Chapter 27: Davis
Losing a weekend with Olivia is agony, even after five days abroad with her and no matter how much I enjoyed meeting Charlie. The only thing that can distract me from how much I want her is how furious I am with her parents—if I could even call them that. The mother that failed her and the stepfather who… it takes everything I have not to pay someone to kill the guy.
Well, correction: That’s only one distraction. The other comes in a sudden barrage of phone calls and texts from my own younger brother that start on Saturday night.
Kieran: Pick up. It’s urgent.
Kieran: Where the hell are you?
Kieran: If you’re blatantly ignoring me, you should know better.
Kieran: DAVIS.
Kieran: Davis, this is fucked up. I need to talk to you.
I missed most of the calls and texts when I was at Olivia’s. It wasn’t until I had left the apartment and was heading downstairs to meet my ride that I even realized that Kieran was trying to get in touch with me.
When I got in the car, I called him back and he launched into a long story—the same old shit that it always is with Kieran. Something about a party with his friends. A model overdosing on coke and being wheeled out to an ambulance. Copious footage of Kieran carrying on with his own line of coke off of another model’s butt, clearly in the background of the video that one of his friends took.
I wasn’t even sure where to start. Between him being so dumb as to surround himself with friends who film women on the verge of an OD, being such a walking cliché of a billionaire’s entitled son as to do that much cocaine, and being so callous as to carry on while a woman is receiving medical attention, it was a tossup.
Our conversation carried on into the early hours of Sunday morning, with Kieran begging me to tell our father for him—to make this all go away. “But you’re his favorite, Davis. You know he’s going to rip me a new one. He might really disinherit me this time.” I’d heard it all before.
“I’m not responsible for you and your bad decisions. Grow up and deal with it yourself.”
“But you’re my brother—”
“Being your brother is a curse. Call dad. Fix it yourself.”
I hung up before he could say anything else. When he called back, I ignored it. The calls and texts continued throughout the week, arriving intermittently while I tried to work. Ignore. Ignore. Ignore.
On Thursday, Gray texts me a link to a Jezebel post entitled: “Davis Ridgeway’s Rich and Spoiled Son Raises the Bar and Proves that You Can Always be Richer, More Spoiled.” Gray accompanies the link with a text message that reads, Cute. But I’m genuinely disappointed that this isn’t actually about you.
Once I’ve read the Jezebel article, I figure my father has to know about it and Kieran doesn’t need anything from me anymore. Still, he keeps texting and I keep ignoring. It’s quickly becoming our thing.
I decide to forget about it and to focus on Olivia. My anxiety over losing her is enough to keep Kieran completely out of my thoughts. He’s not worth the brain cells when I have only two weeks left with the woman who has firmly occupied the most prime real estate in my thoughts for nearly a decade.
It’s not enough.
On Friday, I don’t even greet her when she walks into my apartment. I hoist her into my arms and bring her to the kitchen, where I’ve opened a bottle of wine. I don’t pour her a glass. On the contrary, I put her on the counter and prop up my phone against the wine bottle after I hit record on a video.
“What are you going to do with all of these pictures and videos?” she asks, her breaths growing heavier as I suck hard on the skin on her neck, marking her.
“Blackmail you,” I offer without stopping my work. “I’ll send them to the all-company listserv if you don’t do what I want.”
Her hands tighten on my shoulders. “And what do you want?”
“You. Just you.”
Like seduction embodied, Olivia slides off of the counter. “Well, I can definitely give that to you,” she remarks as she flips up her dress’s short skirt, revealing an ass adorned in one of the skimpy pairs of lingerie that I bought for her. She turns around and plants her hand on the countertop for steadiness.
I’ve never taken my cock out more quickly in my entire life. “Good girl. You’re so goddamn beautiful,” I murmur as I enter her. “I’ve never felt this way about anyone, Olivia.”
What follows is a frantic race to an orgasm that she wins because I’m so distracted by seeing her body undulating against my kitchen counter that I lose track of my own pleasure. No regrets though. Once she’s done, she turns around and hops onto the counter with her legs wide so that I can enter her from the front.
She groans as I finish inside of her, her thighs clenched tightly around me and her fingertips digging into my shoulders as I whisper the things that she likes to hear into her ear. You’re so gorgeous. You’re so precious to me, Olivia. You’re the only person that I want.
Minutes later, she’s still wrapped around me like a koala as I walk us into my bedroom and pull down the covers so that we can get into bed together. Once we take off the disheveled remains of our clothes, she holds me so that our chests press together. Her hand is woven into my hair as she cradles my head against the crook of her neck, and when she breathes out I can feel the subtle motions of her abdomen pressing against mine.
“You’re as good at speaking sweetly as you are at treating me like a disposable plaything,” Olivia comments.
“Interesting. Because I strongly prefer one to the other.”
She doesn’t ask me which one because the answer is obvious. I don’t want to humiliate her; I want to treasure her.
“Davis, I know that Charlie told you,” she mentions. “About Missouri. How things were when we were growing up.”
“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” I assure her.
“But what good has keeping secrets ever done us?” Olivia answers before she finally raises her eyes to look at me. Her expression is tight but relatively at ease, all things considered. “Promise me that you don’t pity me.”
“Pity? I can promise you that.”
She moves closer to me. “It’s not up to you to save me. I know that may be confusing because I’ve been taking your money—”
“That’s different,” I interject, “isn’t it? You earned it.”
“I earned it in the most shameful way possible,” she replies as she shakes her head. “Who would ever look at me the same way if they knew? Can you imagine me telling Charlie or my future husband what I did…”
She trails off and slides to her back. I stay where I am, observing her in profile as her mind turns. My selfish side is annoyed with her imagining whatever asshole she’s going to marry one day, but I realize that it’s not the time. Right now, she needs to know that this doesn’t define her.
“What was the alternative?” I finally ask. “Put Charlie in foster care? Drop out of college? Take out three hundred thousand dollars in student loans? Forget that. Look, I’m the last person who should talk to you about how to handle money problems, but Jesus, Olivia—at the end of the day, is it that bad?”