Trust Me (Rough Love #3) (14 page)

“I want to move on too.” That was the damn truth. I wanted all of this to be over, our past disappeared, but as Simon said, it wasn’t that easy. We’d been through things. We’d pretty much been through hell.

The rough part was that I could never explain this to Price in a way that would be okay with him. Even sitting here and talking to Simon this long…he would murder me for it, and probably stick me in the cage for hours afterward. He wouldn’t understand, perhaps could never be made to understand.

But did that mean I couldn’t help this man who’d been such a part of my life, who was here begging for a path to peace?

“Fuck,” I said. “This is really difficult.”

“I know. It took me forever to find the courage to come see you. But God, I’m taking all of this so seriously, Chere. I can’t go back there again. I can’t.”

“Can I have some time to think about it? Some time to talk to my partner?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, even as I thought to myself that there was no way in hell I could talk to my partner. There was no way in hell Price would allow me to help Simon in any way, shape, or form.

No, I was asking for time so I could summon up my courage, and figure out if it was possible to elude Price’s control enough to give Simon the help and closure he needed. Was Simon’s sobriety worth it?

More to the point, could I stand by and let Simon ruin his life a second time? When I still carried such guilt that I’d let it happen the first time? Price said it wasn’t my fault, but I couldn’t make peace with that opinion. Maybe this was my chance to find some peace too, even if I felt like my head was about to explode.

“Can I come back tomorrow?” he pressed. “Will that be enough time for you to think about it?”

“No. Don’t come back here.”

“Then how can I contact you?” He frowned. “Jesus, you’re acting kind of crazy. This guy you’re with, is it the same dude who attacked me at that gallery?”

“Yes.”

“What’s the deal with that?” He looked at me far too steadily, with too much knowledge of my weaknesses. “Chere, have you gotten yourself into another bad situation with your hotheaded star-chitect friend?”

He had a lot of balls to ask that, considering he’d been my first and most monumental bad situation. Price was nothing like him. Was he?

“He’s not my
friend
,” I said. “We’re together. He gave me a ring and everything.”

Simon stared at it when I showed him. “You’re engaged?” He sounded shocked.

“Not officially engaged,” I admitted. “But we’re pretty serious, and brutal honesty here, he hates your guts. He’s not going to want me to see you. He doesn’t want me to have anything to do with you.”

“If he doesn’t like it, tell him to fuck off.”

I pondered telling Price to fuck off, especially as it related to Simon. The idea was too ludicrous for words.

“I want to help you get over our past together,” I said. “I can understand how it haunts you, but I’m not going to damage my current relationship in the process. Just give me some time to figure things out.”

His skeptical regard unsettled me. “I guess we all have problems. Maybe we can help each other. Do you need help with this guy?”

“No,” I snapped. “Do you still have the same number? Don’t call me. I’ll call you, okay?”

“When?”

I sighed. “When I can. Do you want to be friends or not? Friends are patient with each other.”

But Simon Baldwin had never been patient, or a very good friend, even before drugs took over his life. I finally got him out of my studio by telling him I had a deadline to meet. I breathed a sigh of relief that Price hadn’t come by for a morning blowjob. Most days, he waited until the afternoon.

God, I had to calm down. I needed to figure out how to help Simon attain mental peace without wrecking my own hard-fought sanity. I wasn’t sure there was a way to do it, which really sucked. Maybe I could just tell Price that I needed to help Simon find closure. Maybe he would understand if I explained it deftly enough.

No. Fuck. He’d never understand, and he’d never allow me to see Simon again. I was supposed to have zero contact with my ex. Zero. Never. Nothing.

I was definitely fucked.

So Fucking Sorry

I
watched the
whole thing happen in real time, watched it on a window on my laptop as a meeting continued around me. There was no audio on the surveillance feed, but I saw the intensity and duration of their conversation in high-definition detail. It seemed like they spoke forever, and there was real emotion, real connection in the way they conversed. She hadn’t seen Simon in months, not to my knowledge.

Not to my knowledge.

But had she? He was sober now, and rich as ever. He was good-looking, if you liked hipster vampire types. Hell, she’d gone to see his fucking painting in Paris, fucking
cried
over that shit. It seemed as though the question wasn’t “Does she still have feelings for him?” but rather “How intense are the feelings she still has?”

Shit. Shit. Shit.

No Simon, nothing to do with him, ever. That was our agreement. Hell, that was one of the first rules I’d established with her, and she had no “out” clauses to fall back on, no reasons why it might sometimes be okay to see him or speak with him. It was never okay.

I didn’t leave the meeting to go down and interrupt them. I was tempted to barge in there and throw him through the frosted glass door, but no. I didn’t do it, partly because I wanted to catch them in the act if she was fucking around on me, and partly because I was paralyzed by fear.

Instead, I watched until he left, clinging to every shake of her head, every expression of distress. Was it distress, or longing? Why the hell would he come here and have an emotional conversation with her after all these months?

I had to know. I waited to be paged by the receptionist. I waited for Chere to come to me and admit she’d met with Simon, and confess everything they’d talked about, but she didn’t, and it slowly became clear to me that she wasn’t going to. She bent back over her work, with no signs of guilt about the crime she’d just perpetrated before my eyes.

Of course, she didn’t know she was on camera, any more than she’d known when I spied on her with my hunting binoculars from across the street. I’d never admitted that I’d had cameras installed before she occupied her office, so I could watch her intermittently throughout the day, like during tedious planning meetings. I had every right to do it if I owned her. The cameras were one more layer of protection, one more layer of control.

Whether she knew about the cameras or not, she had a responsibility to come tell me what had transpired. Our rules regarding her and other men were very involved and very specific, and she’d broken about five of them between nine-thirty and ten o’clock.

I thought, okay, maybe she’s afraid to admit what happened. Maybe she’s trying to think of the right words to say. Maybe she’s working on a deadline. Maybe…

Maybe what?

I took her out to lunch. Nothing. Nothing but distant thoughts and nervousness, disguised in overly cheerful conversation that made me want to slap her.
Admit it. Admit what you did, you faithless bitch.
After lunch, I took her back to her studio and sat in the chair he’d sat in, and ordered her to blow me. Still nothing. No confession. No mention that he’d been there, sitting exactly where I was sitting.

Now I stared at her across the dinner table, giving her the benefit of the doubt. Meeting with Simon was a huge fuck up. Maybe she was still gathering the courage to come clean. But maybe…

Love lies.

Maybe she had no intention of telling me. If that was true, it was the beginning of our end. If she was choosing Simon—
Simon
—over what we had together, then I was done. I was done trying to save her, I was done trying to make her life better and more fulfilling. I was done twisting myself in knots trying to make us work. I was done risking my heart, bleeding poetry onto paper. If she wanted Simon…

But I’d let her speak first. I’d make her speak, if she didn’t elect to confess on her own. We went into the kitchen to clean up after dinner. I offered her ice cream. She asked for wine instead, and I thought, now. Now the confession will come. She just needed a little alcoholic fortitude to admit what she’d done. We took the wine into the living room and sat on the couch together. I waited.

Nothing, damn it. She was wondering when I’d take her to the dungeon. I kept her naked at home, always ready. She wanted to play.

I was tired of fucking waiting. I put my glass down on the side table and asked, in as casual a voice as I could muster, “Did anyone visit your studio today?”

There was an awful, soul-destroying moment when she thought about lying to me. I could see it in her features, in her expression.
Oh shit, he knows. I better lie. Could I get away with a lie? No, I couldn’t.

At least she realized that. Her expression turned from panicked to wary to grim.

“Yes,” she said. She put her glass down and crossed her arms over her breasts. “Simon came to see me. I didn’t invite him. He just showed up.”

“And you told him to leave?” I asked, making her uncross her arms. No hiding. I wanted her naked as shit right now.

She watched me a moment before she answered. “Yes, of course I did. That was the first thing I said to him, that he had to go.”

“And did he go?”

“Yes.”

I stared at her. She glanced away, and then back.

“He did go, eventually,” she said in a tight voice.

“What did you talk about?” I was very proud of how level and calm I sounded. I didn’t feel that way inside.

“We didn’t talk about anything.”

“He was there a long time to be talking about nothing.”

“How do you know that?” She went from defensive to belligerent. Typical old-school Chere tactic. It wasn’t going to save her now.

“Tell me what you talked about,” I prompted, tugging her collar’s ring to focus her. “I’m angry enough that you met with him. Tell me what I want to know.”

She slid back on the couch, away from me. “No, you tell me how you know all this. Were you spying on me? Jesus fuck, do you watch me? Is there a camera in my studio?”

“Of course there is. You think I don’t like to look at you throughout the day?”

She was heading full speed into outrage. “You seriously installed a secret camera in my studio? You didn’t think that was something I might want to know?”

“It’s something you should have assumed, considering our past together. The cameras aren’t the issue here.”

“The
cameras
?” she said, getting to her feet. “Plural? How many cameras are there?”

“Sit down. Sit the fuck down or the ass beating will commence immediately. We need to talk.”

“Yes, we need to talk.” She sounded snarky, but she obeyed me and sat her ass back on the couch. “I can’t believe you’ve been spying on me all this time. What am I, your personal zoo animal? A fish in your fishtank?”

“Yes, you’re a very beautiful fish I can watch whenever I like.”

“Where are they? Where are the cameras?” She sat up straighter and looked around the living room. “Do you have them here in the house? In the guest room?” She paled. “In the dungeon? Have you been taping all the shit you do to me?”

“
The shit I do to you?
” I repeated with a warning note in my voice. “Is that what it is? Shit? You agreed to be mine, Chere. We have a relationship, a dynamic that is all encompassing, to include”—I marked off each word on my fingers—“surveillance, obedience, control, exposure, and whatever the fuck else I want. You live here in my house, by my rules. What’s the rule about Simon?”

“That I can’t see him,” she said. “But I had no control over what happened. He came to see me!”

“You didn’t work that hard to throw him out.”

“Because he was upset. He was stressed out.”

“About what?”

She rubbed her forehead. “About his sobriety. About these steps he’s working through, and our past, and trying to find some kind of peace between us.”

I let out a breath. The emotion, then, made sense.

“I mean, I couldn’t just throw him out,” she said. “He was begging for my help. I kept telling him I couldn’t help him, but he seemed so desperate.”

I frowned at her. “That’s exactly the shit he pulled on you before, acting pathetic and desperate so you would ‘help’ him. I forbade you to see him for a reason. He’s a user, Chere.”

“He’s sober now.”

“That’s not the kind of user I meant. He’s a
user
,” I said, with frustrated emphasis. “He’ll use you for the rest of your life if you let him. Did he ask about you at all? How you’re doing? How your work is going?”

“Yes! He said he was proud of me. And he asked if I needed help when I told him about this, about you. About how you wouldn’t let me interact with him, even as friends.”

“As friends. Perfect.” I gave a nasty laugh. “Because he has so many qualities you want in a friend.”

“I almost let him die once!”

Jesus Christ. Tears. She was crying over him again. I couldn’t take it.

“I almost let him die last time because I didn’t engage with him,” she said. “Am I supposed to do that again?”

“Yes.” My voice sounded too loud, too harsh. “Yes, you’re supposed to have nothing to do with him. Why is that so hard to understand? We’ve been over this, Chere. We’ve fucking been over it.”

I thought of Paris, of the brutal punishment I’d given her for merely going to look at one of his paintings. This was so much worse. She wanted to
help him
. She still
cared about him
. She was
crying for him
…again.

“If you don’t stop crying, I swear to God I’ll fuck you up. I’m not even kidding.”

She swiped tears off her cheeks, but she only cried harder and made more. So many tears. Some of them were probably for me, for fear of me, and worry about what I was going to do to her. She’d been a very bad girl, not just to see him, but to hide it from me. To feel so much for him, to allow him this pity and concern…

“Maybe instead of punishing you, I should just punch you in the face so you can remember what it felt like. Then you can decide how much you want to help him.”