“Your whole thing. This whole hot and cold act. You clearly want me, but the minute I show one speck of desire for you, you shut down.”
“That’s not fair.”
“How is that not fair?” she demands, frowning and shaking her head at the same time.
“You don’t exactly have a sterling record, Olivia. There’s a trail of men in your wake who you’ve manipulated for their money—”
“Back the fuck up,” she orders, sitting up straight now. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Sure I do,” I counter. “Eight years ago you tricked me into thinking you liked me for money. Right before that, you confessed to manipulating your professor into sleeping with you.”
“Manipulating?” she hisses, eyes widening so that I can see the whites all around the perimeter of her irises. “Manipulating? You’re so out of line, Davis.”
I let out a sigh. “Oh, what—were you actually in love with a fifty-something, tenured—”
“We had an arrangement,” she nearly spits back. “We met on a website called Seeking Sugar Daddies, which I went to because my dumbass of a mother had to go and die and will everything she had to my abusive stepfather, leaving me eighteen years old and broke, trying to go to college and trying to raise a fifth grader. So yeah, maybe I had to resort to something horrible to keep us afloat, but Paul knew exactly what he was getting himself into.”
I blink a few times, my chest feeling tight as I try to breathe through my shock. She had to resort to a sugar daddy—that she met on a website. Oh fuck that. No. Nope. There’s no way in hell that’s ever happening again.
“Prick,” she murmurs the word, but it’s clear she wants me to hear it.
I suppress the unprecedented rage that’s starting to boil up in my stomach long enough to say, “Olivia, I didn’t know.”
“Of course you didn’t. Why would I tell you that? Why would I lead with what was once the greatest shame of my life until I met you?”
“Look, if you had just told me—”
“You had no right to it.” Olivia looks away from the phone and I can see that her eyes have gone glassy. After a beat, she releases a slow, even breath. “Paul and I had an agreement, and now you and I have one as well. It was my fault for trying to act like there’s anything here but a piece of paper. So keep doing what you’re doing, Davis. Ignore me. Degrade me. Call me horrible things. It’s what I signed up for. I was stupid for letting my feelings get in the way.”
“Olivia…”
“Enough of this. I have to go,” she says before she ends the call, not offering me a window to say anything else.
Once I’m alone, I’m left standing in the bedroom and staring at the dark screen of my phone, but all I can see is her face. Her gorgeous, smiling face in that video that she sent me earlier.
Shame courses through me, and I can’t quite pinpoint its root. All I know is that I never should have done this—I never should have made her an offer like this.
Paul. Raising her brother. Trying to get by with nothing at eighteen. To think that I exploited that innate weakness without even knowing it practically makes me sick to my stomach.
I’ve screwed up. I’ve screwed up so, so badly.