Page 15 of Sinful Attraction

I shrug. “I don’t really expect you to do anything. But if they keep hounding me and I walk away, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Half an hour after my sister leaves, I book a hotel for the weekend to go clear my head. I pack my laptop, phone, a few changes of clothes, and a wad of money from the stash I’ve been squirreling away. The rest of it I will have to pick up later.

I have no doubt that my father can find me if he really wants to, but that isn’t the point of this exercise. The point is that I need a break away from my family, and they need to know I’m serious.

I book the room and pack my overnight bag and laptop case. I’ll start looking for a job tomorrow once I’ve drunk and cried and had a chance to recover. I have no friends or allies in this fucking house, and I can’t stand it right now.

They won’t even notice I’m gone until I’m not at dinner. That gives me two hours to get in my car and drive down into the South Bay, where the hotel is. If they want to come to bother me or try to collect me, they’ll have some driving to do.

I’m on my way out the door when I see my sister again, leaning on my car. She’s been out here waiting for me, suspecting that I would actually follow up on my threats and leave.

“Don’t do this,” she says, the plea coming out of her mouth hard and angry instead of gentle. I stare at her coldly, then walk past her and unlock my driver’s side door. “I mean it, Arya. You don’t really have anyone in your corner in this family—”

“Yeah. That’s why I’m leaving. I am taking a break from you people because if I don’t do it for a while now, I’m going to end up doing it permanently later.”

“You can’t run from your problems—” she starts, then looks shocked when I hold up a hand.

“I don’t want to fucking hear it. I told you I’ve had enough of being treated like trash by all of you, and I meant it. Now, get off my car. I’m going.”

She gets off the car but comes around to my window. “You’re being irresponsible, Arie!” she calls out in frustration, using the nickname we’d stopped using in our teens.

I put the key in the ignition. “Sure. Whatever you say. Ignore what’s being done to me to try and save your precious status quo.” I start the engine. “You should step away from my car now.”

She moves away, glaring at me almost petulantly as I drive off. I want to laugh and cry and throw up all at once. What did these morons think, that I would just keep putting up with their shit when I could walk away?

I’m giving them a taste of life without me to kick around. I hope they choke on it.

I actually manage to stay dry-eyed and calm while I drive the two-and-a-half hours it takes to get to the hotel. Fifteen minutes into the drive, my phone starts going off. I mute it and keep driving.

Mom must be furious.I let out a high bark of laughter that sounds way too hysterical.Good. To hell with her. To hell with all of them.

November in the South Bay is usually in the seventies, but we’re having an unseasonable heat wave. My air-conditioning can’t quite keep up with it. The air in the car feels swampy and still too warm. I grip the wheel with sticky hands and feel glad I haveworn jeans instead of shorts. That way, I won’t have to peel my butt cheeks off the seat when the drive ends.

The traffic is insane. It takes me an extra 45 minutes, and by then, I feel wrung out, like my body and brain can’t take any more. I’m shaking a little as I check in and ride the elevator up to my room.

Inside, I swing back and forth between feeling like a really annoyed grown-ass adult who is absolutely sick of her family treating her like a rebellious teenager... and a rebellious teenager who has gone too far and doesn’t want to admit it. But that’s what I am—it’s how they see me. The box my family puts me in.

I am about to spend the next two days on a combination of hedonism, job searching, tears, and room service. It’ll probably use up a lot of my cash, but I don’t care. I need this.

The room is bigger than my one back home and overlooks a small, woodsy park with fly-casting ponds in its center. The balcony is narrow concrete, with a brown metal railing and a couple of anemic-looking potted plants. I pour them some water, then take off my shoes and look at the room service menu.

I order two bottles of white wine, a salmon platter, some strawberries, and some lemon sherbet. I grab a bucket of ice from out in the hall and wait. Once the food arrives, I eat the sherbet first, brace myself, then check my damn phone.

Fifteen calls from my mother’s cell phone. Two from my sister, one from my dad. And then one from a number I don’trecognize. They have all left messages. My message box is now full.

“God,” I mutter. This is ridiculous. Now, I have to listen to at least some of the bullshit in my box to clear it out.

I start with the last one, the unknown one, since it’s three solid minutes long and that will free up a lot of space. But I’m shocked when I listen to it and hear Michael Rossi’s fucking voice in my ear.

“Hi,”he starts his message.“Look, I know you hate my guts right now, and I even know I deserve that, but we need to talk. I know who the spy is in your household, and I’ll give you her name if you’ll just hear me out.

“I didn’t take that job and end up at cross purposes with you because I wanted to. It was all my dad’s orders. I felt fucking terrible about it, all right?” He sounds a little drunk. “Look, I can’t talk about most of this on the phone. I want to meet, okay? I’ve got a proposition for you that should end up making both of us look better to our families. And I’ll throw in the info on your household spy just for coming to see me.”

He rambles on from there, mostly repeating the same things, while I listen incredulously. Then, it’s done, and I listen to the message again and one more time before I delete it. But I still have his phone number.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I ask the empty room. Michael Rossi just screwed up my entire life. Now he wants to deal?

What the hell is going on?

---