Breaking Even (Sterling Shore 5)

Ah, hell. She got divorced. That’s how.

She just shrugs instead of acting affected. I was worried this was about to take a cold nosedive.

“My parents expect too much out of me, but I moved in with them, thinking they’d leave me alone since I’m adult. They didn’t. Maggie had been begging me to come live with her since I had gotten divorced. We’ve been friends since we were little, even though she’s a little older. Our dads worked together for a while. My dad was Maggie’s dad’s boss.”

So she comes from money?

“Maggie comes from a lot of money because of her dad’s job,” I say, frowning.

“Yep. And my dad has more of it. But I got married at eighteen against my parents’ wishes, got a job they didn’t approve of, and lived my life the way I wanted to. I didn’t want to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or anything else they wanted me to be. They still haven’t forgiven me.”

I wasn’t going to bring up the whole marriage thing, but she mentioned it, so I assume it’s allowed to be talked about. It’s driving me fucking crazy.

“Why’d you get married and divorced?” I ask in a rush, tensing when she does.

After a long period of silence that seems to cloak the air in regret, she finally blows out a breath.

“Because I was young and dumb,” she says through a sad laugh. “I was sheltered and treated like a porcelain doll with a mapped-out life. He was fun and free-spirited. I went to an all-girls private school; he went to public school. I was from a rich family; he lived on the worst side of town.”

She pauses briefly while shaking her head.

“It only made sense to get married,” she says dryly. “He stupidly thought my father would cover all of our expenses and his life would change for the better once he married me. He kept holding out that hope. Year after year, John thought he had a brilliant idea, and he’d try to get my father to invest. I’m sure he cared about me. You don’t stay married to someone for six years if you don’t care about them on some level, but I don’t think either of us actually really loved each other.”

She clears her throat while staring at her plate.

I’ve had girls confess their love after knowing me for seconds. I’ve had girls throw themselves at me for all the wrong reasons. But I’ve never had any sort of relationship that held meaning of any kind. So I can’t relate.

“Why do you say that?” I ask, wishing I knew what else to say.

She smiles weakly. “Because I didn’t cry.”

That... confuses the hell out of me.

“Umm...”

She laughs while shaking her head. “He represented freedom to me. I represented fortune to him. Neither of us got what we wanted. I was content with my crappy job, the small apartment we had, and our meager life. But I didn’t have freedom, because I still felt like a constant source of disappointment—just like I did at home. When he told me he wanted a divorce, I felt as though I could breathe for the first time in years. I was pissed that I had wasted my time, and I was pissed that he said I was holding him back, but I wasn’t the least bit sad that our marriage was over. The day I wrecked your car, I was pissed over the fact that I ever gave him any part of me, and that day represented all that bottled up anger. But I didn’t cry.”

I sit silently, feeling like an ass for having nothing to say. But she finally looks up and smiles at me. When she does, I forget anything else exists, and that fear in the back of my mind tries to rise to the surface.

“Why are you grinning?” I ask, feeling confused.

“No reason,” she says, shrugging. “Why didn’t you call the cops?”

Huh?

“The day I slammed into your car,” she clarifies as she slides over to be in my lap, stealing any thoughts I can have as her body straddles mine in the chair, and she leans down to my neck.

I swallow hard when her lips start making small, moan-worthy trails. It really doesn’t take much at all for her to turn me on.

“Well?” she prompts, but it’s damn near impossible to talk as her hands slide up my bare shoulders, and then move back down as she continues the kissing torture on my neck.

“I didn’t want to send you to jail.”

She leans back, smiling, and my eyes go down to where her shirt has risen up. I’m getting a view of the part of her body I plan to have again. Very soon. Very, very soon.

I love the fact that she doesn’t cover up or even try to. She just lets me look as she runs her hands down my chest. When she bends over and takes my pierced nipple into her mouth, tugging at the metal in a way that has my cock twitching, I bite back a growl.

“Why all the tattoos and piercings?” she asks, dropping my nipple ring from her mouth, but her legs tighten as she squirms in my lap.