Page 27 of Gilded Fake

“Because I can’t handle myself?” he asks. “Because I’m so mentally challenged that I wouldn’t know better than to open my big mouth and accidentally tell them I fucked their queen? That’s what you’re going to say, right?”

“No,” I say, swiping helplessly at the tears spilling down my cheeks. “The less people who knew, the better.”

“For who?”

“What?” I whisper.

“Better for who?” he asks.

I shake my head, trying to answer, but my throat is clogged with tears. “For you,” I finally manage to choke out. “They would have killed you, Colt. I couldn’t risk it—couldn’t risk you.”

“You couldn’t risk yourself,” he snaps. “I asked you. I fucking asked you, point blank, Gloria. You lied through your pretty white teeth. More than once. You lied straight to my face. So why would I believe anything coming out of your mouth right now?”

“Because I’m not lying now,” I say, ignoring the tap that means someone’s waiting to come in, waiting for the next set. “I couldn’t tell you before, but now that they let me go, I don’t have to protect you.”

“Protect me?” he asks incredulously.

“I wanted to tell you,” I insist. “But I was afraid they’d hurt you. Believe me, I would have told you sooner if anything good could come of it.”

“And now that you think you can get something out of it, you’re telling me?” he asks. “You’re fucking unbelievable, Gloria.”

“That’s not why,” I say, so frustrated I could scream. Why can’t he see how dangerous it would have been for both of us?

“You didn’t tell me because it was better for you,” he says flatly. “Because you wanted to keep your spot as queen, and if anyone knew you fucked the pariah, you might lose it. If I knew, I might expose you. Is that it? You thought I’d tell Dixie, and she’s put it on her blog, and you’d be ruined.”

I open my mouth to tell him she already knows, but I have no right to ruin his relationship that way. Before I can say anything at all, another knock sounds. Colt gives me one more scathing look, a look that cuts me off at the knees and makes me feel small and despicable and utterly worthless. Then he turns and walks out.

“Colt,” I cry, running after him.

I shove past a group of a half dozen men waiting to come in, perfectly respectable and professional in their designer suits and expensive haircuts and name brand cologne. The very opposite of Colt Darling in every way, from his casual t-shirt and wet jeans to his unruly lion’s mane to his disfigured hand and the tattoos covering his neck. I should be in my dressing room getting ready to tempt them to sin, to tease them until they’re so desperate they offer me the keys to their Bentleys and Jaguars, offer me a life of luxury as their mistress, put me up in some fancy apartment where my only job is to spend their money and look pretty and make them feel young again when they slip away from their wives for an hour.

But the thought of them touching me makes my skin crawl, and I hate them for getting in my way, for looking at me like I’m the one who’s pathetic as I run out in a thong, my nipples showing through the wisps of lace, my six-inch heels clattering on the marble floor.

Someone calls after me, one of the girls or maybe Ms. Scarlet, but I don’t stop. I run for the final door, the one that leads downstairs. Colt’s just disappearing through the exit at the bottom of the stairs when I reach the top.

“Colt, wait,” I call, but the door slams behind him, leaving me and my echo alone in the empty stairwell.

I charge down, not caring that I’m walking out on clients, that I’m about to run through the Downtown Diner basically naked, that Mr. North could lock me out of the club. All that matters is that Colt understands, that he knows I didn’t do it to hurt him.

I burst through the door into Mr. North’s office, ignoring the order he barks at me, and through Ms. Scarlet’s. I run into the diner, where Scarlet has “The Thunder Rolls” playing on the jukebox, which seems painfully apt as I race out into the torrential April downpour. I’m instantly drenched from head to toe in frigid water. Searching for Colt through the veil of rain, I desperately scan the parking lot. Finally I catch a glimpse of movement through the darkness and the sheets of water sluicing down.

His head is ducked against the onslaught as he cuts across the lot, through ribbons of red and silver light that shimmer across the wet asphalt in the dark, toward his truck, which is pulled up behind my Mustang.

“Colt,” I shout, running across the lot, water splashing onto my legs from where it’s puddling on the pavement. I catch up just as he’s passing my car, grab onto him so he won’t go. I don’t care if I look like a drowned rat that just washed up in the gutter. He has to know.

He yanks his arm away, like he can’t bear my touch, and my heart shatters. “What?” he demands, his voice as cold as the torrents of water battering us and bouncing off the nearby cars.

Suddenly I’m glad for the rain that hides my tears, for the darkness that hides my hurt. “Please just listen,” I beg.

“I’ve heard enough,” he says. “Despite the brain damage, I’m not stupid, Gloria. I know how girls like you think. You’re just like Dixie.”

I bristle at the comparison, my own anger rising. “Then maybe now I have a chance,” I snap back at him. “Since you’re obviously so in love with that psycho you can’t see what’s been staring you in the face all along.

“You—” He breaks off, fists clenched, then turns away to let out a wordless bellow of fury. I’ve never seen him lose his temper in all the time I’ve known him, through all the shit he’s endured. He’s always been too cool to care, even when we were grinding him into the ground. He barely flinched, barely fought back. Everything just rolls off him. But not this.

He turns back, rain streaking his chiseled features, his eyes burning with rage. “You lied to me when it benefitted you,” he spits out. “Now that you’re nothing, you have nothing to lose. You think because our positions have flipped and you’re the pariah, you can get something out of me. You think you can use me to get back in now that I’m a king. Is that it?”

I draw up to my full height on my six-inch heels, so I’m only a few inches shorter than him. I wish I wasn’t basically naked now that the rain has drenched the tiny bits of fabric I wear. What was I thinking, chasing after him like a pathetic dog? I probably lost my job, and for what? So he could hurl the same insults at me that everyone else does, accuse me of chasing something that was only ever forced upon me?

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