Page 68 of Wicked Sin

I won’t, though. Not unless I get desperate. I do get a small paycheck from my counseling position—knock on wood that’s still available to me when all is said and done. So when I return to work, I’ll have a bit of an income.

But in the short term, I have limited funds.

Very limited.

Welcome to the reality of literally everyone else, Taylor.

Thanks, conscience. Thanks a bunch.

I clutch my Walmart shopping bag in my hand.

No more Botox. Hello Bag Balm. It’s a brave new world.

23

Luke

When we get backfrom shopping, Taylor retreats to her room, only coming out for dinner, which we eat in polite silence.

It’s hell.

Each time I think I might bring up last night—how fucking hot it was, how I want to do it again, how sorry I am that we didn’t talk first, or after, or even during—she silently shuts me down. She has thathell no don’t try itglance down pat.

Dismissive, cool, and rock solid.

Cool. That’s the best word for it. She cooled on me, hard, after I hurt her feelings. And that’s a boundary I need to respect. If she doesn’t want to do anything again, if she wants to be done with me as soon as humanly possible, then so be it.

I’m not going to try to persuade her to touch my dick. I don’t want to be that guy. She’s probably had enough of that guy for a lifetime.

“Have you finished?” She looks at my plate. It’s the first question she’s asked me in hours. “I’m done. I’ll do the dishes.”

I’ve barely eaten any of my chicken and rice. Her plate looks the same.

“I’ll help,” I say. “And I’m done, too.”

Without another word, she gets up and goes into the kitchen.

Silently, I pack up the leftovers, labeling hers with her name. Taylor, in a big black Sharpie scrawl across the top of the tin foil. Then I grab a dishtowel and start to dry.

There aren’t a lot of dishes, so it doesn’t take long.

I wish it would take longer. Long enough to figure out the right thing to say to thaw this silence between us.

It doesn’t.

“I’m going to go to bed early,” she says after pulling the plug on the sink.

“Thanks for helping tidy up.” I get a small smile and a glance that doesn’t quite meet my gaze.

“It’s good for socialites to get their hands soapy, right?”

Fuck. “That’s not what I meant.”

“No. That’s just me being jaded.” She sighs. “Good night.”

After she goes upstairs, I call McBride. They’re still waiting on flight records for Lively. “The judge wasn’t impressed with being pulled away from his dinner last night and made us re-do the request for a warrant, but we got it. Now it’s just a waiting game with the FAA records.”

“That’s if he filed properly.”

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