Page 89 of Burn With Me

No. It can’t be over. It’s barely just begun.

As much as I don’t want to be in the office today, I stay and work on all the counteroffers that are piling up thanks to our lost deal with WhirlTech. It’s monotonous–the work–and I barely pay attention because my mind is still stuck on what happened with Ginny this weekend.

I hadn’t expected her to message me early Saturday morning asking to talk, but it seems my words as her stranger got through to her.

But what we did wasn’t talking.

WhatIdid was make another huge mistake.

I should haveneverlet her get in my head. All I wanted to do was give her what she wanted. Show her that side of me that everyone else sees. Show her that the side of me she gets is exclusive—only for her.

“You okay in here?” Stacey’s voice cuts across my office.

Checking the clock on my laptop, I see that it’s already three in the afternoon. I haven’t left my office since I arrived at seven this morning.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” My eyes don’t stray from the screen, but she comes further into the room and sits on the other side of my desk as she types something into her phone.

“I’m worried about you,” she mutters.

“Nothing to be worried about,” I reply. My fingers still over the keyboard as I speak, fighting the need to dump everything that’s been going on to someone who knows nothing about the club so I can get an outsider’s perspective.

If I were able to tell anyone, it’d be Stacey.

“I can see that isn’t true. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on? Is Ginny still not answering you?” Crossing her legs, she sets her phone on my desk and sits back in her chair.

“She messaged me Saturday morning. We saw each other.” I save the document I’m working on and exit out of it, shutting my laptop before leaning back in my chair.

“How did that go?”

“Fucking awful. She doesn’t believe me about the photo. Asked me to fuck her like every other woman because she wanted to know what the appeal of them was.”

Blunt and to the point.

“Please tell me you didn’t.” Stacey’s eyes are wide and unbelieving as she asks.

Rubbing my temple, I send her a look that answers her without words. We’re quiet for a while before she finally sighs and reaches for her phone again. While she’s typing, I decide to come clean about everything.

“There’s more.”

She finishes whatever she’s doing on her phone and sets it down again. “I had a hunch. Tell me everything.”

So I do. I tell her every little thing—from meeting Ginny and my uncle telling me about the club to recognizing her there and creating a fake persona to book her. I leave out the dirty details aboutwhatexactly we did in those rooms, but I tell her enough that she gets the picture.

“Let me get this straight. You’ve been spending every weekend at a sex club that Scott owns?Andyou’ve been pretending to be someone you aren’t to gain Ginny’s trust while using everything she’s told you in there as a way to get her to sleep with you asJackson?”

“Scott owns a sex club? Why the fuck am I just nowhearing about this?” Tripp’s voice startles me. I didn’t even hear him open the door. But when I look up, he’s already coming across the room to sit next to Stacey.

“How long have you been standing there?” I ask him while shooting Stacey a glare. She’s not startled, so I have a feeling it was him she was messaging, telling him to help her figure out what’s been going on with me all week.

“Long enough to hear…pretty much the entire story. That’s fucked, dude. And you know I love you like a brother, but that is some seriously messed up shit. Also, again, I ask, why am I just now hearing about this super awesome sex club?”

“It’s not a sex club,” I hear myself tell him. “It’s a sex-positiveclub.”

Might as well get behind the concept if I’m going to have a hand in running the damn thing one day.

“What the fuck does that even mean?” Tripp asks, mirroring my own question when I first found out about it.

“It sounds like a place where you can go and be comfortable exploring the things you like. Honestly, why does this entire thingnotsurprise me? I’ve worked for you for too long,” Stacey answers.

---