She rolled her eyes, but didn’t respond to it because she knew I was right. Aaron was smart, but only street smart. He had no manners whatsoever, but I couldn’t blame him with the way he was raised. He had a similar past to mine when it came to his parents, only his father wasn’t physically abusive. Only mentally.
He would have been a major liability and because of that, I refused to let him be an employee. I did tell him he could be a driver for Lora and myself if I needed one, but he told me to fuck off. That was two years ago and Lora had resented me for it ever since. She said that it wouldn’t only be helping him, but her as well. And that’s when I gave her the ultimatum: if she left him, I would give her a great job that paid well, but Lora had too much of a free spirit. She didn’t want to work. All she wanted to do was chase thrills and shop and sleep. To put it simply, she was a lazy twenty-eight year old.
Because I wouldn’t hire her fiancé for a real job, she stopped talking to me. Stopped calling and refused to answer my calls or texts—said they’d make it on their own without me. Eventually, it got so bad that I flew out there, only for her to tell me to my face that she never wanted to speak to me again unless I was dying or unless I gave Aaron a real job with Tempt. In the building and all. Neither happened, obviously.
I looked up, and Lora’s eyes were focused on the plastic bracelet around my wrist. “Why do you have a hospital band on? Is something wrong?” Her eyes were serious now and she searched my face and looked me all over, like she was looking for signs of sickness or disease.
“Oh. I don’t know,” I sighed. “I don’t wanna talk about that shit right now.”
“Well, make it quick! What is it? Are you sick? Is it AIDS? You have fucked a lot of random bitches, like that dumb one Juni, who would sleep with anyone—“
“No. No.” I shook my head. “It’s…a long story.”
“Well—” she threw her hands in the air, “—I have nothing but time, Brother. What the hell happened to you? You look like a bulldozer hit you.”
My lips pressed together as I glared at the band. Why hadn’t I cut this shit off already? Was it because I wanted to be reminded of how badly I’d fucked things up?
I met her eyes. “You remember my friend Derek?”
“Yeah, D? The cop who helped Mama?”
“Yeah, him.”
“What about him?”
“He…found something out about me and didn't like it. Punched me so hard I hit the ground and got a mild concussion.”
“What? Are you serious right now?” she gasped. “Is that why you have the black eye?”
I nodded, then shrugged.
“Well, what the hell could you have done to make him do that? He seemed like such a nice guy and he looked after you a lot!”
I debated whether or not to tell her, but then I thought about Kelly, and how I was certain she would show up and pour it all on the table, leaving me to look like a fucking fool. “I slept with his daughter.”
She frowned so hard her brows stitched together. “You did what?”
I looked away—anywhere but at her. “Q—” she gasped. “How old is his daughter?”
“She turns nineteen in September.”
“You slept with an eighteen-year-old girl? Oh my fucking gosh, you really can’t keep your dick in your pants, can you?”
“It’s not what you think, all right? I…cared about that girl. I didn’t come onto her and I didn’t force her into anything. It just fucking happened and don’t ask me how. It’s hard to explain it all. It still blows my mind when I think about it sometimes, but it happened. Can’t deny it.”
Lora looked me over twice, her head going into a slight tilt. She pressed her lips and did the thing that used to annoy me most. Just stared—stared like she could read me like a book and knew my deepest, darkest secrets. Truthfully, she was one of the few who knew the most about me.
“You love her.” It was a statement, not a question.
Knowing they would have been a dead giveaway, I snatched my eyes away.
“Wow, Q. I… I mean…wow.”
“What?” I mumbled, finally meeting her gaze.
“Nothing…it’s just…I’ve never seen this kind of love on you. It’s…weird.” She lowered her line of vision, focusing on the bracelet again. “How did her dad find out?”
“By a conniving bitch, who still happens to be in the picture.”
“What?” she scoffed. “Why would you still have her in the picture?”
“She knows too much about me—about us, Lora. She’s threatening my company, but I’m working on a way out of it.”