Taunt Me (Rough Love 2)

He answered on the second ring. “Sublime Services. How may I help you?”

Such a cultured greeting. He’d always run a classy show, even if he was a pimp who’d bled more money out of me than any decent person would. “Henry, it’s Price Eriksen.”

There was a pause, maybe the softest sigh. “Mr. Eriksen. This is a surprise.”

“I’m not calling to make a date.”

“Oh. Just calling to chat, then?”

“I need to know if she still works for you,” I said. “If she’s going back to work for you.”

Again, the pause, because he had all the power here. “You mean Chere, I assume?” he said after a moment.

“Yes, Chere. Is she coming back to work at Sublime?”

“I can’t really talk about that kind of thing,” Henry said in a fuck-you tone. “But if I could, I’d probably answer no.”

I let out a slow breath. What would I have done if she’d gone back to work for Henry? I would’ve lost my fucking shit.

“You met with her,” I said.

“How do you know that?”

“I just know. How is she? Is she okay?” I pressed my fist against my forehead. If I was in the same room with Henry I would have grabbed him and shaken him like an addict looking for blow.

“It’s been two years,” Henry said. “More than two years.”

It had been two years, five months, and a week, but who the fuck was counting? “I’d just like to know if she’s okay.”

“If you care, you should contact her yourse—”

“Just tell me. Give me one of your non-answers that’s really an answer, if you have to. If you’re going to keep up this charade of privacy.”

A chair creaked over the line. Maybe he sat up straighter. I imagined him bristling, his color reddening beneath his golden tan.

“It’s not a charade,” the man snapped. “I’ve kept your secrets. It wasn’t easy.”

“I imagine the fee I paid for your silence made it easier.”

“Your fucking ‘fee.’ I wish I’d never taken your money. Do you know how hard it is to keep your mouth shut when someone you care about is sitting across a table from you begging for some kind of closure? For the courtesy of a goddamned name?” His tirade cut off. “You know what? You don’t get any information. You want to know if she’s okay? Then call her. I’m sure she’d like to hear from you, if only to tell you to go fuck yourself.”

He hung up on me. I rubbed my forehead, trying to construct her state of mind from his angry stream of vitriol. I dismissed the “fuck yourself” part of things. Of course she felt that way. But she still thought about me. She still wanted to know my name.

She’d met with Henry to find closure.

I let that sink into my system for a moment. Two and a half years later, she was looking for closure, which meant…

Fuck, did that mean she was ready to move on?

Shit. Why now? Who had come into her life? All this time I’d felt like she was still under my control, still under my protection. She’d seemed willing to stay under my protection, even if she didn’t know it was there.

But now she was looking for closure. I should have been happy for her. I wasn’t. There were too many fucking assholes out there, and she was so raw and trusting and vulnerable.

I tossed down the phone and grabbed the binoculars. She was at her computer, studying the screen, shifting, tracing an eyebrow. So dark, those eyebrows. She used to tint them blonde.

You want to know if she’s okay? Then call her.

I didn’t need temptation like that, because damn it, I wanted to call. Every night, I wanted to call her. I threw the binoculars on the couch and picked up the phone, thought wildly of smashing it so I wouldn’t fucking use it. After a few deep breaths, reason prevailed. If you care, Henry had said. If you care…

If I cared about her, I’d leave her alone. She’d come so far in her new life, and I would only hurt her.

“Damn it,” I roared in the silence of my apartment, so loudly I was surprised she couldn’t hear it all the way across the street. But I didn’t dial her number in a desperate frenzy. I stayed calm. I had to remember why…

After the Empire, there’d been the Gansevoort session. I was miserable at the Gansevoort. I was horrible to her at the Gansevoort. The Gansevoort was when I understood that I saw her as more than a whore, more than a sex toy. It’s when I understood, clearly, that I cared about her as a person.

This was after I’d done some poking into her life, and learned about her abusive fucktard painter boyfriend. What I found out wasn’t flattering to either of them. I wanted to despise her for loving him, for living with him and letting him use her money—my money!—for drugs. But I couldn’t despise her and I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I wanted to protect her. I wanted to rescue her like some goddamned knight in shining armor.