, replaying every moment of the last twelve hours, trying to figure out where I went wrong.
It was the date thing.It had to be.
I suggested we order in instead of going out. I basically made it clear I wanted to keep us hidden, keep him secret. I know I hurt him. Something shifted in his face. I felt the distance open up between us like a crack in the earth.
Shit.
I treated him like a dirty little secret. Like an escort. The very thing he doesn’t want to be when it comes to me.
No wonder he left. I bet there’s no family emergency.
I roll onto my side, pulling a pillow against my chest like it might fill the space where he should be. The sheets still smell faintly like him, that cedar cologne, something warm and spicy underneath. There’s a weight on my chest making every breath strained.
