Waiting until my sister was gone, I hustled out to the street. I had to get away from him. And Chelsea. And whatever it was that had sprung up between them.
It's not that I was drunk, exactly, but I had just finished an entire bottle of wine. Then I'd just about finished another one. I sat on the bed in my hotel room, drinking straight out of the bottle and watching HBO. Unfortunately, Pretty Woman was on, and I couldn't make myself turn it off.
I refused to think about the pretty escort and her handsome billionaire client, but the images still captivated me. That was the problem with being drunk. You couldn't stop watching Pretty Woman even though it hit too close to home. You couldn't make yourself do what you should—stop drinking. And you couldn't control your thoughts so you would stop thinking about a certain someone—your hot billionaire husband who'd hired you to be his fake wife. And who was quite possibly cheating on you with your sister.
Or something. Maybe.
I tried to shake that thought off, but I was up to my esophagus with wine. Shaking or moving anything at all seemed like an Olympian feat right now.
The image of my sister in the lobby haunted me—her jiggling boobs, her perfect ass, her insidiously glinting hoop earrings. My thoughts drifted back to that night, years before, when I'd found my sister in bed with Vince. Did I forget to mention that part, Lucas? That I found them together? In my own goddamned bed? Even the voice in my head was slurring.
I tried to block out the images, but my mind—ugly with wine—refused to cooperate.
I turned back to the movie, trying to concentrate. A few minutes later, I realized I was crying, and I was too drunk to stop.
Julia Roberts was trying on dresses with the nice woman who knew Richard Gere wasn’t her uncle.
Vince's white ass is pumping his dick into a woman on all fours in front of him, and he's giving it to her much harder than he ever gives it to me.
Julia was trying to eat an escargot but instead, flung it across the room.
I can see the woman's hair as she tosses her head back and lets out a deep, guttural moan. Her hair is long and blond, just like mine. I wonder if I'm having an out-of-body experience and that's actually me on the bed. But then Vince grabs her hair and yanks it, a litany of curses streaming out of his mouth. He says that no one makes him come this hard; no one else can do it.
It's not my hair he's grabbing.
Julia Roberts was taking a bath with a Walkman on, adorably singing along to Prince. Richard Gere was sitting on the edge of the tub, watching her.
And she orders him to do it harder, because he's the only one who can make her come like this, too. Then I walk into the room a little farther, and I realize it's my sister. Vince is fucking my sister, and he's so busy having an orgasm and fingering her clit—which I have to do for myself when we have sex—that he doesn't even see me standing there. But my sister does. My sister does, and she doesn't stop him.
Richard placed the stunning necklace on Julia and then took her to the opera.
Vince and Chelsea elope in Jamaica. She comes back and spreads the pictures all over my mother's coffee table—pictures of the two of them, smiling and tan, with palm trees and sparkling aqua water all around them.
Julia and Richard were at the polo match, where he saw her with another man and felt a stab of jealousy.
Chelsea is leaving Lucas's office today, looking like the cat that just swallowed the canary.
Chelsea would love to screw my handsome billionaire husband's brains out, because that's what she did. She stole things from me. Maybe it made her orgasms better, like those people who enjoyed choking themselves during sex or the ones who liked to be tied up. It heightened the sensation or something.
But he wouldn't touch her. Lucas wouldn't do that to me, and I knew it.
Of course, I'd said the same thing about Vince.
Chapter Twenty-One
Lucas
"What the hell do you mean, you don't know where she went?" I practically spit the words out at Ian.
"I dropped her at your office at seven. I told her I'd circle the block until she texted. She said you two were going to dinner in the North End."
"She never told me she was coming. She never even came up." My heart was pounding in my chest, quite possibly skipping beats. "You didn't see her leave?"
"No sir. I was driving around the block, but there was traffic over on Congress." Ian’s throat worked as he swallowed.
I tried to call Blake, but it didn't even ring. It went straight to voice mail. "They haven't seen her at The Stratum. No one's come or gone from the penthouse since she left earlier tonight. And there's been no activity on any of the credit cards she has."
"Did you call the police?" Ian asked.