Page 101 of Doughn't Let Me Go

“That was the point,” she says quietly.

I laugh. “Right. Can I ask…”

“Why I only have one-night stands?”

“Yeah.” I nod, even though she’s not looking at me, her attention on her fingers, which are now tracing mindless designs over my abs. “I mean, if you want to tell me. You don’t have to.”

“There’s not really a particular reason. I just don’t do relationships. Or feelings. I try not to get attached.” She sighs and burrows her face into my chest. “Every time I’d get attached to one of my new stepdads, they’d leave. I think my mom’s views on relationships tainted my own.”

“Because you don’t want throwaway.”

“No,” she whispers against me, her lips tickling my skin in the best of ways. “I don’t want throwaway.”

“I hate being left,” I blurt out, startling her.

She looks up at me, chin resting on my chest. “What?”

“I hate being left,” I repeat, swallowing the lump attempting to form in my throat. “That’s why I don’t do one-nighters. I hate the feeling of being left the next day.”

She doesn’t say anything for several seconds, just staring up at me with those underwater blues that sometimes feel as deep as the ocean herself.

“That’s sweet in the saddest kind of way.”

Sad, because she knows my history with being left.

“You said you had a one-night stand before—what happened with that?”

I groan, banging my head against the headboard.

“That bad, huh?”

“It’s embarrassing,” I grumble. “Especially given our circumstances.”

Her brows shoot up. “Now you have to tell me.”

“Fine.” I exhale, working up the courage. “There was an intern. We were obviously into each other but never acted on it because of the whole me-being-her-boss thing.” I look down at Dory when I say this. A small smile forms on her lips, but she doesn’t say anything, nodding at me to continue. “Anyway, she wasn’t permanent, and we both knew it. On her last night there, we thought…fuck it, let’s just get this sexual tension out of the way and never see each other again.”

Her smile grows. “I’m going to assume that didn’t work out so well for you.”

“No. No, it did not. She said we let her go because she was bad in bed. It was a whole ordeal.”

“And was she?”

I bark out a laugh. “Bad in bed? Well, she did yell out, ‘It’s good, it’s good, it’s gooooood!’ when she orgasmed.”

“Like Jim Carrey inBruce Almighty?”

“Exactly like that.”

“That poor girl,” she mutters, trying not to laugh but failing. “No wonder you fired her.”

“I didn’t fire her. Her contract was up.”

“Likely story.” She nips at my stomach. “It’s nice to know you have a thing for the help, though.”

“You’re not the help, Dory.”

“You’re my daughter’s nanny. That’s it,” she says, parroting my words back to me.

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