“You live in the Penthouse?”
When Lacey took Jonathan up on his offer to go up to his place, she didn’t expect that he would lead her over to the private elevator. You know, the one that led up to the Penthouse.
A million people lived in their apartment building—obvious exaggeration but fifty floors meant that there were a lot of people going and coming—but Lacey had been vaguely aware that the place was owned by a hotshot politician. Honestly? She’d stopped by to listen to the receptionists’ gossip a few times.
When she mentioned that fact to Jonathan—not the gossip part, but the politician part—he simply nodded, agreeing with her.
&ldquo
It took about a couple seconds for Jonathan’s question to sink in. When it did, Lacey opened her mouth, then shut it. Actually, she didn’t know what to say.She liked Jonathan, that much was clear, and he liked her back. But it wasn’t easy to make a decision easily when her last relationship had been with someone who ended up betraying her. So, to open up her heart to someone she didn’t know that well…That wasn’t easy.Lacey was still thinking of an answer when her ringtone filled the space. Until then, Lacey hadn’t recalled that her ringtone being that loud, but maybe it was because of the open air space of the Penthouse, but the sound seemed to fill everywhere.“...”
Peace of mind was a thing of her imagination. Weeks had passed and Maddy still didn’t have peace of mind over her unavoidable situation with Liam Tirro. After the day he visited the school, Maddy, thankfully, hadn’t seen him again, but it was hard not to think about him whenever she saw Maria Tirro. Lacey wanted her to tell him, but Maddy didn’t agree with that. Like at all. Every day turned to be a paranoia-filled one as Maddy imagined Liam Tirro showing up at her parents’ house to demand for Lea. Although she was aware that it wasn’t possible, Maddy couldn’t stop those thoughts from filling her brain. “Mama, the pink dress, pleasee.”At her daughter’s plea, Maddy’s eyes fluttered as she remembered where she was. Her parents were throwing a get together for some friends, business partners, and acquaintances, and had insisted that they wanted Lea at the event, which was basically going to be a roomful of people whose main purpose of being there was to show off and find new gossip.
The hell? Maddy stared in horror as Liam Tirro rose to his feet. On his face was a sheepish look, like he’d been caught in a bad act. It was eerily similar to the way her daughter looked when she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t have been.“I know what it looks like, but I promise you there’s an explanation.”Maddy didn’t give any reaction that showed that she heard his words, instead she was thinking about how this was straight out of her recurring nightmare. Just earlier, she comforted herself that Liam Tirro could never show up at her parents’ house, but what was the explanation when he was right in front of her in flesh and blood?“What are you doing her
“Jonathan?”It was the nudge from someone on his left that made Jonathan snap out of his trailing thoughts and return to the present. The present being in the middle of a company meeting. Allowing his thoughts roam during a meeting was very unlike Jonathan, but ever since Lacey appeared in his life, it had occurred more times than he liked.All good things had a drawback. That was nature. And the drawback of Jonathan finding a woman that he liked was that she occupied his mind. Like a lot.Looking to his left, he found a staff member nudging her head towards the front of the room. Jonathan turned his head only to find Riley looking at him with an expectant expression, like she was waiting for him to speak. “W
The letters on the script were dancing around before Lacey’s eyes. It really wasn’t the right time to be distracted, but she couldn’t help it. Not after her mother revealed that she’d been aware that her father was trying to get into her life.Since Lacey was young, she’d always felt comfortable talking to her mother about random and also important things. It wasn’t possible to tell her everything, but Lacey tried not to hide things from her, so having her mother be a part of the plan with her father felt like a betrayal.And honestly, she was done with the people closest to her lying to her. It sucked. How was she supposed to trust new people when those she’d known for years found it easy to lie to her?“You make me feel
“Jonathan!”Lacey hadn’t pegged Jonathan as a rash person. Rather, he seemed like someone who acted rationally, so how was it that someone like him jumped in front of her car? Bringing the car to an abrupt stop, it was reflex as her mouth fell open.Through the windscreen, Jonathan still stood in front of her vehicle with his arms in a wide open stance.The sight could only be described as something straight out of a drama. Who in their right mind would jump in front of a moving car? First of all, Lacey hadn’t expected that he would be waiting out here for her when she came out, and for him to now jump in front of her moving car? What was this?It took a couple moments, but Lacey
“I’m sorry. This is so out of the blue.”The jazzy music playing in the background of the café did nothing to calm Lacey’s nerves. On her lap, her hands wrung around each other just as her eyes roamed around the other tables, which turned out to be mostly empty save for a few people, before returning to the woman with the nervous smile in front of her.Selma hadn’t come alone either. The young girl Lacey met on the day of the wedding was also there. Selma and Mark’s daughter, Lacey’s half-sister. Lacey watched the movement of her straw as she sipped her orange juice.“This is Ruby, my daughter. She wanted to meet you.” Noticing Lacey’s gaze, Selma made introductions. She seemed apologetic.
When the elevator reached the Penthouse and stopped, the doors opening immediately revealed Jonathan standing there.Lacey knew that if she delayed, she would lose that little bit of bravery that she was still hanging on to, so as she stepped into the room fully, she walked into Jonathan’s arms. For the first few seconds, it brought her contentment to just hug him.There was just something about leaning on the person you liked. If the circumstances had been any different, she wouldn’t feel so nervous about this, but in order to get Jonathan out of her system, it had to be done.“I thought you wouldn’t let me in.” With her cheeks still pressed into his clothes, Lacey sighed in satisfaction.
Even though Jonathan didn’t get the chance to talk to Lacey, he wasn’t too bummed out by it after seeing that she wasn’t mad at him. She was back home safe, plus she had a friend to stay with her; those were enough for him. Upon getting back to his Penthouse, the first thing he did was go through his mails. Tomorrow, he was meeting with Director Jada Reign, and he wanted to make sure that she hadn’t sent an email canceling after the news his company was embroiled. Thankfully, there was no mail of cancellation, which meant they were still on for tomorrow. Jada had picked their meeting location; a newly opened fine dining restaurant Jonathan had never been to before called Maria. According to her, while she was in Italy, she had food made by the chef, and wanted to check out his new place. Jonathan didn’t protest. Jonathan found it a little weird that she wanted to go to a fine dining restaurant in the morning, but he kept that to himself.There were also a couple messages from his pa
“So, how was your date?”Steven had a huge grin on his face all through the day, so much that when school was over and he passed by the front of her desk, Maddy had to ask. Almost like he’d been waiting to ask, Steven immediately plopped onto the spare chair at Maddy’s table. “It was my first time officially being on a date, but we clicked so easily.”“Hmm.” Maddy cocked her head to the side with an amused smile. “Does that mean you’ve been on unofficial dates before?”As Steven’s laughter subsided, he noticed Maddy wasn’t her usual self. She was smiling, but there was a blank look in her eyes. So he asked, “Do you have something on your mind?” Turning her head towards her friend, Maddy groaned a bit before responding. “I think I have a date, but unlike you, I’m not too excited for it.”Today was the day she was meeting Liam Tirro, but without Lea. After much deliberation on the matter, Maddy decided not to introduce her daughter to her father just yet. There were a couple reasons,
Lacey quickly took in the presence of the three people standing at her door. She had been about to go into her room when she heard the sound of her keycode and went to check who it was. Since the only people who knew the code to her apartment were her mother and friends, she wasn’t all that surprised to find Sangah there. Except, there were two other people at the door. One face was unfamiliar, while the other person was a face Lacey seen earlier that day. Actually, he was the person she had wanted to reach out to the most. “Sangah, you’re back from South Korea?” “We flew in tonight. Holly and I were going to crash here. I thought you would still be at your Mum’s place.”Holly. Lacey’s eyes fell again on the beautiful woman whose arm was connected with Sangah’s elbow and smiled. Lacey took in her outfit of a flashy black dress and couldn’t help but wonder if she flew on the plane like that. “Holly?”“Holly.” Sangah turned a smile at the woman beside her. “Holly is my girlfriend. Ho
“Let’s meet. Where are you? Office? I’ll drop–”“Adam, you seem to have a lot of free time lately,” Jonathan interrupted the other man with a sharp tone. Recently, Jonathan had had more contact with the other man than he would have liked, and he didn’t want to see the other’s face for a while. Which was why he added, “Tell me what it is you’re calling about.”Given that he was calling so soon after Lacey’s post went up, Jonathan had an easy guess as to what Adam Rashidi wanted. A playful, buoyant laugh came over the phone right before Adam responded. “It’s always business with you, isn’t that right, Jonathan? Well, you must already have an idea why I called you…” This was followed by a small pause before Adam continued, “Lacey Thalmes, send her to me.”Resisting the urge to hang up the phone, Jonathan opened his mouth to speak but Adam beat him to it. “Your company seems to be doing a bad job at protecting their artists. Give her to me and I promise to make her more famous than JT En
The moment Lacey pressed the upload button and sent out her post into the world, she turned off her phone as a flurry of emotions hit her hard, the predominant ones being, of course, excitement and fear. She’d already given her friend group a heads-up of what she was about to do so they wouldn’t be too surprised if they came across her post. They were her friends so they would be on her side, but if what Jamie said was true, then the post was going to reach a lot more people. People who only knew her because of Thomas, people who didn’t know the real her, people who would be quick to write off her words as lies, and maybe also people who would believe her and be on her side. The enormity of the situation made Lacey want to shovel herself under the blankets, and stay in the room until it all blew over. Not on Jamie’s watch though. When Lacey was about to retreat back into the room, the other woman stopped her. She was the mastermind behind Lacey taking the decision to fight against
Jonathan’s car was idling at a distance not so far away from Lacey’s mother’s house. Lacey told him to leave, but he didn’t want this to be how things ended between them. He really was going to do everything he could to fix it. But how? After he sat in his car thinking for a while, his ringtone filled the car. It was Riley calling. Unexpectedly, when he answered, Riley immediately started speaking. Her words were jumbled into each other and Jonathan couldn’t make them out. “Slow down, Riley. What happened?”“Are you with Lacey Thalmes right now? What silly ideas did you put in her head, Jonathan? Huh?” Riley’s words came out hard and fast. She was ticked off. This made Jonathan pay closer attention. “Tell Lacey that she can come back to JT if she takes down the post right now!”At first, Jonathan had been confused, but he heard clearly now Riley’s last statement. “Wait a minute. Did you fire Lacey already? What the hell, Riley? Why are you doing things without my permission?” There
“Are you willing to fight?”It wasn’t the first time since meeting the woman that Lacey was left stunned, but this topped all those other moments. Jamie’s words made her heart beat faster. As part of it was from trepidation, but another part of it was the excitement that things could actually turn around. Jamie was right. If she let it go again this time, what was the assurance of a next time not happening? Would she have to spend the rest of her life looking back to make sure Thomas wasn’t catching up with her, ready to ruin her life one more time? In these past two years, he’d never been far from her though even after he was out of her life. Oh, is Thomas going to decide today to lie about me again? She had never fully stopped worrying about that. So, after a few moments of contemplation, Lacey came to a decision. Wearing a determined expression, she said, “I am going to fight. Thomas broke me once and almost ruined my life. I don’t want to let him do that again. But…” That was w
“Lacey, are you okay in there?” A knock on the door made Lacey look up from her phone. “What’s going on? Why is the door locked?”It was tempting to ignore her mother, but after the fainting scare earlier, she didn’t want to find her mother in another dangerous situation, so Lacey placed her phone on the bed and got to her feet. Unlocking the bolt, she opened the door. “Lacey, what’s wrong?”“Nothing, Mum. Just something came up at work. Don’t worry about it.”Lana Thalmes’ expression grew even more worried. “It’s something serious, isn’t it? Earlier, before Jonathan left, I heard you shout. Did he do something to you?”Lacey’s head swayed side to side. She wasn’t in the mood to answer her mother’s questions, what with her world and entire life being overturned for the second time in two years, and by the same person. Two years wasn’t a lot of time to most people, but in that span, Lacey had gone through a divorce, turned her life around and gotten a job, only to find herself back in
“Calm down, Adi. I can’t hear you,” Lacey said into the phone. She’d been having a chill time with Jonathan after he drove her and her mother home. They had been talking about random things, and somehow, it wasn’t weird that Jonathan was in her mother’s house. But then her phone rang, and it was Adi saying a lot of words she didn’t understand. “Lace, I asked where you were? Are you at JT Entertainment?”This time, she clearly heard him. With furrowed brows, Lacey responded, “No. Why? Do you need me to do something for you?”“No. No.” Adi’s voice sounded frantic. “It’s not that. It’s just…” As he hesitated, Lacey raised her gaze to see what Jonathan was up to on the other side of the room. Surprisingly, she found a grave expression on his face as he stared right at her. When he saw her looking his way, his features seemed to crumple in apology. Before Lacey could get confused about what was going on, she heard Adi’s voice through the phone. “What did Thomas do to you at the company?