The smiles at the table faded, replaced by uneasy glances between the big boss man in his power suit, and me, the interloper flushed with emotional anger. Price pushed back in his chair and nodded to the clients.
“Please, continue. I’ll return in a moment.”
He left it to Jennifer and Praneesh to explain who I was to the other suits in the room. He took my elbow and led me down the hall to his office.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” he asked. His voice was as tight as his grip on my elbow.
“Yes, I think I am,” I began, ready to pitch into a diatribe.
“Wait. Not in the hall.”
He steered me into his office and shut the door behind us. I turned to him, seething with all the hot, awful conflict that had propelled me over here in the middle of the day, in the middle of his meeting. He yanked me to him and kissed me. One of his knuckles stroked my cheek.
“No,” I said.
“Why not?” His arm slid around me, hard and muscled through his civilized suit. “You said you needed me, that you couldn’t wait.” He groped my ass and started yanking up my skirt. “Sometimes I don’t want to wait either.”
“No, I don’t want this. I need to talk to you.”
I pushed at him but he only held me harder. The caressing knuckle turned to long fingers gripping my cheek. He kissed me again, not soft now, but commanding and angry. I felt trapped within his power, within his enveloping scent and large body. I’d be lost in a moment. We’d be fucking on his desk, and nothing else would matter. I lifted my hands between us and shoved for everything I was worth.
“I said no,” I yelled. I backed away, holding out my arms to ward him off. “Don’t touch me.”
I expected hotter anger in reply, but he seemed to have discharged it with the kiss. He looked bored now, haughty, maybe a little bemused that I’d pushed him away from me. He pursed his lips and adjusted one of his cuff links. They weren’t my design.
“What do you want?” he asked. “Why are you here? I’m busy.”
“You know why I’m here. We need to talk.”
“About what?”
“About Simon,” I said, my voice rising again. “About what happened to Simon, and your part in it. My part in it.”
“There are no parts to anything. Your ex was a fucking drug addict. He died.”
His cool, uncaring tone made me grit my teeth. “That’s it? That’s your final word on the matter?”
“Yes, that’s my final word, which you very well fucking know.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “What happened to him has nothing to do with either one of us. He’s not in either one of our lives. He’s not going to be.”
“But he is. Just because you insist he’s not, doesn’t make it true.”
“If he’s in our lives, it’s because you’re fucking up.” He stared down into my face, then turned and walked across his office, over by the window. “Jesus, Chere. Do you still love him?”
“No, but—”
“Then why the fuck do you care? Why do you care so much?”
“Why don’t you care? He died, Price.”
He threw up his arms. “What did you think was going to happen? He used heroin and crystal meth, and crack, and God knows what else. He was an addict, full stop. He was a fuck up.”
“I fucking know that.”
“Then what do you want from me? Do you want me to cry for your fucked up, abusive ex-boyfriend? Do you want me to throw myself on the ground and tear at my hair and say it was all my fault because I wouldn’t let you go to him? What do you think you could have done for him?”
“I don’t know! Something!”
“Nothing. There’s nothing you could have done.”
“You didn’t even let me try.”
“Because I knew it would end this way. And you would have been involved with him again, and you would have been hurt again, and blaming yourself now instead of me. Or did you think you might have been able change him?” His smile was a mocking grimace. “Do you think he would have fallen in love with you again, you and your golden fucking pussy? You probably wanted that.”
“I didn’t!”
“Oh, you could have made him straighten the fuck up, right? Because you’re magical.”
“We loved each other once,” I shouted. I felt hurt and humiliated, all my feelings belittled. “Simon hit me, yes, he used me, but at least he let me live my life and be myself. He allowed me to have normal human emotions like concern and anger and grief.”
“Because he made you have those emotions every single fucking day, and he would have done it again if you got involved with him. He did do it again! This is all happening because you let him in the door of your fucking studio.” His expression was awful. His gaze burned me. “Are you seriously grieving over his death? What the fuck for? He never loved you. He used you and hurt you. God, Chere, what’s wrong with you? Why can’t you fucking remember?” The tortured words echoed off the glass walls of his office, resonating between us. There was a faint knock at the door.