Denial was thick and unyielding. As was desperation. I stayed there, naked, vulnerable, waiting. Jay emerged from the closet wearing a suit. Shoes on. He was clasping on a watch, not looking at me.
“You know my past,” he said.
I swallowed and nodded. Though the nod was a lie. There were parts I didn’t know. Parts I knew he was hiding from me, whether he thought it was because I couldn’t handle hearing it or because he couldn’t handle telling me, I wasn’t sure. But I’d been more than willing to accept that. I knew he’d given me more than he’d given any person. And that was a gift.
A treasure.
“Then I’m sure you’re smart enough to realize that I have no intention on living any kind of traditional life.”
Having finished putting the watch on, he’d taken his phone from the bedside table and was now tapping at the screen. Still not looking at me.
The absence of his gaze was physical. It was ragged pieces of a blade cutting at me.
“I didn’t mean it,” I whispered, my voice croaky. “I was—”
“You meant it.”
It was the first time he’d interrupted me. Ever. The first time he’d made it clear that he didn’t want to hear whatever I had to say.
He looked at me now.
Barely.
He was preparing to look through me. As if I wasn’t even there. He was preparing to erase my existence from his life.
“It is my fault,” he continued. “As much as you suit me in the bedroom, everything else about you needs something more traditional. I’ll never be able to give that to you. Never. I’m not going to change for you. Not going to give you what you need. I’ve known that all along.” He paused, preparing for the death blow, which he delivered expertly. “I’m done with you now. I’ve already arranged for your things to be taken to your apartment, and a car will be here to pick you up in ten minutes. Get dressed.”
Then he turned and walked away.
He didn’t look back. Didn’t say another word.
Nor did I, since I knew there was nothing that could change Jay’s mind once he’d made a decision.
I got up. I got dressed. I went to my purse, got a scrap of paper out of my wallet and laid it on the pillow.
And, in nine minutes, I got into a car that was waiting at the front of the house for me. During the drive, I looked out the window seeing nothing.
EPILOGUE
I believed in fate, destiny.
It likely came from my biggest fear—ending up like my mother. I’d had faith that my life was outside of my control in many ways, that there were plans made for me that were set in stone, that I couldn’t change no matter what, and I’d liked that. For better or for worse.
I believed that meeting Jay was a part of my destiny.
For better or for worse.
I knew that we’d end, of course. The beginning of our relationship had given the promise of that. But I was a romantic. A fool. I had believed, hoped, that what we had might break that promise.
But Jay was a man of his word. He had promised that he would never love me. That he would give me sex that was going to be seared in to my being forever. That, when he was done, he’d never see me again, never think of me again.
He hadn’t tricked me. He hadn’t fooled me in to this arrangement, hadn’t filled my head with the possibility that it might ever be anything more than it was. I had done that. From the very beginning, even though I’d tried my best to convince myself that I was the kind of woman who would get out of such an arrangement unscathed.
That was not me. I did not have thick skin. Even the clothes I wore were soft, delicate, dry clean only.
I had a dry clean only soul.
And it had been put through the ringer.
By Jay.
By myself.
Fate, for whatever reason, had planned this for me. To go through everything I’d gone through since I’d met him. Learn things about myself I never would have learned if he hadn’t come in to my life. Fall into an ugly, twisted and forbidden kind of love. A Shakespeare kind of love. A doomed kind of love.
And I’d come out torn, stained and forever ruined.
Fate had fucked me over on that one.
That bitch.
But then she gave me something only hours after I’d made it back into my apartment, after opening up a bottle of wine. A phone call from someone needing a stylist for a high-profile television show being filmed on the other side of the world.
“I know the chances of someone like you being able to drop everything and get on a plane to New Zealand within the week is low,” the showrunner pled. “But we got utterly fucked over from some diva we shouldn’t have hired, and we are willing to offer you an extra twenty percent than we offered her, which was already a considerable number.”