I was wrong. She’s not chocolate and Netflix.
She’s fucking heroin, and I’m dying for a hit.
“Oh, that sucks, I’m sorry,” she says, her gray gaze sympathetic, and even now, I’m tempted to steal a kiss as I step around her on my way out.
“I’ll call you later,” I say curtly instead and stride out, slamming the door shut before the cats can escape.
I need to put some distance between me and Emma.
I need to detox before I’m in too deep.
45
Emma
He’s gone so fast it’s as if I’d imagined him here. Only the rumpled bedsheets provide evidence of his recent presence—that and the persistent tenderness between my legs. Somehow, we still ended up having sex after breakfast, and now I’m really sore.
So, yeah, it’s probably for the best that he left so abruptly. Well, not for the best—I feel bad that something went wrong at his fund—but I certainly shouldn’t feel abandoned or anything. So what if he didn’t kiss me goodbye? We’re not boyfriend and girlfriend. He’ll probably turn up when he’s done at the office, and we’ll have a ridiculous amount of sex again.
That is, assuming he still wants me. There’s no guarantee of that.
The thought is oddly depressing. Just the possibility of never seeing Marcus again makes my chest feel tight and heavy, like it’s being squeezed in a vise.
“He’ll be back, right?” I ask Queen Elizabeth, and she gives me the cat equivalent of a shrug—a blank stare, followed by a tiny tail swish.
I sigh and walk over to my desk. I’m imagining this, I’m sure, but for a moment there, it seemed as if Marcus had been upset with me… as if I’d done something wrong. But that’s silly. He got bad news from work, that’s all. Whatever’s going on at his fund has nothing to do with me. The only thing I can think of as far as something I could’ve done is telling him I’m too sore to have even more sex.
Wait a sec.
Is that it?
Did I offend him by refusing his advances?
No, that doesn’t seem right. Marcus is too confident, too much of a man to have such a fragile ego. It is, however, feasible that with the possibility of more sex off the table, he didn’t see the point in staying.
But no. There was that phone call. He didn’t make it up. I saw his face; the news he got really was bad. There might be hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars on the line—tens of millions, for all I know. It’s ridiculous to imagine he’d even be thinking about me during such a critical time; most likely, he seemed short because he was worried about the bad trade.
In any case, he said he’ll call later, so I’m sure I’ll hear from him tonight. Or if not tonight, tomorrow.
In the meantime, I should use this opportunity to catch up on my editing.
I’m already a weekend behind schedule as is.
46
Marcus
Bleary-eyed, I scrub my palm over my face and glance at the clock.
3:05 a.m.
We’ve been at it for over twelve hours.
Getting up, I toss my disposable coffee cup into the trash and look around the glass-walled conference room. Jarrod and all of my portfolio managers are here, sitting around the long rectangular table surrounded by piles of reports. Like me, they’ve been going over the investment ideas the analysts have been bringing in, trying to figure out how we can make up a $700 million loss during a holiday-shortened week.
If we’re still in the hole come November 30th, we’ll lock in this month’s underperformance, and it’s going to be a permanent black mark on the fund’s record—not to mention, a source of embarrassment at the upcoming Alpha Zone conference.
So far, there are a number of promising short-term ideas, but nothing big enough to plug a $700 million hole. And odds are, we’re not going to find that gem tonight.
I slap my palm on the table, and everyone snaps to attention.
“Enough,” I say. “Everyone, go home. We’ll resume this first thing in the morning.”
I don’t want their judgment compromised by lack of sleep.
It’s bad enough I’ve let my dick do my thinking for me.
“See you back here at seven?” Jarrod says, walking by me, and I nod. It wouldn’t hurt to catch up with my CIO before the PMs pile in. He’s only twenty-seven, but he has a knack for seeing the big picture, same as I do. One day soon, he’s going to strike out on his own, but until then, I’ve got his clever brain to bounce ideas off of.
Everyone files out of the conference room, and I follow, a tension headache squeezing my temples as I close the door behind us. On the main floor, the analysts are hunched over their computers, crunching numbers and sorting through data, searching for something to bring to their PMs.