Page 44 of The Southern Submission

Payton’s hands still against my neck and he pulls me back against his chest. “Archer’s a predator. You didn’t do anything wrong. You know that, right?”

I stay silent.

He grips my knees and spins me around to face him. He wraps his arms around my back, holding me close. It’s incredibly intimate being face-to-face with him like this.

“He’s the one who fucked you over and that’s why you don’t date, right?”

“It’s a pretty good reason not to. He’s horrible and I was so stupid.”

He tilts his head like he’s seeing something I’m notsaying, and I look away, not wanting him to pry into what I’m keeping from him, but in true Payton fashion, he catches on too easily.

“It was you who ended things, right? How did you finally break up with him?”

I nod, still not meeting his intense ocean-blue eyes. “It’s a long story and it’s already late. I’m sure you don’t want to hear it, especially since it’s not relevant to our fake relationship.” I wave at him to deflect, looking for an edge of anger to add to my voice, but I can only muster embarrassment.

Payton captures my hand in his and pulls it up to his lips, kissing each of my fingertips in turn. “It’s relevant because it happened to you. Besides, it’s going to be too hard for me to sleep with you next to me if you won’t let me cuddle, so I have all night to listen to your story, and I want to hear it. Please tell me, Ainsley, even if you’re embarrassed or it hurts. I won’t judge you.”

I look at Payton, seeing the truth of his words and the openness on his face. I hate sharing this part of my history with anyone. It took me a year to tell Della, and my parents still don't know the full story. But for some reason, I want him to know. I blink and look at the stubble on his jaw before I can work up the nerve to tell him. I take a deep breath of his glorious scent to fortify myself before I can begin. When I blow it out, I see him shiver a bit from my breath on his neck.

“He asked me to do something for him, to write a story using information that he said was from a source at the company. I agreed, and the story was really good, one of the best I’ve ever written, but it ended up costing me my integrity in the end. My editor was able to substantiate the claim, but I shouldn’t have accepted the information. It’s a story that earned me a really great scholarship that would have paid for the rest of my grad program. It opened doors for me after my time at NYU—itlanded me an internship atThe New York Times, which led to a promised spot on their staff once I graduated.”

I laugh bitterly, remembering how great my life was going for about six months before it all came crashing down on my head. I risk a glance up at Payton. He’s looking at me sincerely, with no judgment in his stare, just patience.

He cups my cheeks in his big hands and forces me to maintain eye contact.

“I’m listening. I know this is hard. I won’t judge you for anything you say.”

I swallow the lump in my throat, hating the next part and the way it reflects on my character, and possibly how he’ll feel about me, despite what he says.

“Everything was going so well after that story. My confidence was at an all-time high, so my writing was better than ever. I won an award for it. Everything was great. Until I found out it was all a lie. Archer’s father, Andreas, had provided the insider information I was given. Donner Investments had fabricated the whole thing. Archer used me, knowing I was desperate to prove my worth as a journalist. I didn't care when I wrote it that the story would have the kind of life-altering consequences it did. When I heard Archer and his dad talking about how they'd used me, I was devastated.”

I hug my arms around myself as my stomach twists even now, years later, thinking of walking up to their table to meet them for dinner without them seeing me and hearing them discussing how easy I was to manipulate. I’d stayed long enough to hear all the incriminating evidence because they were planning to do it again now that they’d been successful. The repercussions of my actions and how Archer manipulated me using false information for the financial gain of a company that already had more money than they knew what to do withstill affect me.

I swallow the lump in my throat and glance up at Payton, feeling guilty even admitting it now. He cups my jaw and brushes his thumb over my cheek before he leans forward and kisses my forehead tenderly, lingering long enough for me to relax into the intimate gesture. I blink a few times to hold back the tears pricking my eyes.

“What did you do when you found out?”

“I tried to have the story retracted. I begged my editor to pull it even though it had been out for over six months by then. I said I’d own the fuckup. But he had substantiated the story and it was true at the time, so there was nothing we could do. The company I wrote the exposé about had quickly collapsed after it ran and Donner Investments bought them out at bottom dollar, which was the whole point in Archer giving me the information to begin with. I cost a lot of good people their livelihoods because my ambition blinded me. Everything happened so fast after that. I outed myself to NYU for using falsified information in a story, which cost me my scholarship. I had to drop out of my grad program without a way to pay for my classes. I needed to break up with Archer, but I had nowhere to go and felt so alone, and honestly, I was afraid of what he’d do. I begged an old friend to let me stay with her for a while just so I could leave him. Archer didn’t take it well when I told him my reasons. It was nasty. He punched holes in the walls next to my face as I packed my stuff up, pushed me onto the bed when I tried to move past him, broke glasses as I was trying to leave, so I had to walk through the shards, and he probably would have done worse because he had his hands on me, shaking me when my friend arrived to help me leave and buzzed the intercom. That finally made him stop. The last thing he wanted was for anyone to see him as less than perfectlyin control and the greatest.”

I stop and take a quick, trembling breath as I sink through the deepest, darkest memories of my adult life. I feel like a wreck, the same mess of a woman I was when Archer was raging at me as I tried to leave. I hear his taunts, his screams, feel the terror, not knowing if I’d make it out alive. All because I’d made the wrong choices.

“Was that the end of things, or is there more?”

Payton is rubbing comforting circles on my back, his voice soft as his caress, but I know he’s angry. I can tell by the set of his shoulders and the way his jaw ticks while I talk. He’s being so calm, for me, knowing I need this more than him raging against the treatment I received. It softens my heart even more toward this stupid man who just wants to comfort me and make me smile for some reason. He’s been so good to me when he’s had absolutely no reason to, and now he’s proving once again that he knows exactly what I need without me even asking. It gives me the strength to continue the story.

“He was pissed at me and embarrassed that he’d ever be the one dumped, especially by a nobody like me. He hacked into the NYU newspaper server and ran a story that was supposedly by me about the false information incident that wasn’t very flattering. Of course my editor retracted it the next day when he realized what had happened, but once something’s on the internet, you can’t pull it back completely and Archer ensured there are still sites where it lives on, so it’s haunted me ever since. I can’t exactly get a job at a big-name paper with an unfinished master's degree and unflattering stories that pop up when you do a deep dive while researching my name. Archer made sure of it.”

I roll my lip between my teeth and the sting of tears pricks the backs of my eyes and chokes me again. I had everythingI wanted right in front of me. It was so close. Then it was snatched away because I made the wrong choice. I blink and a tear tracks down my cheek.

Payton swipes it away with his thumb and tilts my face up, making me meet his eyes. “You’re right about one thing. Archer and his father used you. They manipulated you. You wrote the story you did on the information provided. You did your duty vetting the information. It was substantiated, so you ran with it. There’s nothing you could have done differently at the time.”

I shake my head at him, having gone down this route so many times in the last two and a half years. “I could’ve refused to take the information from my boyfriend at the time because he was a bad source. I could’ve stood on the principle that I was too close to the story, knowing the company was one Donner Investments had an interest in had I only looked a little deeper. Instead, I saw an easy story handed to me and I ran with it. Not only that, I fucking thrived under the attention and success it brought me after. I was so stupid to think I could have a win like that and not have to sell my soul for it. Now I know life doesn't work like that. There are no such things as handouts, favors, or free rides. Life will always expect its fair share for every scrap of luck I receive, and I know I’ll have to pay for every bit of good that comes my way.”

Twenty-three

Payton

Waking up with Ainsley wrapped around me wasn’t how I imagined starting my Saturday after she refused to cuddle before bed. We threw the covers off at some point because it’s warm in here with her covering me, even in the scraps of clothing she calls pajamas. Barely there boy shorts and a tiny tank top that leaves little to the imagination made her a walking temptation, yet I somehow managed to refrain from fucking her into the mattress, which is a credit to my restraint.

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