Page 50 of The Unraveling

This feisty response seems to intrigue him more. I feel my thighs grow unexpectedly warm.

“You think money would solve all your problems. I’ll tell you a little secret.” He leans in again. “You’re probably right.”

I scoff.

He lets me hold his gaze and I do so challengingly. “Sponsor me.”

It is my instinct to backtrack. To laugh. To say I’m kidding. To look away. But I do none of these things, letting our eyes stay locked.

“How will that benefit me?” he asks.

This is it.

“I’m fucking amazing. You can’t put something like me in a free port and wrap me in plastic. You only get chances like me in the moment. As you well know.”

Something changes in his eyes, something unknowable. His intrigue and amusement meet something else, a box somewhere inside him.

I need to shatter that box.

Our last course is placed in front of us.

I’ve been so enraptured in his gaze that I didn’t even notice the server remove our last plates.

“This is the uni with black garlic,” says Mauritia, before backing away professionally.

“So what do you say?” I ask.

He hesitates.

“How far are you willing to go for your career?” he asks.

“A question like that from a man like you—that’s when most smart women would get up and leave the table.”

He raises his eyebrows. “You seem smart.”

“I am.”

“Then what are you still doing here?”

My heart is huge in my throat. We’re closer than we were before, and even though it’s a respectful distance, I feel as though I can feel the heat coming from him.

“Sponsor me. Max.”

Chapter Sixteen

When I get back to Arabella’s that night, she has moody music playing and the apartment is cast in darkness but for a few red candles burning by the open windows.

I recognize the music as being a Kelsey Lu album called Blood.

Arabella is lying face down on the couch completely naked, flipping through a magazine.

I put the key back under the mat and then shut the door behind me, locking it.

“Arabella?”

She rolls over and I see her whole body. She is slow and languid, moving like honey.

“Jozz-leen,” she says, wetly. “You came back.”

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