Three Hard Lessons (31 page)

That was it. No pleading, no more apologies, and there was terrible finality that made me sick. I’m sure he was pissed I’d walked out. Whether or not I walked away for good was up to him. I needed time and space. It just sucked how much space was about to be between us.

I did fine on takeoff, but thirteen hours is a long-ass time not to think about what had happened, and the Asian man sitting next to me looked mortified when I spent twenty minutes crying silently turned toward the window. I couldn’t help it. I was exhausted and Dominic had broken the wall I’d built around this part of my feelings.

The nice thing about first class was I drank myself to sleep, and the seats were pretty comfortable. It was six in the morning when I landed at O’Hare, and after customs and immigration, I was on the train toward my apartment in the thick of rush hour. It was loud, and dirty, more than I’d ever noticed before.

Dominic’s emotionless text was unnerving. I spent the remainder of the ride overanalyzing it. When I got home, I slept in my bed – my first time sleeping alone in more than two months – and I hated it.

My intercom buzzed and woke me at noon. It was Logan, which immediately made me suspicious. I’d texted Evie this morning and made arrangements to have dinner with them when they got off work.

“Did Dominic send you?” I asked into the call box.

“I came to return your car.”

Oh. I buzzed him up and pulled on a sweater and jeans.

It didn’t register that he hadn’t answered me about Dominic until I opened the door and was greeted with flowers.

“I’m sure you know who these are from,” Logan said, lingering in the hallway. “Can I come in?”

I motioned for him to do so, but gave him a guarded look. “What a cliché. He shouldn’t have asked you to do that.”

“He didn’t. I offered.”

Logan evaluated the room and sat the vase of red roses on my kitchen counter. They were beautiful, but I refused to show my appreciation. A first-class ticket hadn’t fazed me, so a dozen roses weren’t going to either.

“Dominic told me what happened.”

My neck got hot and I clenched my teeth. “Oh, did he?”

Logan’s face was serious. “All of it, and I mean,
all
of it. He knows how bad he screwed up.”

I didn’t know what to say. I picked up the flowers and moved them to the center of my kitchen table. “That conversation had to be awkward.”

“Payton, he’s a fucking mess.”

“Good,” I snapped. “Me, too.”

Logan’s face softened. “Look, I’ve been where he is. I kept secrets from Evie and it was the dumbest thing I ever did. I almost lost her.”

“I remember.” In fact, I’d been one of the people pushing her to forgive him.

He put his hands on his hips. “It was . . . really hard when she asked for space, but it helped her find a way to forgive me.” Logan’s stare bore down. “So I told Dominic to give you space. And I know it’s none of my business, but do you think you might be able to, with some time?”

“Forgive him?” There was the $100,000 question, wasn’t it? “I don’t know.”

Logan pressed his lips together and nodded. Then he pulled a set of keys from his pocket and set them on the counter. “I got your car up into the triple digits on the Stevenson.”

My jaw fell. “You better be fucking joking.” It was impossible to tell with him sometimes.

The corner of his mouth lifted in a smirk and his joke helped ease some of the tension from my weary body.

He glanced at his phone. “I should probably head back to work. Evie said we’re meeting for dinner tonight?”

“Yeah.” I took the keys and put them in my purse. “Thanks for your help.”

“Hey, anytime you want me to drive your car, I’m available.”

I followed him to the door, and as he stepped through it, the words tumbled from my mouth. “I want to.”

He paused. “What?”

“I
want
to forgive him. I just don’t know if I can.”

He looked startled, but it shifted to a pleased smile. “It always seemed to me that you, Payton, can get whatever you want.”

On Thursday I met Joseph for lunch. He had something he wanted to discuss, but didn’t want to do it over the phone. Maybe he wanted to apologize in person, but it wasn’t necessary. I knew it wasn’t personal.

“Where do you want to eat?” he’d asked.

“Anywhere that’s not Asian.”

So we picked a Mexican place near my apartment where the décor was a bit over the top, but the food was great. When I came in, Joseph was already seated at a table, wearing a sweater over a tie and dress shirt. He always looked professional, but today he looked . . . odd. Academic.

His dark eyes went large as he evaluated me. “You look different.”

I sat at the table. “Yeah, I know. I’ve been out of town for a while, and the earliest appointment I could get at the salon is tomorrow.” My hair color needed some serious help. But Joseph continued to look at me, confused. It was kind of annoying. “What?”

“You look older. And, honey, I don’t mean it in a bad way.”

Now I was really annoyed. “It’s been two months, not two years.”

Joseph’s eyes warmed. “I’m sorry about how I handled that night. I didn’t want to lose you, and lost control myself.”

I let out a breath. “You didn’t make him pay. I mean, more than the club’s cut. Why?”

There was surprise in his eyes. “You said what it would do to you, how it would make you feel. Payton, I’ve always given you what you needed, when I could.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I like doing it. You and I are a lot alike.”

It was at this moment I realized he looked different too. Not just the clothes, but faint, dark circles hung under his eyes. He looked . . . exhausted.

Joseph wrapped a hand around his margarita. “Can I ask where you went?”

“Tokyo.” That stunned him.
Get ready, Joseph, here comes the mother of all surprises.
“I went with the guy from that night at the club. He lives there.”

He froze.

“Crazy, huh?” I continued.

Slowly Joseph returned to life. “You’re certainly not predictable. So, you’re back. Are you and him–?”

I inhaled deeply and blew it out. “I don’t know what we are.”

Since arriving in the States, I hadn’t heard from Dominic until this morning. I didn’t sleep well without him. I lay in bed, stared at the sunrise and wondered what he was doing on the other side of the earth. I was still so angry, but fuck it. I pulled my phone off the charger.

Today was the first day I felt a little better. I told myself it was because I’d completely recovered from the jet lag, but it was bullshit. It was from opening the door to Dominic, just a tiny bit.

Now I stared at Joseph and began to wonder about his motivations. “Why did you want to get together? To see if I’d come back to work?”

His eyebrows lifted in what seemed to be curiosity. “Would you?”

“No.”

“And if Mr. Red wanted to work out an arrangement, would you be interested in that?”

My heart beat faster with anxiety. I hadn’t thought about Mr. Red at all, and doing so now only made my disdain for him more intense. “What kind of arrangement?”

“One that would make you exclusive to him. He wants you bad. As in, he’d pay for
everything
, bad. Car. Apartment. He’s loaded up to his eyeballs.”

“He wants me to be his on-call whore.” I shuddered. “I don’t care how much money he has, or how broke I’m about to be, a thousand times no.”

Surely Joseph would make some percentage or land a fee if he could broker this arrangement, but he didn’t look disappointed about my outright rejection. Instead his lips curled back in a bright smile.

“Then, I’d like to offer you a job.”

Had he gotten stupid in the past two months? “I told you, I’m not going back to the club.”

His smile was devious. “But what if it was to take over for me?”

chapter

TWENTY-SEVEN

My glass slipped from my fingers and thumped loudly on the table. “What? Where are you going?”

“I have some personal stuff to take care of. I need some time off.”

My brain raced with thoughts but my voice went skeptical. “You want me to fill in for you?”

“You and I both know you can do it. Next to me, you’re the one who knows the most about the club, and I trust you. It’s not like what I do is all that hard. The place practically runs itself, but you’ve seen me handle the sticky situations.”

Me running the club. The thought gave me a rush of power. And the money . . . “How much would I pull down?”

He laughed. “Probably more than you made in the room. Are you interested?”

“Fuck yeah, I’m interested.” I was way more than just interested.

He detailed it all out then. I’d train and shadow him this weekend, and next weekend I would take over as manager. I spent the rest of the day at the club with him, learning how the monitor system worked and the cash-out process. It was weird to be back at the club, and I forced myself not to think about how I left.

A daily morning routine began to develop with my texts to Dominic.