Page 36 of Heartless

“Yes.”

“The truth is you walked out on me while I was away. You didn’t even have the decency to call and break up with me. You just disappeared with no explanation. And for what? To run off with that thug of an ex of yours? That was cowardly, Sharla. I would have expected a lot more from you.”

“I meant the truth from my lips not my mother’s twisted version or your father’s lying lips.”

“That was bold.”

“No, what was bold, Onyx, was your father showing up at our house and paying my mother a nice sum of money to send me away to school. Anyplace out west that was far enough from where his Ivy League-bound son was attending school.”

Shock and disbelief war inside of me for a leading place. “What?”

“The day after you and your mother flew up to visit Harvard, your father visited us. He paid my mother one hundred thousand dollars, in addition to the cost of my tuition to attendthe University of Utah, as long as I promised not to contact you again.”

“The fact that you’re telling me this makes me wonder how true it is.”

“The one thing you’ve known about me is that I’m not a liar. He made my mother sign an NDA.”

“And you? Didn’t he require you to sign one?”

“He did. Only it wasn’t my name that I signed.”

“My father is too smart to have let that pass.”

“I signed my name as Sharla Michelle Watson, only I spelled my middle name with one ‘l’ and no ‘e’ on the end. Technically, it wasn’t my signature,” she says with a shrug.

Turning my lips down, I reply, “Technicality. He could have gotten that overthrown in court easily.”

Her words hurt, though they shouldn’t. Knowing that she preferred my wealth over and our relationship over my love burns deep. And yet, here we are years later and what we had should be the furthest thing from my mind, but I can’t help but recall how strongly I felt for her or how deeply I hurt over losing her.

Sharla was the first woman that I proposed to. She was the first woman who understood me, and I could see myself spending my life with her. When she disappeared without notice, I was confused and hurt. Her mother told me that she’d packed up and moved out west with her ex-boyfriend. A guy that I knew had been trying to get Sharla back so it was easy for me to believe.

I keep my face schooled impassively as I reply, “Very brazen of you. Makes me wonder how you got hired into my company. Have you done your research and just come back to try and get back in my good graces?”

“Why would I do that? I’ve gone on with my life, Nyx.”

“Don’t call me that. It’s Onyx, or better yet, Mr. Maxwell.”

She crosses her arms over her ample bosom, and those light brown eyes flash fire at me. “I don’t know what you thought, and I don’t care what you believe. An executive recruiter approached me about this job, hired me from Ernst and Young with a very lucrative salary and signing bonus, and I agreed. I didn’t come into this company with hopes of sinking my teeth into you.”

“Are you sure?” I ask, walking to my desk.

“Look, just ask Neha. She knows. I was hesitant to take the job which is why she offered me the fifty grand signing bonus over the original twenty-five grand. She also met my salary requirements, and I knew that I would be a fool to turn the offer down. The opportunity to head up the diversity and inclusion initiative of a growing global company is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a girl like me.”

She says that last bit with a little bite.

“What’s that supposed to mean? A girl like you? You’ve never felt sorry for yourself before or allowed where you came from to define you.”

“Your father’s words to my mother not my own.”

Ouch.

Sharla grew up on Coming Street, one of the poorer neighborhoods in Charleston. She and her mother had lived in affordable housing for as long as Sharla could recall. Her mother worked as a patient tech making less than thirty-five grand annually at the hospital where my mother worked which was how I met Sharla.

I had gone to my mother’s job one day the summer before my sophomore year to help her out with a presentation she was doing. When I was leaving, I’d bumped into Sharla and dropped a box full of supplies I’d been carrying back to my car.

She apologized profusely for several seconds before she offered to help me restock my box. Once that was completed, Iwas taken in by those soft brown eyes, that raspy Southern voice, and her fully developed body that rivaled any woman’s.

I knew that I couldn’t let the opportunity to get inside of her pants pass so I’d asked if she could take my keys and open the trunk for me to put the box inside. She did, and we exchanged numbers afterward. But Sharla was a challenge. She wasn’t like the other girls who fell at my feet and left their panties in my car. She forced me to get to know her and the more that I did, the more that I liked her.

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