KristoWell, she wasn’t coming back, and I was going to make damn sure of that. I ripped the pages in two, all of them, and tossed them to the floor of the apartment, letting them splay wildly across the floor. I watched them as they drifted out in front of me, and I ran my hands through my hair and let out a grunt of annoyance. I wanted to yell at the top of my lungs, but even the booze hadn’t got me losing control that much.I slumped down against the counter and then slipped down against the floor. She was gone. Nothing was going to change that. The worst part was that some small part of me had been wondering since the moment she’d moved in if there could have been something between us. Sure, the start was unorthodox, but maybe, just maybe, we could have made something work.I shoved those thoughts angrily to the back of my head. Nothing would have worked between us because she was just a gold digger, a liar who had taken me for a ride and wrung me dry. I was lucky she had left aft
AmayaAs I drove down to see Jolene, I felt as though there was a damn war going on inside my head. I couldn’t make any sense of my thoughts, but I knew seeing my sister was going to help remind me what exactly my priorities were right now.“I’m here to see Jolene.” I put my hand down on the reception desk, and the woman slowly raised her gaze to meet mine. She looked tired. I knew the feeling. I had barely slept all night, tossing and turning back in my own bed once I’d made it back to my apartment.“Go right up,” the woman replied, waving her hand toward the stairs after she checked my credentials. I headed up to Jolene’s room and opened the door, plastering a big smile on my face so she wouldn’t guess the turmoil that was running through my head right now.“Hey!” she exclaimed, wheeling over to me at once. “How are you?”She wrapped her arms around me, and I swiftly hugged her back, closing my eyes and leaning down to inhale the sweet scent of her hair. This was why I had done this
AmayaBefore I knew it, I was sitting at a table surrounded by a half-dozen women, all of whom were piling on question after question, so fast that I could hardly keep my head straight.“How long did you know him before you guys got married?”“Don’t you think it’s a little fast?”“Where is he now?”“What do you do?”I held my hand up, and they fell silent. I almost giggled at the amount of power I had over the lot of them. I wondered if any of them had ever imagined what it might be like to marry Kristo themselves, to wed into this rich, successful family once and for all. I could see a couple of them looking at me with something close to envy, and I understood where it came from. Had I been in their position, I would have been envious too. But they didn’t know the dark side of it, the bleak side, the one that burned me up as I sat there surrounded by women who wanted to know my secrets while I kept the biggest one of all from the lot of them.“We met while he was on a business trip,
KristoI watched her as she climbed out of the car, eyeing me warily as she did so, and she slowly made her way to the door like she half-expected me to lunge out at her out of the blue. I crossed my arms over my chest as she tried to walk around me and into the apartment, but I stepped in front of her.“Amaya, I need to talk to you,” I told her firmly, but she shook her head. Her eyes were focused on the ground, and I didn’t blame her. But I had found some time to think, and we needed to discuss the ins and outs of this relationship before she blew it up.She threw her hands in the air and glared at me, the first time she had looked me in the eye since she had climbed out of that car.“What do you want?” she demanded. “Seriously, what can I do for you?”“I want you to finish out the rest of the contract,” I replied smoothly, carefully, playing professional. As long as I kept feelings out of this, I might be able to convince her this was the best choice for the two of us. She rolled h
KristoI should have gotten her to sign a contract with all the money I’d already put out, but I couldn’t do it. Fuck my life if it blew up in my face again, but I couldn’t.She looked over her shoulder at the condo and winced as though remembering how tiny it was in there, remembering all the space she had in my apartment. I wanted her back there, filling the space. I still wasn’t sure exactly what it was that made me want to keep her around, but it was there and undeniable, and I never found myself lacking what I wanted.“I need you to be the buffer between me and my dad’s new wife,” I went on, pushing hard, knowing I was close to getting what I wanted so badly. “I need someone there to make sure I can actually remember her name. She likes you better than me, remember?”“You’re a total asshole, you know that?” She rounded on me again, but there was defeat in her voice. She knew how this was going to go, just the same way I did. I grinned.“Sure, I do,” I replied. “But that doesn’t m
AmayaI pretended to be asleep in the car as we pulled away from the house. I just didn’t want to talk any more, not about what I’d just agreed to, not about what I’d said when I’d walked out the night before, not any of it. Even though I was exhausted and could probably have used the rest, I found my mind racing at a mile a minute as I tried to make sense of what the fuck I had just done.Why had I taken him back so easily? He had pretty much just had to turn up on my doorstep, pull those sad eyes, and remind me of how little money I had and how much I needed this and I was crawling back to him. Maybe not crawling exactly. I had laid down some ground rules at least, something to keep him at bay, but even as I sat there right afterward, I was doubting my ability to keep my attraction and my feelings for him at a decent low. I just wanted him, wanted this, wanted everything that came with being with a man with his kind of status and attitude and, fuck, all of it.It was for Jolene. Tha
AmayaI was pretty sure I did a solid job keeping up the front that the two of us had built together. But this time, I was building up a front of my own, as well. The last time I had been here, those lines between reality and unreality had been so blurred, too blurred, as I’d found myself seduced by his sweetness, by the way his family treated me and the way they seemed to embrace me. But now I just sat there and quietly ate the food and let Kristo do the talking, ignoring his hand where it came to rest on my upper back, ignoring the way his fingers traced casual shapes on my neck the whole time. Did he know how torturous this was for me? Did he know how much it hurt, to have him play the loving husband but know we were returning to separate beds and separate lives as soon as this was over? I was going to keep my heart locked up tight because if I let a man like him near it, it was going to shatter.“You should call me when you get a chance.” Karen swooped in and planted a kiss on my
KristoI felt as though I was going to blow my fucking lid at any moment. It had been a week since she’d come back, and she’d stuck to her word. No emotion, no romance, and certainly no sex. And it was starting to drive me up the fucking wall.Life before she had left hadn’t been this way. I knew that for damn sure. It hadn’t always been easy, fair enough, but it had been interesting and fun and the two of us had actually shared something together. I still wasn’t sure what it was. She seemed to think it was love, but I wasn’t certain it could be categorized that easily. Whatever it was, it had to be better than the shit we were dragging ourselves through right now.She would come home from work and just sit there. I was pretty sure that was the hardest part. It was the look on her face, unreadable and impossible, and the fact that she would just plonk herself down in the seat opposite mine and nod and smile and be polite. Where was the Amaya who would tease me, would call me an asshol