Page 113 of Release Me

“Worried?” Belinda muses, her glasses swapped out for opaque black shades.

That Sloane is so pissed with the way I bolted out of there that she fucks me again, only not in a good way?Absolutely. “No.” Belinda is too smug this morning. This feels like a setup. “Why?”

“Because you’re not your usual self,” she muses. She’s perched cross-legged in the passenger seat of our cart, the split in her green pencil skirt climbing indecently high up her toned thigh.

“And what is my usual self, Belinda?” I’ve shared no more than a handful of superficial conversations with this woman over the years. That afternoon at the Wolf family cabin involved very little talking.

“Like you don’t give a fuck about anything but having a good time.” Her eyes trail over my arms, my shoulders. “You’re tense.”

She’s not wrong there. “I guess stress doesn’t become me.” I accidently veer off the path around a bend, leaving indents in the freshly watered and manicured grass. Can’t wait to hear Dorian bitch about that later.

But my focus is locked on the trees ahead.

The signs are gone.

Allof them.

There’s no hint of fluorescent poster board, not asingle unwelcome sign, save for the standardPrivate Property, No Trespassingones. Nothing but twisted old trees, their branches forming a tangled screen to hide the quaint paradise beyond, with its charming, colorful trailers and garden patch bursting with greens.

My body sinks into my seat. At least one thing has worked out for me.

“Well, would you look at that,” Belinda says.

“Hopefully, that’s satisfactory for you and Wolf.” Enough that Henry will let go of whatever resentment he might still hold for Sloane.

Belinda pivots in her seat to face me, her expression unreadable.

“What?” My voice is wary. Did she figure out that I fucked the one woman she demanded I not?

“Fine.”

I frown in confusion.

“I will teach youeverythingyou need to know.”

“Because you weren’t already going to?”

She studies her manicure. “No, I was going to explain things to you with as much reluctance as possible, while making you feel like a tiny, insignificant, stupid man for wasting my time, until you quit.” She assesses me like a lioness deciding whether to mate with or kill the male in front of her. “But I thinkI’m beginning to see what Henry sees. So, I will help. If you fail anyway, that’s on you.”

Her offer is a lifeline—a rope tossed over the edge of a cliff with me clinging to the only jagged rock. “Thank you.” And I truly mean it.

“Don’t thank me yet. I hope you’re ready. These next two weeks are going to be painfully long and especially rough.”

Just how you like it, Belinda.

With an almost friendly pat against my shoulder, she goads, “Come on. Let’s get started.”

45.Sloane

“Who are we scoping out tonight?”

I jump as Rebel swoops in, pressing my phone to my chest to hide the screen. “No one.”

“Uh-huh.” She sets the filled cooler in the sand and then, fishing out bottles of Sapporo, passes one each to me and Skye before settling into a chair. The ritual of finishing our summer nights out by the oat grass, with a fire crackling and the soothing sounds of crashing waves from the nearby darkness, is a longstanding one. Another tradition from Gigi that’s stuck through the years. Any Sea Witch staffer is welcome to pull up a seat and unwind, and many accept the invitation. On any given night, we’ll have eight to ten people here, occasionally with someone busting out a guitar. If we’re lucky, Frank will bring out his ukulele.

“Okay, spill,” Skye pushes.

Right now, it’s just the three of us, which is why I’m willing to hold my phone to show them the candid close-up of Ronan from the Wolf wedding. I found it after going down a deep and sordid rabbit hole that led me to the photographer—a French artist famously known for taking close-ups of the female anatomy, mid orgasm. To say I didn’t know things likethat existed—and that people pay small fortunes for the invasive pleasure of this Joel pervert—is an understatement. Rich people are weird.

---