Cruel Money (Cruel 1)

“And then you appeared,” I parroted.

“Ah. No wonder you were so angry. And drunk.”

I crossed my legs into a pretzel and tilted my head up to the stars. “You didn’t make it any better, you know?”

“I know.”

“What if I never write a book worth reading?” I whispered my greatest fear into the silence.

I didn’t know why I’d said it at all. Let alone to Penn. What had he done to deserve this confession from me? Nothing. But, for some reason, it was so easy to talk to him. Maybe it was because I had been cooped up in this house for two weeks. Maybe it was because I was lonely. Or maybe it was just him.

It had been easy to talk to him in Paris. Though I had been a different person then. I didn’t know why I had done it, but it was out there now. Too late for me to take it back.

“I don’t think that could possibly be the case.”

I snorted in disbelief. “You obviously didn’t read the rejection letters.”

“I have a number of peer-reviewed articles published. I had to send them out to a lot of different journals before they landed anywhere. And I constantly got feedback from other philosophy scholars about my work. Most of it was far from positive or constructive. It might surprise you, but I know all about rejection.”

“It does surprise me,” I said with an eye roll. I doubted many women had rejected him. That was for sure.

“Look, rejection doesn’t mean that what you’ve written isn’t worth reading. It means, it didn’t work for that person or the next person or their marketing team or whatever it is. Harry Potter was rejected, like, a dozen times before it was picked up. I bet those other editors feel like idiots right about now. You’ll find the right place for your work, and then those other editors will rue the day they rejected you.”

“We can only hope,” I murmured. Though I did feel slightly better. It helped hearing it from someone who had been there. Even if tangentially.

“You’ll get there.”

I chewed on my bottom lip and nodded. I hoped he was right. “What’s your book about anyway?”

“My book?” he asked in surprise.

“Yeah. Penn Kensington’s philosophy. What interests you?”

He closed his notebook on a chuckle and tossed it onto the table between us. “Sex.”

I sat up straight. “Are you kidding me?”

“You asked.”

“I was asking about your work,” I insisted.

“Get your head out of the gutter, Natalie. I was talking about my work.”

I furrowed my brows skeptically. “You write about sex…professionally?”

“I study ethics. One of my areas of focus, including the one that I’m writing my book on, is the philosophy of sex.”

“Okay. What does that mean exactly? You’re looking at whether having sex is ethical?” I asked, suddenly intrigued.

“It’s complicated,” he said softly. “I’ll back up. Philosophy is the study of what really matters, such as knowledge, reality, and existence. It looks at how we know what we know, whether or not there’s a god, if we have free will, what is right and wrong behavior, et cetera. Ethics is the latter.”

“Who knew I’d be getting a philosophy lesson tonight?” I said with a laugh.

“I don’t have to explain,” he said with a shrug.

“No, keep going. I’m interested,” I insisted, leaning forward. “We’re talking about right or wrong.”

“Yes. The ethical theory that I most agree with is from Aristotle.”

“Hence the dog.”

“Indeed. As I mentioned on Lewis’s yacht, for Aristotle, you want to reach eudemonia, the ultimate state of happiness. And developing that happiness is done by creating good habits…essentially.”

“This has something to do with sex, I presume.” I tilted my head and smirked.

Penn arched his eyebrow. “Well, the general theory regarding sex is what we call the standard view. Sex is okay between two people in a committed relationship—preferably marriage—and the purpose is for procreation.”

I couldn’t roll my eyes hard enough. “Well, that’s incredibly outdated.”

“Is it?” he asked calmly. “I think most people will say that waiting to have sex is a smarter, safer choice.”

“Yeah, and those same people are having sex before marriage,” I pointed out. “I doubt anyone only has sex to have kids.”

“Right. I don’t think people follow the standard view, but that’s what is set up as the paradigm. It’s the best way to mitigate the risks of having sex.”

“I’m going to go out on a limb and say that you don’t subscribe to this mentality,” I said cheekily.

“I do not.”

“Color me shocked.”

“I enjoy sex,” he said blatantly. “Most people enjoy sex. It’s a pleasure unto itself and for much more than procreation. And the basis of my research is dismantling the standard view in an Aristotelian ethical fashion. It’s proving to be challenging.”

“I couldn’t imagine doing what you’re doing. Challenging sounds like an understatement. You’re trying to disprove a cultural stigma.”